Alright! I had a few hours today to work on some painting, so I decided to really dig in and ‘get’ NMM today. So, get ready for a lot of pictures (like, for real), because this sucked before it improved. I hope this helps someone that is having issues. It was definitely not something that came easily to me, and I think I still have some work to do. Enjoy!

So, I’ve painted this guy before, but I thought his flat sword would be a good one to try this on. For reference, I looked at Rhonda Bender’s version of him. She did an awesome shaded metallic, but it gave me an idea of where to place my highlights and shadows.

So, I started with a basecoat of MSP Coal Black. ( We will come back to this exact picture SEVERAL more times before it works.. I definitely recommend just painting over and starting again if you mess up. It gets super muddy super fast if you keep layering. Just my suggestion.)

Then I tried the loaded brush technique to get some color gradients going. I used CB and Linen White as my 2 base colors. 

This was several different attempts at layering and blending and not working and blending more and almost working and then messing it up cause I didn’t wait for it to dry before I messed with it and then it sucked again so I painted more…. That happened a lot. 

So then I watched some videos on theory and realized that I know the theory, I just can’t get it to work. Like, I know that an internal combustion engine is an explosion that moves a piston, but I can’t fix one. So, I went and messed with it some more. 

After a lot more attempts, I was starting to get somewhere. It wasn’t quite right, but I was making progress in the results I was getting. I was using some MSP Stormy Grey at this point to clean up some of my gradients. I decided to just paint it the way I would normally, and try to glaze/wet blend the crap out of it.

At this point, I was frustrated and not making as much progress as I wanted to.  So, I phoned a friend! I got some good advice about where to improve highlighting, to blend MOAR, and to use horizontal strokes instead of vertical. That was when I hit the breakthrough! Horizontal stripes!!!!

So, I went back, cleaned it up with horizontal strokes, and glazed a bit between the CB and SG with Turquoise Contrast paints. I thinned it significantly, and blotted most of it off the brush before using it. 

Then I was done!!! I feel like I kind of accomplished something, as I’ve never gotten NMM before. I may retire from my NMM career now. 😀 I hope this was helpful to anyone trying to get NMM to work. Don’t ask me how to do it on anything but a sword with 2 edges, because I tried some other stuff, and it did NOT work. lol. 

Let me know what you think, or if you have any super secret tricks and tips for NMM!!

-marinealRose