by Bob Barnetson

Most gaming figures will have some metal components that require painting, whether it is a gun barrel, sword or helmet. Getting a realistic metallic look without investing an immense amount of time is fairly easy.

Three Approaches to Metal
I’ve used three main approaches to painting metallics.

• Wash: You can paint the metal a bright silver colour and apply one or more washes of black/brown paint or ink to tone it down and create shadows where the shadows should be.
• Block paint: You can paint the area a dark metallic colour and drybrush or carefully highlight the area one or more times with ever lighter metallic colours.
• Magic dip: You can prime a figure white, apply the magic dip (creating an overall dull grey effect) and then use silver to highlight the important metals. A second magic dipping can be used to tone down the silver and restore any shadows inadvertently lost when painting.

Having painted 50+ figures with each technique, my assessment is that they all generate an okay outcome on 1:72-scale plastics. The magic-dip technique is appreciably faster and simpler so that is the approach I’ve come to prefer. That said, the block painting technique deserves some further consideration as it can be useful for denoting special figures, such as leaders.

Block Painting Metallics
Block painting metallics (particularly weapons and helmets) can be useful for creating depth on figures without much sculpted detail and for making important figures (e.g., your leader) stand out. This is normally done over a dark primer.

The basic technique is to paint one part of the item with a dark metallic paint (I use a dark gunmetal colour). A second part is then painted with a very shiny silver. The effect is fairly dramatic. This technique can also visually reduce the size of oversized weapons (more of an issue with 25/28mm figures than with 1:72-scale sculpts).

A similar technique can be used to make a blade look sharp. For example, the head of an axe, spear, or a halberd can be painted with the darker metal while the silver is reserved for the sharp edge or tip.

You can get a similar effect on shield bosses (the metal part in the middle of shields). The bottom of the boss is painted in the darker metallic and the top in the lighter. A similar technique can be used on helmets, with the upper part (which catches the light) painted brighter than the bottom.

Up Next
Having mentioned the magic dip approach in several articles, next week we’ll conclude this series by examining the many uses of magic dip.