Painting silver

[Thirdfox]

I'm planning on doing silver chest aquilas on flat black power armor. I know that white works best when built up from a gray basecoat but i have no idea what to use for silver.

 

Any input will be greatly appreciated.

[Lorenzen]

is it just for the chest eagle/details?

 

if so then keep it simple. boltgun highlighted with chainmail, then a wash of badab black.

 

tbh most silver paints will go over black without any need for a "basecoat"

[IdOfEntity]

Lorenzen has the right of it for a neutral silver. A cooler silver should have a basecoat of purple or blue, and a warm silver will have a basecoat of orange or red. You can choose to add washes. (A wash of bronze over silver gives a pleasing effect)

 

Citadel metallics are pretty good at coverage, so if you want to slowly build up the metal while keeping a bit of the basecoat showing through you'll need to water the metals down pretty far.

 

You can also just basecoat black and do a very thin wash of another color over the boltgun/mithril to give it a lovely tint.

[Thirdfox]

@Lorenzen

 

Yeah, it's just for the chest eagle, helm skulls and other small details.

 

 

@IdOfEntity

 

I think i'll go for the cooler silver option. Will try washing the results afterwards.

 

 

Thanks for the tips, both of you. Admittedly, Citadel paints are a tad tough to procure where i come from so i'll be using acrylics from Tamiya instead. Their gunmetal gray and titanium silver appears to be a good match for boltgun metal and mithril silver.

[Hemal]

You can build up thin layers of a dark metal equiv, highlight with chainmail equiv, wash with a blue/black wash and highlight with chainmail then edge highlight silver to give a dark metal finish, and for a bright silver finish, use chainmail highlighting up to silver mixed with a little chainmail, was, and edge highlight with pure mithril. Remember that chainmail and boltgun metal are just mithril silver with different qties of black in the mixture....