advice on painting chainmail and using printers inks

[faust18]

Hi all, ive been painting chainmail for the first time so far ive used a black base .citdel bolt gun, chainmail then mistral siver washed it back with black then recaptured the highlights.can anybody give me a good method either with acrylics or oils.I also want to try printers inks but dont know where to start at all with them so some advice there would really help me out alot , thanks mick

 

[megroot]

Printers inkt is not mixable with acrylic.
You have to use oils.
Mixe the printersink (silver) with black. Paint this as a base color, let us say darkgrey.
Highlight with more printersinkt, shade with pure black.
This is how I do it.

Marc

 

[faust18]

Thanks for that till now I thought id be able to use them with acylics thats saved me a mess.I also got some got some vallejo laquer based gold paints they were crap on the brush I guess theyd air brush fine dont know,,do you anyhting on laquer based paints I thinned with ipa .also is the new oil based silver worth a go maybee? any way thanks for the sterling advice mick.

 

[Alex]

There is no substitute for printers inks. the other ones are too coarse for 54mm scale. you dont want to be able to see each metallic pigment

chain mail : primer, black undercoat, silver ink then shade with a mixture of silver ink and whatever oil color you prefer or even pure oil color.
that's the exact same way my silver car was painted at the factory !

 

[faust18]

Thats great Alex can see now why printers inks are superior due to the metallic flake size ill get some stormtroopers ink and crack on thanks for the heads up regards mick

 

[Einion]

Hi all, ive been painting chainmail for the first time so far ive used a black base .citdel bolt gun, chainmail then mistral siver washed it back with black then recaptured the highlights.can anybody give me a good method either with acrylics or oils.

That is a good method! Lots of people paint it in that way.

BTW it's more correctly called mail, not chainmail.

There is no substitute for printers inks. the other ones are too coarse for 54mm scale. you dont want to be able to see each metallic pigment

In the new ranks of 'metallic' paints some use a bismuth pigment (e.g. some of the VMAs), which is actually finer than printer's ink.

Humbrol's venerable Metalcote paints based on graphite can also give a superior result to printer's ink in a couple of respects.

Einion

 

[Helm]

Or Maille if you want to be really pedantic

Steve

 

[Einion]

Or Maille if you want to be really pedantic

And archaic

Einion

 

[Helm]

Well chain mail has been around since 1822 so it's hardly a novelty either but on the subject of the inks IMO you can't beat old fashioned enamels for metals it might be the way I paint/use them but I always get a plasticy finish with inks more akin to brushed aluminium than steel myself

Steve

 

[Einion]

...on the subject of the inks IMO you can't beat old fashioned enamels for metals it might be the way I paint/use them but I always get a plasticy finish with inks more akin to brushed aluminium than steel myself

That might be an issue with the specific inks, there are loads of different brands and some are much more brilliant than others. That was one of the reasons I was reticent to pick them up initially, and subsequently I developed other ways of doing different metallics so no need for them now.

Bottom line is of course it doesn't matter what you use if you like the effect it gives. And mail is a fairly forgiving thing to paint, so there are many viable alternatives (including no paint at all with white-metal kits naturally).

Einion