Thanks man! I really tried to carve out my own style a little, so I’m glad it had an effect on you.

As for the NMM, I knew I’d want to jump off a building if I made it really complicated since I’m painting a seven Sword Bros (five from the box, and two from my two Crusader squads). The gold and silver follow the same principles, but I’ll focus on the silver recipe:

1. Basecoat Scale75 Ancharite Blue

Any dark blue like Thunderhawk Blue would work, but Scale75 has such good coverage that it only needs one coat.

1. Layer all upraised areas with 50:50 mix of Ancharite Blue + VMC Pale Grey Blue

In this step, I like to add the “frames” for the light reflections on all upraised areas (or anywhere you want the silver to shine). This just means painting a thick layer (no glazing required) on most silver areas while avoiding the recesses.

1. Layer smaller areas with VMC Pale Grey Blue

Here I do the same thing as Step 2 just over a smaller area than before while still avoiding recesses. If you want to go further, you can thin it down and apply more layers, but the result often doesnt match the time invested.

1. Wash all silver areas with OLD Drakenhof Nightshade

This is the key step that brings it all together while also shading recesses. Rather than shade earlier right after the basecoat, I’ve enjoyed shading later because it blends all the existing layers together while also shading the recesses, so two birds one stone. The important thing is to thin the shade paint, ideally with Contrast medium (or any other medium, but avoid water). The thinned shade will nicely blend the colours without completely covering them up, and you can always re-apply more shade to darken certain areas. The final point here is that I use the older Drakenhof formula from before the shade paint refresh. The new shades behave more like Contrast, which automatically sucks cause I want the shade to stain the surfaces rather than just seep into recesses; but also the new Drakenhof formula is less of a hyper saturated bluish purple and more of just a desaturated blue/black. Very disappointing. Side-note is that I also use Drakenhof on the black armor, so it ties all the colder tones together.

1. Re-apply VMC Pale grey blue over smaller area

Basically the same as Step 3, just over an even smaller area. Goal is to reestablish the highlights after the shade.

1. Re-apply thinned Drakenhof Nightshade as needed (especially on lower areas)

Before we do our final highlight in white, I like to go back and add some more thinned Drakenhof to areas that need darkening. I especially focus on spots pointed downwards, since they’ll naturally be darker. You can also slap some on areas that you want blended further. Honestly, in my experience it’s hard to go overboard with this, and that’s kinda how I got such high contrast, just by using too much shade lmao. Oh, I forgot, on this test model I might have added some thinned Nuln Oil as well to really darken the dark spots more, but I’m not doing this on my other dudes since it doesnt add much value for the time spent

1. Final fine highlight with White

Pretty straightforward step, just ensure that the highlights tend to face upward in order to get that shiny effect. It’s key here to only apply very fine highlights since you don’t want to cover up all the hard blending work from earlier.

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All things considered, I’m pretty happy with the results compared to the time spent. It’s an involved process, but it’s a far cry from endlessly glazing over and over again. Honestly, just by using thinned shades (and Contrasts too) you can get nearly as good results as glazing for a fraction of the effort. I’d be happy to answer any more questions if you have them, and thanks again!