Russeted, Blacked, or other non-silver armour?

[Wirelizard]

Does anyone have painting tips for doing non-silver armour? Brightly polished "white" armour was a lot of work to maintain, historically, so pretty much the domain of fancy people with squires and servants and such. Regular troops probably had hammer-black or otherwise non-"white" armour, but most of our figures get white armour regardless of rank.

I fell down a bit of a research rabbit hole looking into blacked/russeted/blued/other coloured armour treatments recently, and the result was a fairly long blog post with lots of links.

By way of example, here's a set of partial cavalry armour from the mid-16th C from the Wallace Collection museum in London.


I'm thinking bright silver basecoat then washes of various colours might be the best way to do this armour, to keep the metallic look underlying the colour. Anyone actually done any armour like this and want to share photos, paint recipes, or tips?

[Daeothar]

Looking at the armor in the posted picture, I'd say a basecoat of charcoal (I often use VMC German Grey for this) with a black wash and then an edge drybrush of sliver would do the trick nicely. Perhaps with some details picked out in silver afterwards?

[westwaller]

I have seen tutorials for Bolt gun metal (or equiv) washed with slightly thinned down black and then scratched and edges highlighted with bolt gun metal. I have also had some personal success with bolt gun or whatever darker silver colour washed/glazed with the original citadel inks black for a brighter look.

Some armour just appears to have been painted black so maybe matt black with a few metal scuffs and scratches here and there is another way to go?

for blued (actually more of a purple colour i read somewhere) armour black and blue ink mixed together might work?

I think in small scales russeted is probably a bit tricky. Vallejo do have various rust colours in their range.


I googled 'russeted armour' and came up with this, that I thought I would share https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwich_armour

I can see some of my statements above may be a bit 'wrong'.

[FramFramson]

I've sometimes used the simple expedient of mixing in a little metallic paint with a black. A 1:2 ratio of Boltgun metal (or equivalent) to black is a good place to start and then tweak the ratios as you like from there.

[Orctrader]

I've sometimes used the simple expedient of mixing in a little metallic paint with a black...

What I did here.

[Wirelizard]

Thanks for the suggestions and photos, everyone!

I've had some good luck today with a bright silver base coat (Reaper's True Silver) and various inks over that.

The GW washes aren't suitable for this sort of thing, they're designed to settled into crevices and such for shading. Not enough colour stays on the flat parts of a figure.

FW Acrylic Artist inks and Reaper's red ink work nicely, though. I've now got a couple variantions of blacked armour, two really striking russeted-ish, and a blued armour that might still need to be toned down further to be believable. My girlfriend said, "Ah, 17th Century Power Ranger?" when she saw the base blue ink on the one, and damn if she wasn't right. Adding some additional layers over the blue has helped a lot...

Haven't been able to get a photo that shows them properly, but I'll try for one tomorrow in daylight!

[Wirelizard]

Finally got this painting written up and posted to my blog: http://www.warbard.ca/2018/01/18/colourful-cavalry-part-two/

The photo is crap because of shortage of daylight while I'm home these days, but I'm pleased with how the armour has turned out so far.