Deathripper Bonejacks Metal Color and NMM

[Kimmo]

Continuing on the subject of having some fun fun, I pulled a pair of Bonejacks out of the stash along with Micro Art 40mm bases for a bit of a technical exercise. I haven't had a chance to properly play around with Vallejo's Metal Color, nor have I attempted a non-metalic metallic finish soooo...the premise: one Bonejack and base using Metal Color, the other in NMM.

A primed set using a mix of Vallejo Black and German Red Brown for a nice dark brown. I don't want a mirror shine so went with dark brown instead of black.




The second set is my sketch pair to work out the colour scheme and tones. This is still very rough and not terribly precise with the shades, but gives me a good idea of what should work. The tan represents brass, the red brown is copper, the grey is steel, black is iron and the dark brown is bronze.





And my Metal Colors that I'll be using. I mixed up a batch of bronze and brass, both are a touch dark but a good base. I'll be able to play with the tones and shades using these six colours. I have a bottle of Silver as well which will get used for the steel and iron mixes. Aluminum is nice, but it is a bit too "white" for the deeper tones I want.



I'll start off by doing the primed set in Metal Color and use that as reference for the NMM, the aim will be to get the tones the same.

Kimmo

 

[TERRYSOMME1916]

Looking forward to this, I am waiting on some Metal Colour Silver arriving from Amazon to try before plunging into buying the range of colours.
TERRY

 

[Kimmo]

Cheers Terry! Spoiler alert: if you want shiny, you'll love the range.

Kimmo

 

[Kimmo]

Let's get down to business...

First off, a base coat of all the colours.












After basic shading and highlighting using only Metal Colors.















And after a wash of dark brown mixed from Black and Camo Black Brown with a spot of thinner and glaze medium, then excess wiped off with a moist cotton bud. I needed the wash to start defining shapes and to tone down the shine just a wee bit.














And we've got a pretty good start to our Spacepunk Murderchook. You can see how shiny the paint is, even after a very thin wash of regular paint. The next step is to start defining edges, picking out details and cleaning up some of the basic colours. The shading and wash have sort of muddied a few areas. The biggest challenge so far is in actually seeing what you're painting, there's so much reflection of light that it can be a bit tricky to get an overall feel for what's actually going on.


Kimmo

 

[Kimmo]

More progress, the shading and highlighting is starting to shape up nicely. Rather tricky to get good photos because of the shine, hopefully the edging and catch lights are showing up.














Adding the green glow base, picking out details and getting the head started.















A shot of the underside shows how I'm adding light patches to where the glow will spread out to. This will be another first for me, directional light.







Next up is adding washes to bring out the rivet and screw detail and then see where we're at before I start on the green glow. I think I may have to give the metal a satin coat to cut the shine back a little, which may also alter some of the highlighting and shading. In reality, the shading is more subtle and cloudy than the photos are letting on. I actually like the slight randomness as it looks more like aged metal.


Kimmo

 

[TERRYSOMME1916]

I can only say a big thank you for taking the time to put this SBS example of this range of Metal Colour together and I can appreciate that the pictures will look different than what you are actually getting in reality due to lighting and reflection etc but as you point out with a little work on the shadows etc and a satin/matt varnish and a little weathering these colours could do the trick, I will experiment with the silver that arrived from Amazon yesterday and see how it goes.
TERRY

 

[Kimmo]

Cheers Terry! You need to know where you're at before you can get to where you want to be. This figure isn't the best of choice to try out the Metal Colors on (the plastic is rough and difficult to clean up properly), but it was at hand and the package came with a pair, ditto for the bases, so I thought I'd give it a go. One thing you will notice is how much more shine you can get with a good clean surface, and with a glossy black base. Even with the imperfections and roughness, there is quite a bit of shine in places.


On to today's update. I thought it might be wise to get my NMM colours sorted out before I get too far with the metallic version. I had a bit of a rummage and settled on the following Vallejos for the base coats:

Brass = Khaki Grey (MC)
Bronze = Burnt Umber (MC)
Copper = Dark Fleshtone and Scrofulous Brown (GC), roughly 1:1
Steel = Basalt Grey (MC)















I think I'll continue with the NMM version for a bit so I can refer to to the tones and shading before I add any further washes or filters. I'm going to try and use a makeshift wet palette and see how using retarder medium helps the process. I had watched an interesting video on Youtube and the chap had used both of these to great effect, a crucial insight was also in how he went about the entire process, more on that as we get going.


Kimmo

 

[Nap]

Hi Kimmo

What a interesting SBS , thanks for all the updates , the effects certainly look good

Look forward to seeing more

Happy benchtime

Nap

 

[Gary_81]

Nice painting and interesting to see metallic and NMM as well.

Gary

 

[Kimmo]

Cheers Nap and Gary! It's all for the greater good and a chance for me to blabber on. I should get a session in today, and see what we get up to.

Kimmo

 

[Kimmo]

After a couple of sessions, we can see what sort of progress is being made. It's not exactly pretty at this stage, but it is starting to look like something. First up is my wet palette.




A simple affair with a sponge liner, two sheets of blotter paper and parchment. I bought a refill pack to test out and haven't really done much testing, typical. I noticed the abbreviation for Model Air (AC) is wrong, had Color on my mind, and the White Flesh is from the Nocturna Malefic Flesh set by Vallejo, worth picking up as well as the Fairy Flesh set. One tip I found helpful was to soak the parchment for a while (10-15 min) in hot water to get it good and saturated. I simply ran the tap into the container and poured out the excess, then dabbed the parchment with a paper towel. I added way too much paint. Two drops will go a long way and give you more room. If you seal and and place the container in the refrigerator like I did, you'll notice that the moisture levels increase a fair bit, and if you have a lot of paint, you'll get a rather abstract painting as a result. Next go around I won't put the container in the fridge to see how the paint reacts. The refrigeration didn't do any harm BTW.


Onto the first session for some rough sketching and shading.















I mentioned having watched a nice video in a previous post, and the one thing I took away from it was to not be too precise at this stage. Use the retarder medium to give you longer working time and just mess about until you get a good feel for where your shadows and highlights should go. Metal has a "live" feel to it because of the way light (and colour) reflects and shines on it, so unless you're prepared to spend a really long time trying to get perfect bands of light and then blend it in, this is a quick way to get you started. This process will take time in a any event. I'm using a larger brush for the blocking, and a finer one for detail work. I'm also incorporating a stipple and chicken scratch style of brushwork to increase a sense of "texture" and chaos. Let the paint dry and go back and forth as needed and let everything dry properly, then start refining, which brings us to today's session.















Now we're getting somewhere. There is still much to be done, including getting some orangey brown back into the mix using Scrofulous Brown. The off whites are rather chalky and stark at this stage, and the bronze needs something, but I think this may just work.


Kimmo

 

[Kimmo]

Been tough to get quality bench time the last few days and the paint just wasn't flowing, so to speak. After a several fits and starts, here's where we're at now:















I gave the head a quick going over to help with the overall tone and contrast. I was messing around with the brass a bit, it was looking too desaturated and flat. I added a very thin filter of Scrofulous Brown and Yellow to punch up the intensity, and then added more dark tones to get more contrast. The copper is looking good, the bronze still needs work. I switched out the Model Air paints with the closest matches I could find (Saddle Brown, Cork and Flat Flesh) as I find the Model Air is just too thin to cover the way I like when a heavier application is called for.

This is an interesting exercise, at times a little frustrating as well, but a good lesson to learn from. I'm trying different techniques and brushes to see what works best and going from there. The main point I'm learning is that NMM requires a good deal of contrast, and knowing where to place the lightest and darkest values. This really is an exercise in patience because you need to let things dry to see what is happening. The fun part is that you can be a bit messy and just go with the flow; all those little imperfections and blemishes add to the depth and illusion of a reflective surface. The retarder medium is working well, which is another pleasant surprise and has me thinking it may be getting a lot more use in the future. I'm also finding out that using a slightly larger brush is better for all the blending work. Small enough to get fairly fine lines, but not so small that blending gets scratchy. The obvious take away is to use two (or more) brushes...


And that's your Christmas Eve musings. Everyone have a safe and happy holiday.

Kimmo

 

[Kimmo]

Lots more progress the past few days, hopefully everyone has had a chance to digest their ham and/or turkey. Moving along, I did a bit more refining with our NMM chook and got the base painted up. I gave the metal bits a coat of Satin to increase the sheen and it also smoothed out some of the brushwork nicely. I wasn't happy with the green glow so tried a bit of gloss, this seemed to help some. I wish I had inks, they'd be interesting to try out on this.






















And the base under way.





A sponge was used to get the worn metal effect, then I refined things with a brush and forgot to take photos before I glued our chook to the base.













Now I can work on the areas that need working on, no point painting stuff that's in shadow.


And our metallic chook got another round of work which was mainly washes and edging or catch lights. You can see I've added a bit of reflected tone on the side armour from the leg. Next up will be the green glow and finishing off the head.














And the base is pretty much done as well, no sponge this time, just a brush. I love doing worn metal. You can see in the second photo how the white is almost as intense as the bare metal because of the angle of the light, something to keep in mind for NMM techniques. These two angles show the obvious benefit of using metallic paint, when the light hits nicely, you get an intensity that is very difficult to achieve with the NMM technique. It can be done, as many an old master has shown on large oil paintings, just not quite as easy in smaller scales.









All in all some good progress. I'm really pushing the limits of what I can do with the brushes I have for some of the finer work. Since Santa didn't leave any behind, I'll have to wait for some extra cash to pick up some really good ones I've been eyeing for ages. Still a bit of work to be done, but getting there.


Kimmo

 

[Kimmo]

Calling this one done, the last project for the year and decade. I touched up a few highlights here and there, a bit of dark wash for added contrast and edging to bring out the detail on the base and perforations. I also gave the NMM chook a light coat of Vallejo Rust (for copper), Oiled Earth (for bronze), Desert Dust (for brass) and Model Color Smoke (for bronze again) to add a bit of intensity and depth to the various shades, and to smooth things out a bit more. The Rust in particular worked well to bring back some life to washed out areas. The Metal Color chook got a coat of satin to take off the glare, the shine is still rather impressive, even at this small size. I'll add a gallery link below in a bit, for now, here's a teaser:





This was a fun and informative project. It didn't go exactly as planned with the NMM, but you need to start somewhere when learning new techniques. The Metal Color was a joy to work with, it blends well and goes down nicely. One thing I forgot to mention is that it tends to dry up fairly quickly, so make sure you have enough to work with if not using a wet palette for custom mixes.

Thanks for following along.

Kimmo

 

[Kimmo]

And your gallery link:

https://www.planetfigure.com/threads/deathripper-bonejacks-metallic-and-nmm.194400/