Shiny Power Armour

[Emperor's Furor]

Hey I'm wondering if I could get some tips on how to achieve a colour scheme for Marines Errant like the one below. I was thinking I could do lead belcher, then Stormhost Silver or Ironbreaker, then apply thin layers of white and blue with the hopes it'll shine through.

 

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/mediawiki/images/b/be/Marines_Errant.jpg

[Kierdale]

For the blue I'd use Tamiya Clear Blue (with if I remember correctly X20 Thinner) over basic GW metallics.

 

 

EDITI dabbled with Tamiya Clear paints HERE

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

If you're wanting the blue to be metallic, you can use the Clear Blue as Kierdale suggested, and you might also look at a Vallejo Gunmetal Blue which is a metallic blue about the same color was that illustration.

[sockwithaticket]

I used Gunmetal Blue recently, it's got more of a teal tinge than the blue in the picture.

You don't have to go the metallic route. Look at the shins in particular and note the transition from a shadow to almost white in places, that's the shine and it's do-able with non-metallic paints. In fact, I'd say it's the best way to achieve that effect. However, it's tricky to do and make it look good as it either requires blending or sunstantial glazing for smooth, natural transitions. 

[Emperor's Furor]

Hmm, yeah I'm not going for a full on metallic, I just want it to shine I guess, for the blue a glaze might be enough, not sure about the white though.

[Gordon Shumway]

If you just want the shine without the metallic, just do a gloss coat or future floor polish coat at the end. Easy peasy.

[sockwithaticket]

That won't give you the effect in the source picture.

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

The official paint scheme may not be metallic, but that's what's represented in the art piece from the OP. Even paint with a gloss coat like your car doesn't look like that and a neither does flat paint colors.

[Bryan Blaire]

You might try white pearl/metallic white or white with an iridescent medium mixed in (that's two ways of saying the same thing) for white, and a metallic blue (Reaper Miniatures makes a Sparkling Blue in their Master Series Paints Core set) or your choice of blue with an iridescent medium mixed in. Those would make it look like that image.

 

Once you shade the recesses with a matte shadow color and run some kind of matte glaze in the appropriate color over them, it should knock down the glisten enough, but leave just a little bit of the metallic appearance for the shine in the light.

[Teetengee]

From a heraldry standpoint, I am fairly certain silver and white are interchangeable (iirc). So in a sense painting the whole model a very bright silver and then using a blue glaze over half would match this image. You might try something like that to see if you like the effect.

[Major_Gilbear]

Another alternative might be to add metal paints (or metallic medium) to regular paints, in order to get a "halfway-house" between full solid colours and metallic paints.

 

If you don't want to make your own (which is understandable), then Scale 75 do a range of paints called Alchemy. These are metallic paints designed to be used of similarly-coloured basecoats in order to provide a gentle but pleasing metallic effect.

 

They are not as reflective as "proper" metallic paints, and you will still need to shade and highlight to get the best from them, but I thought I'd mention them as they could be interesting for you.

 

I personally also thought that the S75 silvers and the blue could also be especially interesting for representing Grey Knights or HH-era Knights Errant, as their armour is supposed to be bare Ceramite (a which varies in appearance fluff-wise between an off-white, a dull grey, and a silver metal).