I am Iron Man...First Knight Models Mini Finished, 2/50.

He's been sat unfinished since the middle of last year, but over the last couple of weeks I've found my Knight Models mojo, so finally have a finished Iron Man :)

When I first picked him up I was tempted to paint him as a film Mk II suit, and that's still something I want to do in the future, but I was tempted by the challenge of the metallic red. I've played with metallic colours before, namely some metallic purple Soul Drinker Space Marines, but red has always been difficult due to most red washes and inks going pink.

I start with a GW Chainmail base layer, then add layers of washes until I'm happy with the shade. This allows for the inks and washes to go where they want to create depth but still allow the silver through without needing highlights.

The next stage was to sort out the gold. I've never liked GW gold paints, so the first time I started painting Iron Man I started using Vallejo Model Air Gold, which, at the time, seemed to be the smoothest metallic gold. Since then though I've picked up the Scale Color Metal n Alchemy Gold Series and this is my first real attempt at using them. I might have laid the darker gold on a little heavily, but a wash of GW Gryphonne Sepia seems to have drawn it together.

The final part was something I wasn't really looking foward to - the ARC reactor, eyes and repulsor. I wanted to give them the glowy blue effect, but wasn't sure I'd be able to pull it off. I started out with a light base of GW Fenrisian Grey which overlapped just outside the lines at inconsistent levels (slightly more to the top than the bottom, different angles etc). This was followed by one of my favourite paints at the moment - GW Nihilakh Oxide - which along with being verdigris in a pot, is a great aqua blue wash. I then added some layers of white, Guilliman Blue glaze around the edges to add some depth, then finally a couple of layers of white in the middle of each area to keep it bright.

Overall I'm happy with him (other than the tiny nick of gold on the crotch plate, but to remove that I'd have to relayer the entire plate in metallic red, with no guarantee that I could get the red to the same shade), and he's my second finished model of the year.

The only thing he needs now is a layer of varnish, but I can't decide whether to go Matt or Gloss. The Matt will most likely dull down the metallics, which I don't want, but I also don't want to layer him in 'Ardcoat which will create shine where there shouldn't be.

Edit - Sunday 1st Feb

After advice on Facebook, I went with a Matt varnish on the base and a Gloss on Mr Stark. This turned out quite well, as it actually seems to have made the red a lot deeper and closer to the film style suit red.