Metal that reads as metal, and light that reads as light. Neither is difficult once you understand what each one is actually doing, but both get skipped for years by painters who assume they need an airbrush, a masterclass, or luck. They need neither. This guide covers both, because on a model built from tarnished metal and cold inner light, they are really one job.

A metallic paint straight from the bottle, applied like a normal colour, almost always looks flat and toylike. This is not a paint quality problem. It is a technique problem, and it comes from treating metal like it is just another colour to base and highlight the usual way.

Real metal does three things ordinary colour does not: it reflects its surroundings, it darkens sharply in recesses because there is no ambient light bouncing around inside a gap, and it develops tarnish and grime that sits differently on a reflective surface than it does on cloth or skin. Get those three things right and even a flat basecoat reads convincingly. Skip them and no amount of expensive metallic paint saves it.

1. 1 Undercoat black, always. Metallic paint over black gives you the dark, reflective depth that makes it read as metal rather than grey paint. Metallic over a light undercoat looks chalky and pale no matter what you do afterward.
2. 2 Base in one clean coat. Metallic paints carry actual metal particles, which means thick or uneven coats show brush strokes badly. Load the brush properly and pull it in one direction. Do not scrub it back and forth the way you might with a matte colour.
3. 3 Shade with a true ink, not a wash. This step matters more on metal than almost anywhere else. A chalky wash sits on top of a reflective surface and looks exactly like what it is: paint dumped in a crack. A transparent ink stains the metal underneath and darkens it, so the recess still looks metallic, only in shadow. Black ink for gunmetal and silver. Sepia for a warmer, dirtier tarnish.
4. 4 Highlight with a brighter, colder metallic. Not white, not silver used as a highlight on itself. A genuinely brighter metallic, picked out only on the sharpest edges, the ones that would actually catch a light source. This is where the reflective quality comes from. A flat silver highlighted with more of the same silver stays flat forever.
5. 5 Weather it before you decide it is finished. Real metal is never clean. Drag a warm ink into a handful of recesses, unevenly, so some patches look more tarnished than others. This single step is what separates a toy from an object that looks like it has actually existed in the world.

Object source lighting, usually shortened to OSL, is the technique of painting a model as though a part of it is casting its own light. A glowing rod, a power cell, an eye lens, a weapon coil. Done well it is one of the most striking effects in the hobby. Done badly it looks like a green stripe was drawn on with a highlighter. The difference between the two is almost entirely one detail, and it is the detail everybody skips.

1. 1 Prime the light source white, not black. This is the step almost everyone misses and the reason so many glow effects look muddy. A saturated colour over black stays dark no matter how much you apply. White underneath gives the colour something bright to sit on, which is what makes it read as light rather than paint.
2. 2 Base the source in a strong, saturated colour. A fluorescent works well here precisely because it is more saturated than any natural pigment, which is exactly the quality a light source needs. Cover the white completely.
3. 3 Push a brighter version into the very centre. The core of a light source is brighter than its edge. A small dot or streak of a lighter shade of the same colour, right at the point the light would be strongest, sells the effect instantly.
4. 4 Carry a soft tint onto the surroundings. Thin the same colour down heavily and glaze it lightly onto the metal or cloth immediately next to the source, fading it out as you move away. This is the step from the callout above, and it is the one that makes the difference between a glowing model and a model with a coloured shape stuck to it.
5. 5 Keep it rare. One or two glow points on a model reads as a striking light source. Six of them reads as a Christmas decoration. Restraint is what makes the effect land.

The reason these two techniques belong in one guide is that they are frequently the same model. A gunmetal body with a single glowing power source is one of the most rewarding combinations in the hobby to paint, because the cold, dark metal makes the warm or unnatural glow look far brighter than it would sitting on a bright basecoat. Dark metal and bright glow amplify each other. Paint them side by side deliberately rather than as two separate problems and the whole model benefits.

• Skipping the white undercoat on a glow source. The single most common reason an OSL effect looks dull instead of bright.
• Using the same metallic to highlight itself. A highlight needs to be genuinely different, not just more of the base.
• Shading metal with a wash instead of an ink. The recess stops looking like metal and starts looking like a stain.
• Painting the glow source but not its surroundings. Without the spill of colour onto nearby surfaces, it is a shape, not a light.
• Glowing everything. A model covered in light sources has no light source. Pick one or two points and commit to them.