TMM: True Metallic Metal Techniques for Miniatures

Hey again, friends. Let me ask you something. When you paint metallics, what do you do? If your answer is "slap on some silver, throw a wash over it, maybe drybrush a highlight," then you're in the majority. And look, there's nothing wrong with that approach. It works. It's fast. Your metal bits look like metal bits. But I found a secret, and once you see it, you can't unsee it.

True metallic metal, or TMM, takes everything we know about light placement from non-metallic metal painting and applies it using actual metallic paints. The result? Metallics that have genuine depth, shadow structure, and highlight placement. They don't just shine uniformly like a Christmas ornament. They look like real metal that exists in a real environment with real light hitting them. And honestly? It's not that much harder than what you're already doing.

Watch the Full TMM Tutorial

Everything in this article comes from the video above. But if you're the type who likes having written instructions next to you while you paint (I see you, and I respect you), this is for you.

The Big Idea: Dull It Down to Bring It Up

Here's the counterintuitive thing that makes TMM work. You start by making your metallic paint less metallic. I know. It sounds ridiculous. "Hey, I want my metallics to look better, so the first thing I should do is... make them less shiny?" Yes. Exactly that.

Metallic paints have metal pigments suspended in them. That's what gives them the sparkle. But when you use pure metallic paint as your basecoat, the entire surface has the same level of metallic sheen. Every shadow, every midtone, every highlight reflects light the same way. And that's why it looks flat even though it's shiny. Real metal doesn't do that. Real metal has dark areas that barely reflect anything and bright spots that catch the light like a mirror. The range is massive.

So we create that range ourselves. Mix regular acrylic paint into your metallic to dilute the metal pigments. I use Vallejo Metal Color Aluminum as my only metallic paint for pretty much everything, and I mix in regular acrylics to create my shadow tones. A dark sea blue works great for steel. The result is a paint that still has some metallic quality but reads much darker and more subdued. That's your base. Your shadows. The foundation everything else builds on.

Setting Up the Base: Paint It Like NMM

With your dulled-down metallic mix, paint all of your armor surfaces. Don't worry about getting perfectly even coverage. In fact, slight variations in opacity are fine because they'll add to that natural, uneven way light plays across metal. Think of this step as establishing where your shadows live.

If you're not sure where shadows should go, here's a quick trick. Hold your model under your hobby lamp and look at where the natural shadows fall. Those darker areas on the underside of pauldrons, inside elbow joints, where one piece of armor overlaps another. That's where your darkest tones should be. And if you've primed black, the deepest recesses can just stay black. Free shadows. Love that.

Now here's where TMM separates from ordinary metallic painting. Instead of washing the whole thing and calling it done, we're going to highlight with purpose. Take your pure, unmixed metallic paint and hit the areas where light would naturally fall. For most miniatures lit from above, that means the tops of surfaces, raised edges, and the center of broad flat panels.

At this stage, don't worry about blending the transitions between your dulled-down base and the pure metallic highlights. Seriously. This process is meant to be fast. We'll handle those transitions in the next step. Just get the bright metallic where it needs to be.

The Glaze: Smoothing Without Effort

This is the step that ties everything together and it takes almost no time. Mix your dark sea blue (or whatever color you used to create your shadow mix) very thin. We're talking glaze consistency. You want it so thin that each pass barely deposits any color.

Now brush this glaze over the entire armor surface. What this does is unify everything. It softens those harsh transitions between your dark base and bright highlights. It pushes back areas that are a little too bright. And it adds a subtle color tint that makes the metal feel like it exists in an environment rather than a vacuum.

Don't overthink this. A couple of passes is all you need. If you go too heavy, just wipe it with your finger while it's still wet. Seriously. I do this all the time. Sometimes your finger is the best blending tool you own.

Building Deeper Shadows

After the glaze, you might find that some of your shadow areas need to be pushed darker. Mix a bit of black into your dark sea blue, keep it fairly thin, and go over the darkest parts of the armor. Undersides of panels, joints, anywhere that would be in deep shadow.

While you're at it, run this darker mix along the transitions between your highlights and your base coat to help smooth things out even further. Don't spend a ton of time on this. Don't overthink it. If your eye tells you "there's a harsh line that shouldn't be there," swipe some thin dark paint across it. Done. Move on.

The Secret Sauce: Scratches

This is the step that makes the whole scheme sing. This is the key to the entire thing. Take a tiny brush (and I mean tiny, like five or six bristles tiny) and your pure metallic paint, and start scratching.

If you don't have a dedicated liner brush, make one. Take any thin synthetic brush, hold a razor blade where the ferrule meets the bristles, rotate the brush while you press, and cut away the outside bristles until only a handful remain. Boom. Liner brush. Cost you nothing.

With your tiny brush and pure metallic paint, scratch little lines and dots around the model. Focus on highlight areas where the light would catch. Hit some edges. Create the impression of tiny nicks and reflections on the surface of the metal. This is the step where your metallics go from "okay that's pretty good" to "wait, how did you do that?" The scratches catch real light because they're pure metallic pigment, and they create this incredibly realistic effect of worn, real metal.

Work fast here. The scratches should feel natural and random. If you try to be too precise, they'll look mechanical. Let the brush dance a little. Some scratches will be longer, some will be tiny dots. Some will land in perfect spots and some won't. That's what makes it look real.

Panel Lining: Definition for Free

While you've got that tiny brush out, we're doing panel lines. Grab some black ink (not thinned-down black paint, actual ink). The reason I like ink for this is that it's very thin but incredibly potent. Thinned-down black acrylic loses its darkness. It'll panel line but the lines won't be dark enough to read properly. Black ink stays dark even at a thin consistency, and it flows off the tiny brush beautifully into those recesses.

Just trace the lines between armor plates, around rivets, anywhere two surfaces meet. The thin ink will flow right into the recess by capillary action. If it goes somewhere you don't want, clean it up with a damp brush. This step takes maybe five minutes on a full model and adds an enormous amount of definition.

TMM vs NMM: When to Use Which

I know this is the question that's burning in the back of your brain. Why would I paint TMM instead of NMM? Or vice versa? Here's my honest take.

TMM is better when:

• You're painting an army or a group of models and need to work efficiently. TMM is significantly faster.
• You want your metallics to actually catch real light. TMM sparkles under a lamp in a way that NMM physically cannot. At a game night with overhead lighting, TMM looks incredible.
• You're painting for tabletop play rather than display or photography.
• You want to add weathering later. Metallic pigments under chipping and grime effects look incredibly realistic.

NMM is better when:

• You're painting a display piece or entering competitions. NMM photographs beautifully and shows artistic skill.
• You want complete control over where every highlight and reflection appears.
• You're painting for photography, where you control the lighting. NMM looks the same in every photo. TMM changes depending on the light angle.
• You enjoy the meditative challenge of it. NMM is genuinely satisfying when it clicks.

There's no wrong answer here. And if you're curious about the NMM approach, the NMM guide breaks down the whole process. A lot of the placement theory is the same. The difference is the tools you're using to get there.

Bringing the Rest of the Model Together

One trick I use on every model is reusing colors. When you're painting the leather bits, the parchment, the base, whatever, mix in some of the colors you already used on the metallics. That dark sea blue? Throw a little into your leather shadows. The warm brown from the base? Sneak some of that into your deeper metal shadows. When the same colors appear in multiple parts of the model, even subtly, everything feels more cohesive. Like the whole model lives in the same world.

Plus, the paint's already on your palette. I'm lazy. Why would I open a new pot when there's perfectly good paint sitting right there?

Finishing Touches That Sell It

For the eyes (or any small spot where you want to draw attention), use a warm color that contrasts with all the cool tones in the metal. A strong red or warm orange in the eye slits creates this instant focal point that pops against the blue-steel armor.

On the base, consider adding a few dots of pure metallic paint on random spots. Bits of metal debris, exposed rock surfaces, whatever. Those little sparks of pure metallic catch real light and subtly reinforce the metallic quality of the armor above. It ties the whole model to its base without being obvious about it.

That's TMM. It's metallic paint, but with intention behind every brushstroke. Dull it down, build it up, scratch it to life. The result looks way more complex than the process actually is, which is kind of the dream in miniature painting.

And look. If you've been painting metallics the old way, basecoat plus wash plus drybrush, there is nothing wrong with that. But if you want to try something that takes maybe fifteen extra minutes per model and gets dramatically better results, this is it. I think you'll be surprised.

Now get out there and slay the gray.

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