In our last post we looked at the concept art and machines from The Matrix films. Inspired by that, you might be trying to figure out how to paint metal.
Aaron Blaise – painting metal and reflections
Aaron Blaise has a great Youtube channel with some instructional videos and well as his drawing request live streams. He has a range of courses available on his website which we mentioned in a previous post.
In this video he explains how to go about approaching shiny metals and capturing reflections from the environment.
Trent Kaniuga – Dark Souls armor study
Trent Kaniuga is the author and illustrator of Twilight Monk, and the developer of indie game, Ikeda: Scraphunter. He’s one of my favourite artists on Youtube that regularly posts informative and entertaining content.
Swatches 3-part series of metal studies.
In this 3-part series, artist Clint Cearley shows how to paint metal of different types. Part one of this series focuses on painting shiny metal. The second looks at metal that is weathered and rusty. The third one is all about darker metals.
GammaTrap
In this video, GammaTrap shows a more stylized approach to painting metal. It’s a nice, lengthy tutorial, so grab that stylus and get comfortable.
Jazza
This approach that is well suited to more cartoon-like styles of working. If you are doing a challenge like March Of Robots, then this might be a great way to color your work.
On that note of drawing robots, you might like to check out this Photoshop tutorial by Takumer Homma. In it, he applies traditional art principles to create a digital painting of a robot mech.
Wrapping up…
So to conclude, these are just a few of the better free tutorials I found on approaching painting metals. in different ways. There are some paid-for tutorials that are a bit more in-depth like this one below by Naranbaatar Ganbold.
This tutorial, available on the ArtStation Marketplace contains:
A 13 min process breakdown;
A Painting demonstration – 1h20min;
Brushes, PSD and JPEG files
If, however, you really want to step this up, I highly recommend checking out Jonathan Hardesty’s course on Schoolism. In that course you’ll learn how to approach a whole range of textures and materials. With an annual subscription to Schoolism you have access to a whole bunch of courses including Hardesty’s Understanding Textures.
If you don’t have a drawing tablet yet, and are looking for one to get you started on your digital art journey, check out this post with some affordable pen tablet options.
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