Knight Part 7

I've been working on my TMM approach and made a number changes for this piece.  I normally mix in some matte paints with the metallics to control the shine (mixing dark matte colors into the shadows keep them from reacting to the light).  Previously I'd work with several shades of metallics, a dark, medium, and light silver shade.  This time I ditched the additional shades and just worked with the medium metallic shade.  As I add in dark matte colors to make the shadows, the balance of metallic finish vs matte finish seems to be better than when I started with an already dark metallic.  For the highlights, I mixed the light color into the metallic.  This keeps the highlights where I want them and they're less dependent on the room lighting.  The blending with that can be a bit tough, so I'm still working on that.  But I feel like it's headed in a better direction.

Another change to my approach is to use more stippling in the metal application.  It gives the surface more texture and helps with the blends.  That's helpful on the larger surface, don't quite know of a way to do that on the chain mail.