How to Paint Blue Steel (metallic)
If you have any questions / comments, please feel free to post on the forum thread for this tutorial.
Hi guys, unsurprisingly I am not going to be giving out any modelling tips today....
However I am going to be giving you a super quick tutorial on how to paint Blue steel. This works really well for high elves, or any 'clean' silvers you're doing, I've chatted a bit more about applications at the bottom.
Equipment:
Paints:
Guilliman Blue Glaze
Drakenhof Nightshade
Vallejo Glaze Medium
Plate Mail Metal
Shining Silver
Step 1: Basecoat Plate Mail Metal (2 thin coats if needed) - Undercoat was Matt Black Primer, which helps silver cover nicely.
Step 2: Wash Drakenhof Nightshade + Guilliman Blue (stir/shake Guilliman gently) 1:1 - 2 coats, let it dry fully between each. Drakenhof is much darker than the old blue wash 'Asurmian Blue' - this is why I added Guilliman. A touch of glaze medium here may help, but will extend drying times.
Step 3: Highlight - Shining Silver, in this case drybrushed, but an edge highlight may be better for a sword etc.
Done!
Thoughts/alterations.
This is a very blue mix, if you're going for something more subtle you have a couple of options:
1. Do as above, but heavily drybrush/paint plate mail after the wash (and only do one wash), just leaving it in the recesses.
2. As above, but add less blue glaze, and more glaze medium, just one thin coat.
Other alterations would be doing a careful straight drakenhof nightshade wash, but only in the recesses, for higher contrast, or starting with a shining silver base coat for a really bright steel.
Alternatively if you're going for super contrast, start with a darker silver (you could just add a little black to your basecoat), wash twice, or more, and then go straight in with a shining silver edge-highlight. This would give a similar effect to the
Dark Steel tutorial I did a while back.
The options are endless, washes are fantastic, as you can tint and shade your metallics without deleting previous work, experiment, go forth and prosper
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