The Paint Review: Vallejo True Metallic Metals - First Look

There’s been a tremendous amount of buzz surrounding the upcoming Vallejo True Metallic Metal paint series since their existence was announced to the world under less than ideal circumstances (through accidentally uploaded online retailer photos). It’s a tempting prospect -- I love to chat with hobbyists about what they do and don't like in painting, and a common theme of those chats is that they struggle to find metallics that they actually like to use. Most metallics are, unfortunately, garbage that confound and confuse regular painters. Often the best way to get a good metallic coat is to use particularly noisome enamel or alcohol-based paints, which is certainly not ideal.

Perhaps our friends over at Vallejo have found a way to solve that particularly thorny problem. Let’s see, shall we?

Thank you to Acrylicos Vallejo for providing a sample of their new range for review. This is only a sample, a full range will be forthcoming!

Each set has four paints for a single colour - a base, a shade, a light, and an airbrush version of the base. They all share a name to avoid confusion; you know that all the paints with Ruby Red in the name are, in fact, for the Ruby Red set without need to consult some kind of org chart to see whether they are. The naming, at least in my experience with the paints I received (Dusken Green, Ruby Red, Imperial Gold, Sterling Silver), is simple and descriptive without obfuscating the color through more oblique names like Wizard Potion, Frosty Crevice, or what-have-you.

Helmet: Imperial Gold, Axe: Dusken Green, Hair-Ring: Ruby Red, Gun-barrels: Sterling Silver

The system is pretty simple: You basecoat with (unsurprisingly) the Base or Airbrush paint, wash with the Shade paint, touch up with the Base paint, and then highlight with the Light. In my experience, outside of the gold-bronze-silver spectrum, most other coloured metallic paints are pretty lacklustre; either they're not very shiny or the colours are simply not strongly saturated enough -- since they are made metallic by the addition of silvery particles, they then somewhat towards paler, greyish colours. Thank goodness, then, that the TMM paints are a total revelation in this regard; the colours are strong and perfectly saturated, with tons of punch. Ruby Red in particular is a stunningly strong blood red metallic colour that absolutely pops.

This fellow was basecoated and shaded with the Ruby Red paints without being highlighted, look how strong the colour is, the shade has dried glossy and strong.

The addition of the airbrush version of the base paint in the sets is great for airbrush fan-boys like me, but those painters who eschew the use of compressed air may feel as though they’ve been required to buy something they neither want or need. It’s unclear at the moment whether the paints will be sold in individual bottles (though I assume that must be the case), in which case such objections don’t really matter. I will say, though, that the airbrush paints are a bit more fume-y and smelly than the other ones; perhaps there's some alcohol-based thinner in the formula for the airbrush one after all?

The paints also self-level quite nicely without clogging up all the detail and making a mess, something that metallic paints without extremely fine metallic mediums are notoriously prone to doing. They're almost like enamels but without the stink, which is a big plus!

The Shade paint is an interesting addition as well; rather than your ordinary wash that you might use to shade anything, the True Metallic Metal washes dry very glossy. A common problem with your ordinary washes is that they can tend to make your metallic bits overly matt, or that it can be difficult to find washes that “fit” to the colour of metallic you’re using. Since the TMM range has a shade paint tailored specifically to each one of its colours, and each shade dries to the same kind of glossy finish, getting decent-looking shaded metallics is a breeze.

These paints are great; they’ve converted me -- a long-time metallics -- hater into someone who might actually want to paint metallic schemes from time to time. I can’t wait to see what the full range of colour looks like.

Verdict

With powerful, saturated tones that pack an almighty wallop, combined with glossy shades that keep everything shiny, I think that these TMMs are going to set a new standard in metallic miniature paints.

Tags: Vallejo | the paint review