Non-Metallic Metals or "say what?"
NMM stands for Non-Metallic Metals. It has been a technique used over the last few years or so by many of the brightest lights in the miniature painting world. It is not actually a new technique, however. It has been used by painters since before metallic paints were invented. The idea is to make a surface look metallic without using metallic paints (such as Boltgun metal, Chainmail, Mithril Silver, Tin Bitz, etc.)

NMM uses shades of color (grey to white, for example) to mimic the shading and reflections of a metallic surface without using metallic paint. The two major components of NMM are lighting/highlighting and blending. Take a close look at the sword below for a good example of this technique.

Highlighting is the process of replicating the effect of light hitting the highest parts of a model, while the lowest parts are in shadow. Highlighting is typically achieved by using lighter tints of paint on the high points, and darker shades on the low points. This increased contrast makes the difference between the high and low points appear more distinct and realistically lit. One fairly simple way to achieve this effect is to take a picture of the model under very bright light, and use that as a guide for where to tint lighter or shade darker.

Blending is the process of combining two different colors visually to make them appear seamless. An extremely simplistic version would take Red on one end and Yellow on the other, with orange in the middle. Using only 3 gradients to get the difference between Red and Yellow would be pretty obviously not smooth, but adding more shades of Orange between them, could make it so. There are basically two different styles of blending: Dry and Wet.

Dry blending relies on making very small steps between colors and using very small stripes of each color so that they appear (hopefully) seamless. This is often achieved by adding tiny amounts of one color to another, with a little more added with each step. (Such as straight Red, 5:1 Red:Yellow, 2R:1Y, 1R:1Y, 1R:2Y, 1R:5Y, Straight Yellow.) Using seven steps to go from one color to another in narrow bands will be a much smoother progression.

Wet blending is the other style of blending. You basically don't allow the paint to dry between one color and the next. Instead of using little dry stripes of different shades, you create the different shades right on the model surface. There are several different methods of wet blending, but that's the basic idea.

Just as there are different kinds of Blending, there are different kinds of NMM. The most basic version is simply the above-mentioned style that uses gradients of color to duplicate the play of light and shadow on a metal surface. There is a more dramatic technique known as Sky-Earth NMM. This plays on the reflectivity of highly polished metal and paints the surface as if it were like a mirror, reflecting what is in front of it. While you needn't paint every detail of the surrounding terrain, you give the impression of it by painting the sky and the earth onto the surface. The most obvious version of this is in shiny, highly polished Chrome or mirror-like surfaces.

When the base metal is colored (such as Gold or Bronze) the colors used in NMM or SENMM will be basically tints of that color. (So a bronze sword wouldn't reflect a blue sky and brown dirt, it would feature a lighter bronze in the sky area and a darker bronze in the dirt area.) The exceptions to this are cars. Cars offer a great example of reflection all the time, but they reflect true colors, not the base color. The reason for this is that what is giving the reflection is a clear-coat over the top of the color. If they didn't have the clear-coat, but were just really shiny, the reflection would be simple shading of their main color. The model below is a great example of colored NMM. Note how metallic it appears because of the highlighting.

I saw an interesting model that offers a mix of chrome SENMM and color NMM. It looked really interesting, so I thought I'd try to modify it for my new army.

I have been quite interested in NMM for a while, but I always thought it would be too hard for me to do. I kind of put it on my "wishlist" of techniques I'd probably never be good enough to try. Until, that is, I started concentrating on getting better at painting. After several major leaps in my painting skill, I started collecting example pictures of NMM (which is where all these pictures came from.) I then read a few tutorials on it, and put them aside for a later day. Now I finally feel I'm up to the task, so I pulled up some more tutorials and read them and reread them to make sure I understood them as well as possible. I read tutorials from a variety of authors, since not everyone does it the same and not everone can explain or teach things well. Once I got the feel for how to do it, I went back through my various NMM pictures to find what effect I wanted to achieve.

I knew I definitely wanted to include some really shiny chrome, but I wasn't sure I'd like to do the whole model like that. (See the Silver Sharks picture, above the Dark Angel.) The Wolfpriest, however, had an interesting mix of chrome and colored NMM, and I thought I'd give that a shot.

I started by taking a closeup of one of my models to get a better idea of just what I was going to paint where, and which areas would be chrome. This also gave me an idea for where some of the highlights would be later on.

I started by basecoating the model with Foundation Dheneb Stone. While I normally basecoat with Chaos Black, since these models are going to be Bleached Bone and have a lot of Skull White highlights, I wanted to give the lighter colors a headstart. After I was finished with the basecoat, however, I put Chaos Black under the areas of Bone White that I wanted to be darker. I thought that would be easier than trying to tint it afterward, but it wasn't enough. I also did two layers of Bone White on the areas that I wanted that color.

Once I was finished with the Bone White areas, I put Snakebite Leather as the horizon line and the darker part of the earth reflection on all the areas that I wanted to be chrome. I apologize for the picture, but it should give you the idea.

Next, I used Enchanted Blue as the darker part of the sky reflection on the areas I wanted to be Chrome. Note that I left a little area unpainted just above the horizon line for the Skull White highlight.

After looking at this, I added the Skull White highlight on the horizon lines, and a lighter blue at the top of the sky reflection and Bubonic Brown at the bottom of the earth reflection. After looking at this, I knew it wasn't enough. I went through the better tutorials and my examples and realized I needed a lot stronger highlights. I put in some strong highlights and gave Skull White highlights on all the sharp edges. It made a big difference. I think for future models I'll use a bit more of the lighter colors.

I also added some more highlighting in the Bleached Bone areas. While it looks a lot better, I'm still not pleased with it. I'm not sure if I'll keep messing with the Bleached Bone, or if I'll just switch to another color. Bleached Bone is the DeathWing color scheme, but if I can't make it work right, I may go with something else. The current contenders are either Black (like the example Wolfpriest model) or all-chrome, like the Silver Sharks models. I'll give it a bit and see if the look grows on me or if I can figure out some way of making it look better. I think I'll also have to fiddle with my camera again and see if I can get it back to taking consistently good pictures.

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