A lot of new painters want to jump straight into this advance technique without realising it is built on the foundation of most of the basics along with a couple of intermediate techniques.   The basics being; blending, glazing, layering, colour mixing, contrast, and edge highlighting. The intermediate techniques that help with the advanced ones are: understanding how base coats interact with the paints you put on top, brush control and having a solid understanding of light sources. I certainly would never discourage anyone from having a go, but if you haven’t quite figured out the above, you are setting yourself up to fail. And then get disheartened and probably get fed up, you know how it goes.  You are after all trying to paint an illusion, a ‘trompe l’oeil’ (deceive the eye). You are trying to make a piece of 3d moulded plastic look like a piece of metal, without using metallic paints (paint which has flecks of actual metal in it).  You also have to remember that metal being