High Elf Test Model: Non Metallic Metals (NMM) Gold

by | Jan 28, 2015


Hey guys! Decided to pick up my brush last night and make a stab at painting my first High Elf for my next army. I have had in my mind a plan to do a Blood Elf (World of Warcraft) theme for a few years now so I am quite excited to make a start. I also decided that sticking to my pledge of trying something new with every army so this one will be an experiment in Non metallic metals (NMM).

I follow an awesome painter (@KujoPainting) on twitter who put up a great step by step guide and recipe for NMM Gold he used on his dwarfs (see his thread for details). I had a look at it and I thought it looked really cool and not too difficult to do. In actually in fact it looked a lot like how I do most non metal surfaces but with a more harsh edge highlight so I thought I would give it a bash!

I’m really happy with how the gold came out (a little messy in areas but that will come with practise) but the silver sword is a bit of a mess so I will retry entirely on that. Also I think the overall balance of the scheme is a bit off. I think it needs less gold armour and more red armour (shoulder pads and thigh guards??), more black cloth (the red cloth at present changed to this) and keep the green gems and red plume the same? Will try this out and put up more pictures.

On a general note I really liked doing NMM, usually hate doing traditional metals (especially if I am going for a clean look) and it was less difficult that I had thought (was very daunting seeing all the awesome work out there). If you try it don’t lose heart until you get to the last high light as it will look a bit naff till then. I think I will try out a few tweaks to the recipe but this is what I did:

Base: Rhinox Hide
Layer: Balor Brown
Wash: Sepia (Think will try Agrax and Reikland Fleshshade)
Layer Balor Brown
Layer: Zamesi Desert
Highlight: Iraqi Sand (Vallejo)
Extreme Highlight: White

I think I need to keep a bit more of the Rhinox Hide base visible on larger surfaces to accentuate the depth/reflection of the metal. Once I have this nailed down I will do a step by step guide because I think in theory it is easier to make gold look great than using traditional metallic paints. 

Both Mike and Joe are also working on their test High Elf models so hopefully they will post up their work too as they have gone for completely different schemes :) Nudge, nudge! Wink, wink! Get a blog post up guys!