Non-Metallic Metal for Beginners (Yes, You Can Do This)

Hey again, friends. I've wanted to write this one for a long time. Non-metallic metal. NMM. Those three letters that make half of all miniature painters break out in a cold sweat and the other half pretend they were "going to try it eventually." I get it. NMM gets a nasty reputation for being difficult because of all the sciency BS that supposedly goes into it. Reflected light angles, Fresnel equations, understanding material properties. People talk about it like you need a physics degree and a protractor just to paint a sword.

Here's the thing though. I took my time, refined my process, figured out the stuff that actually matters, and threw away everything else. And what I found is that painting non-metallic metal on miniatures is genuinely doable. Not "doable if you've been painting for ten years." Doable right now, on your very first try. This is not rocket surgery.

So let's break it down.

Watch the Full NMM Painting Tutorial

Everything in this article comes from the video above, but sometimes it's nice to have the written version you can reference while you're sitting at the hobby desk with a brush in your hand. So let's get into it.

The Mindset Shift That Changes Everything

Before we touch a single brush to a model, I need to get something into your head. Trust me on this one.

Blending isn't what makes metal look like metal.

Read that again. I'll wait.

You could spend hours and hours making every surface on a piece of steel armor look perfectly smooth, blended like butter, and it would still not look like metal if you don't do the other things right. We've all seen those beautifully blended minis that just look like... shiny plastic? That's because the blending was great but the placement was wrong.

What actually sells the illusion of metal to our human eyes is two things:

1. Consistent placement of light throughout the whole piece
2. Extreme intensity contrast, with bright brights and dark darks and almost no midtone in between

That second one is wild because it's basically the opposite of how we paint everything else. Normally we live in that midtone range. We love our midtones. But metal says no. Metal wants drama. Metal wants extremes. And once you accept that and commit to it, the whole thing starts to click.

The Only 3 Colors You Need for NMM Steel

One of the things I love about this technique is how few colors it takes. For non-metallic metal steel armor, I use three colors. That's it.

• Black (your shadows)
• White (your highlights)
• A desaturated blue (your midtone and base mixer)

Why blue? Good question. Gold star for the day. Metals like silver and steel are highly reflective, and the most common color they reflect is the sky. Which is, you know, blue. So a cool desaturated blue sells "steel" to our brains better than grey does.

You could use a different color if you wanted. A desaturated green would give you an alien or magical metal feel. But blue is the classic for a reason, and it's what I'd recommend starting with.

Everything else is just mixing between these three. Black plus blue for your darks. Blue plus white (with a touch of black to keep it desaturated) for your highlights. Dead simple.

How to Paint NMM Steel: Step by Step

Step 1: Prime Black and Establish Your Darkest Shadows

Start with a black primer. This is doing double duty for us. It's our primer and it's also our deepest shadow color. Any cracks, recesses, and areas that would be in pure shadow? They stay black. You never have to go back and panel line or reestablish shadows because the primer is already doing that job for you.

This is a massive time saver. Don't paint over it. Let it work for you.

Step 2: Lay Down the Dark Blue-Black Base

Mix your black and blue together to create a dark, desaturated blue-black. This is your primary shadow color, and it goes on most of the armor surfaces. But here's the important part. This is not an all-over basecoat. You're not trying to get perfect, even coverage across every millimeter.

Use a small brush (I use a size zero sable) and gently touch the model, creating scratches and lines and imperfections as you go. If some areas end up more opaque than others, great. If the coverage is a little patchy and uneven? Even better. Those natural imperfections in opacity are going to work in our favor later because light behaves in weird, uneven ways on metal surfaces.

Let the brush dance across the surface. Areas that seem more transparent will naturally look like light is catching them slightly differently, and you didn't have to understand a single thing about physics to make it happen.

If sections of the model are in deep shadow and hard for your brush to reach, don't paint them. They'd be in pure shadow anyway, which means they stay black. You just saved yourself time and made the mini more realistic at the same time. Win-win.

Step 3: Understand Your Light Angle (Without a Protractor)

Here's where people get intimidated. Light angle. Reflections. Science. Deep breaths.

On most objects, the brightest point is at the top where the light hits it directly. But metal doesn't work that way. The brightest point on a reflective surface is at the angle where your eye lines up with the reflection point. Yeah, I know. Too much science. We're not doing that.

Here's my simple guideline that works every time: take the very peak of whatever surface you're highlighting and move the brightest point down about 30 to 45 degrees from it. That's it. I've found that this consistently looks right because of the natural angle you hold a miniature at when you're looking at it.

I also set my light source slightly off to one side, not dead center. Pick a direction (I usually go slightly to the right) and stick with it for the whole model. This creates way more dramatic and interesting results than a flat, centered light would.

Step 4: First Highlight (Skip the Midtone)

Here's where we do something that feels completely wrong. We skip the midtone entirely.

Mix in some white and a bit of black to your blue to create a highlight color that is brighter than a natural midtone would be. You're jumping past the middle ground and going straight to a proper highlight. This is crucial for selling the metallic effect. Remember: bright brights, dark darks, no middle ground. Metal is dramatic.

Apply this with the same scratchy, imperfect brushwork. Focus on where your light angle dictates the highlights should go. Paint less area than you think you should. It's always better to paint too little rather than too much at this stage.

And here's the part I really need you to hear.

It's going to look bad right now.

I mean it. It's going to look rough and patchy and you're going to think "I'm clearly doing something wrong because if I were doing it right it would look better than this." No. In fact it wouldn't. Non-metallic metal doesn't look good until the very end. This is the ugly phase, and every single NMM painter goes through it every single time. The nature of pushing up the brightness so quickly and imperfectly just looks bad until suddenly it doesn't.

Don't stop. Don't get frustrated. Don't tell yourself you aren't good enough for NMM. I beg you. Just keep going.

Step 5: Second Highlight (Push It Bright)

Mix in more white (and your small touch of black to keep things desaturated). This highlight is significantly brighter now. We're covering smaller areas but making sizable jumps in brightness each time.

At this stage I also start adding in a little bit of pale yellow to my white. This gives the highlights just a hint of warmth, like sunlight catching the steel, and it adds a really nice depth to the color. It's subtle but it makes a difference.

Don't be afraid to entirely cover the previous layer in some areas if you think they'd catch a lot of light. Some spots on the armor need to really gleam, and that means going from deep shadow straight to near-white. That kind of extreme contrast is exactly what we want.

This is also where you stop highlighting certain areas altogether. Anything that would be mostly in shadow (the back of a leg, an arm tucked behind a shoulder pad) gets left dark. That restraint is part of what sells the illusion.

Step 6: Final Edge Highlights and Dots

Almost pure white with just a hint of that pale yellow. This is the fun part.

You're dotting edges and sharp corners with tiny points of near-white. These represent the spots where bright light would bounce right off the sharpest edges of the metal. Keep them small, keep them potent, and keep them few. We don't want to overpower everything we've done so far. These are the sparkle on top, not the main event.

This is often the step where everything suddenly starts looking like actual metal. All that ugly-phase suffering pays off right here. Woo!

How to Paint NMM Gold

Good news. If you understood the steel section, you already know how to paint NMM gold. Bronze, copper, gold, they all follow the exact same principles of light placement and extreme contrast. The only difference is the colors.

For gold, I use:

• Deep mahogany as the darkest shadow
• Warm golden brown as the midrange
• Warm yellow for the highlights

Same light angle. Same dramatic jumps in brightness. Same scratchy, imperfect application. The big difference is that gold and bronze need to be much more saturated than silver. Where steel uses desaturated, grey-leaning blues, gold wants rich, warm, saturated tones.

One thing that can be tricky with gold is getting your highest highlights bright enough using just warm yellow. If your yellow isn't quite popping, mix in a bit of pale yellow (a lighter, less saturated yellow) to push those final edge highlights and dots brighter without losing the warmth.

Bounce Reflections: The Secret Sauce

Alright, this is the part that separates "pretty good NMM" from "wait, how did you do that." And the beautiful thing is it's dead simple.

Up to this point, we've been focusing all our light and highlights on the upper portions of every surface. But what about the undersides? In real life, metal reflects its environment. The ground, nearby objects, whatever is around it. That reflected color bouncing up from below is what gives a metallic object its full sense of volume and weight.

Here's how to do it. Pick a color that represents the ground or environment your miniature is standing on. I like red oxide for warm, grim-dark bases. Thin it down to a heavy glaze consistency (transparent, not opaque) and paint it along the underside curves of each armor panel. The brightest part of this bounce color should be on the portions of armor closest to the ground, fading as it moves upward.

Keep it subtle. Your armor isn't a mirror, so these reflections should be faint and muted. If you're painting something highly polished like chrome, you'd push the bounce reflections much brighter. But for regular steel or burnished metal, just a whisper of warm color on the undersides is all you need.

Why does this matter so much? Because it creates the full three-dimensional depth of your figure. Suddenly your model has shape, volume, and weight. It feels like it exists in an environment, not just floating in a void. And honestly, it's not hard to pull off. It just makes you look like you really know what you're doing.

Even if you don't. Because I sure as hell don't.

Black NMM (Bonus Speed Trick)

Want to paint a black metal weapon or dark steel armor? Here's the shortcut. Prime black. Do a couple layers of edge highlights in a blue-grey, getting brighter each pass. Add your dot highlights of near-white on the sharpest corners. Done. Two minutes.

If you're thinking "wait, that didn't look like the full process at all," you're right. But dark, near-black metal still needs those shiny edges to read as metallic. So all we're really doing is a stripped-down version of the same thing. Edge highlights plus dots equals metal. It's easy mode and it looks fantastic on rifles, dark armor, and weapons.

Want an easy army scheme? Prime everything black. Edge highlight. Dot. Boom. Black armor for your whole force in an afternoon.

Common Mistakes (and How to Push Through Them)

Giving Up During the Ugly Phase

This is the number one NMM killer. I cannot stress this enough. Your non-metallic metal will look bad until the very end. Every time. This isn't because you're doing it wrong. It's because the technique only comes together when all the pieces are in place. The early and middle steps look rough by design.

I've seen so many painters get halfway through, decide they must be terrible at NMM, and give up. Don't do that. See it through. Even if your first attempt isn't perfect, by going through the entire process you'll learn things that make the second attempt better. And the third even better than that.

Not Enough Contrast

If your NMM looks like tinted armor instead of metal, push your darks darker and your brights brighter. Metal has extreme contrast. Way more than you think looks right while you're painting it. Be brave. Go brighter on those highlights. Leave more areas in pure black shadow. The more contrast you have, the more metallic it reads.

Too Much Midtone

This one's related. If you spend too long in the midtone range and don't skip past it, your metal will just look like regular painted armor with a gradient. Remember: dark, skip, bright. That jump is what makes it work.

Inconsistent Light Direction

If your highlights are coming from the left on the shoulder pad but the right on the leg, nothing will read as metal because the viewer's brain can't piece together a coherent light source. Pick a direction, stick with it everywhere, and everything comes together.

Forgetting Bounce Reflections

Lots of NMM tutorials skip this part entirely and I think that's a shame. Without bounce reflections, your model looks lit from above but floating in nothing. Even a faint warm glaze on the undersides of armor panels adds so much. Don't skip it.

What to Try Next

Once you've painted your first piece of NMM steel, the whole world opens up. Try gold on some filigree or trim. Try a dark, black-metal weapon. Try changing your bounce reflection color to see how environment affects the feel. Each one uses the same core principles you just learned, just with different colors.

And as you practice, your brush control will get better, your highlights will get more precise, and you'll start to instinctively know where the light goes without thinking about it. That's not some gift you either have or don't. It's a skill that improves over time. So paint more minis and have fun with it.

If you want to go deeper on blending techniques (which can complement your NMM once you've got the basics down), check out the blending video linked in the tutorial above. And if you want the full masterclass experience, How to Paint: The Warrior covers everything from fundamentals through display-level techniques.

Thanks for hanging out with me today, hobby friends. I hope this helped take some of the mystery out of NMM painting. It's one of those techniques that looks impossible from the outside but once you break it down into what actually matters and throw away the rest, it's really not that scary.

I'm pretty confident you can do this. Just see it through from start to finish, trust the process, and don't let the ugly phase win.

Now get out there and slay the gray.

Some links below are Amazon affiliate links. If you buy something through them, NINJON earns a small commission at no extra cost to you — it helps keep the tutorials free.