Rogue Trader Space Marine Librarian - Non-Metallic Metal

Having finished a few old school Salamanders heavy weapons troopers last week I decided to get another long term Rogue Trader project off my paint station and onto the gaming board. This 1987 Librarian has been undercoated and ready to paint for nearly two years but the poor chap has been consistently put back in favour of other more pressing projects.

However at last his time has come to be painted...

As he is a special character I decided that it would be prudent to spend extra time and attention on him, especially as the rich, blue armour of his vocation will draw the eye to him amid the sea of green that makes up the rest of the force.

If you look closely you'll see there is actually no 'metallic'paint used anywhere on the model... all of the areas of bare metal have been painted using non-metallic metal (NMM) techniques. 

This is my first attempt at these advanced painting methods and I am really pleased at how they have turned out. In hindsight I would suggest maybe not initially practicing this technique on an older model as the quality of the sculpts/casts from back in the day are a fair bit 'rougher' than their modern successors and as such they don't lend themselves so easily to the levels of accuracy such a technique requires.

The main armour panels on the model (both blue and green) were built up through multiple layers of blending to give a smooth gradation of colour. This was achieved by selecting a relatively dark base colour and then gradually lightening it with small drops of skull white.

The eyes of the model were painted with a light red/orange (that annoyingly hasn't come out properly in these photographs...it looks better in real life) to reflect this hardy battle-psyker preparing to summon his ethereal powers to crush the foe...

...which I imagine would look something like this!!!

Hopefully this guy will be seeing some action on the table in the near future!