Ares Step by Step 

 
By Paul Stockley   

https://www.instagram.com/pstockley.miniatures/ 

https://www.facebook.com/paul.stockley.54 

Disclaimer 

I want to be upfront about this tutorial. Firstly, Ares is a complicated model to paint to the level shown here and involves 
a significant investment of time. I estimate the project took around 70 hours to complete. Secondly, it demands very 
good brush control skills. While I have pretty good control, this project has forced me to improve even more. I highly 
recommend doing exercises not on miniatures using primed pieces of plastic card at the beginning. This is what I did to 
improve my skills early on. Finally, I think that tutorials like this give the impression that painting miniatures is a simple 
set of linear steps. However, this isn’t true. There were many failures, and constant reworking involved to get the results 
shown. Don’t be afraid to go back to previous steps or rework areas that don’t look right. The difference between great 
NMM and mediocre results is very small. Just don’t give up and keep refining.  

Part 1: Ares Arm 3 

Colour mixing and matching 4 
Step-by-step 8 

Part 2: Back on Ares 24 

Part 3: Cape 29 

Part 4: Shield 31 

Inner Pattern 32 
Outer NMM 35 

Part 6: Face 38 

Part 7: Base Step by Step 39 

Base - Rocks 40 
Base - Front NMM 44 
Base - Back NMM 51 

 
 
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This is the second project in my series where I try and replicate different NMM styles. The 
first was a Sergio Calvo project based on his tutorial for the Death Knight Avenger. For this 
project, I chose Ares painted by Michal “LAN” Pisarski. This is one of my favourite 75mm 
mini’s. I have never seen LAN paint, so I had to reverse engineer a set of steps to recreate 
his painting. This involved numerous hours looking at the box art images and some from 
his Facebook page. I am sure the steps I have come up with aren’t the same as his, but the 
end result is similar. He used mainly Scale75 colours while I wanted to use Kimera. This 
project also allowed me to continue exploring using Kimera Kolors and specifically, how to 
mix paint to match predetermined colours. 

 
 
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Just a note about the images on the steps: These were taken using my phone in less than 
ideal light and aren’t a great reproduction of the actual miniature. They make the paint 
appear to be less smooth than it is in reality. However, that isn’t too important to explain 
the steps involved. 

Part 1: Ares Arm 

First, I used Affinity Photo to pick out the most important colours from Michal’s original 
images.  

 
 
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Colour mixing and matching 

Given the reference I created, I mixed the base colours using just Kimera paints. This step 
was pretty time consuming (probably 3 hours), but a worthwhile exercise as I am new to 
mixing. I created enough to store in small pots as I knew this was going to be a long project 
and consistency was key when moving from section to section. In each pot, I put a few 
drops of Vallejo Airbrush thinner. This contains flow improver and some retarder. I find 
this helps to get smooth coverage.  

 
 
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Here are a few tips I have learned from my limited attempts at mixing/matching Kimera 
Kolors 

1. Don’t look at the colour on the palette to determine if you have matched your target 
colour. Instead, paint some on the colour background you intend to paint over and let 
it dry. For Ares, I intended to paint over a black primer. 

2. Be careful with the type of light you look at the colour under. This applies both to 
mixing and viewing the miniature as you progress. When I first started painting, I used 
the brightest lamp I could find. The problem was that while my paint jobs looked great 
under this lamp, in less than ideal light they looked horrible. Bright lights have a 
tendency to reduce the contrast, especially if you have lighter colours that reflect and 
bounce the light into the shadows. Now I paint with a more global overhead light that 
is less bright. I also check regularly under different lighting conditions. 

3. Some of the Kimera paints are very powerful (blues, violets, etc). If you are mixing 
small amounts and adding these colours, you have to take the very smallest amount 
on your brush and wipe most of it off. 

4. In the beginning, it can be easier to control by mixing larger quantities. You can more 
easily make fine adjustments which are easier when you are a beginner. 

5. My first step in mixing a colour was to find something close on the Kimera colour 
mixing guide and start there. Next try and get the value right (brightness), then adjust 

 
 
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the colour a bit at a time by adding other colours. I would first experiment on the 
palette before mixing a bigger batch in the paint pots. 

6. If you go too dark on a mix, the temptation is to keep mixing in lighter colours until you 
get the shade you want. Often you will need A LOT of light colour and mix too much 
paint. In this case, first, remove half of your current mix and then add the lighter 
colour. 

7. I use a small nail with the end rounded off to mix paint. I found this wasted a lot less 
paint than using a brush and is easier to clean. 

8. Finally, take photos after each painting session. This isn’t really related to mixing but I 
find it useful to spot mistakes in my work. Also, the best NMM effect will always be 
when viewed as a photo on the computer and this will motivate you in the early stages. 
However, If you get it right it should still look good when viewed in hand under decent 
lighting.   

 
 
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Step-by-step 

The first step was to basecoat the armour plates with colour A (a really dark purple-brown). 
Then I sketched in the initial highlights using colour B ​ .​ These were painted using lots of 
thin lines. For this project, I used a smaller brush (00) than I usually do. Michal told me this 

 
 
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was what he usually used for his NMM projects. Using this dark colour first allows you to 
easily correct the basic highlight shapes by painting over with the base coat A. 

The next step was to soften the dark areas between the highlights. I did this by mixing B    
with Vallejo Matt medium (about 20% paint, 80% medium, and some water). I find this 
works well with Kimera Kolors to help with blending. Getting the right opacity takes a bit of 
experimentation. I would say it is better to have too much medium than paint. You can 
always add more paint bit by bit to make it more powerful. Also, make sure to add water 

 
 
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so it is like a thin layer consistency. The medium is typically thick and not thinning it will 
result in texture building up.  

 
 
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Now I highlighted within the area painted already using colour F ​ .​ Again using as fine lines 
as you can paint. You want some of the colour underneath to show. 

 
 
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I did a second layer with the same colour F ​ .​ I tried to paint within the first layer in some 
places. 

 
 
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Next, ​I glazed some of the colour F ​ ​ +

​ matt medium over the shadows on the hand and 
shoulder to soften them a bit. 

 
 
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Now I glazed colour C ​ ​ o

​ ver the dark areas and slightly onto the edges of the highlights. 

I added the next level of highlights using colour G ​ ​. Some areas near the top were painted
with lines and some smoother i.e. on his hand. 

 
 
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Next, I softened the edges using a glaze of colour F ​ ​ a

​ nd matt medium. 

 
 
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Again I added some glazes of colour C ​ ​ a

​ s I wanted a richer red-brown colour. 

 
 
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Now I added maximum highlights using the colour I ​ .​  

 
 
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Then I blended the highlights as in similar stages. Also at this stage, I base coated the steel 
parts. I used grey mixed with scale75 black and white. 

 
 
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After the blending, I added another layer of highlights using the colour I ​ ,​ just at specific 
points. 

 
 
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I painted the steel edging using various greys mixed from scale75 white and black. Because 
it doesn't cover too well, I find it easier to get smoother transitions. 

Using a dark grey mix of scale75 I painted in the base for the blue highlights. In retrospect, 
I should have added just a touch of blue to make the later stages easier. 

 
 
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Next, I glazed over some ProAcryl blue-grey. I found this gave a smoother transition than 
using the Kimera Pthalo blue red shade. I needed the blue to be a bit less luminous. 

 
 
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Then I glazed in the center of the blue highlights using Pthalo Blue red shade. This added a 
more luminous look. 

 
 
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I then painted more highlights using a lighter grey. Then I did more glazing with the two 
blue colours. I will probably add a couple more glazes at the end. 

At this stage, it was basically done. Now is the point you can spend as much time as you 
want, blending and smoothing. This isn’t a competition piece so I spent about another 30 
minutes refining using glazes/stippling over the whole arm. It is hard to explain exactly the 
steps, I just slowly made changes to get a smoother result. 

 
 
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Part 2: Back on Ares 

For painting the blue reflected armour on the back, I take the basic greyscale mixes I used 
for the NMM on the base (see section 4) and mix in some of the Phthalo Blue (red shade) 
on the palette. The only colours I don’t do this with is the Black and pure White. I also 
create a mix of the Phthalo Blue with matt medium and water. Additionally, I create a 
darker mix by adding Phthalo Blue + Black and matt medium/water. This is the basic 
palette I will use. 

The first step is to paint the base for the highlights with the darkest grey. This is important 
because when you glaze the blue over the top, it will not tint a black base coat. It needs at 
least a bit of white in the colour otherwise you will need a lot of glazes to see any effect. 
NOTE: I lightened the images to make it easier to see the brush strokes. 

 
 
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Next, we sketch in the highlight areas with the next lightest gray using thin lines. This is 
almost identical to the front arm. 

Paint the next highlight with the next lightest blue. Keeping inside the previous one. Notice 
how I use a crosshatch pattern on the area below his shoulders. I think I darkened the 
initial highlight before doing the cross-hatching by painting over with the blue/black glaze. 
This is an easy way to make subtle adjustments in value (brightness). 

 
 
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Now we unify by painting the blue glaze mix over everything. This may take 2-3 coats 
depending on the strength of your mixture. 

Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of the next steps, but they are essentially the same 
as before. I wasn’t happy with the curved highlights, they were too far apart so I painted 
over the lower one with black and moved it closer to the other one. Then I reduced the 
black areas between the triangle-shaped highlights by painting a mixture of the mid 
grey/blue + matt medium/water over the black areas. Then I re-highlighted again starting 
from the mid grey/blue working up to pure white on the edges/light catches. Finally, I 
unified again by painting the blue glaze mix over everything. To feather the edges to the 
dark areas, I stippled/glazed the darker blue glaze mix. I also used this mixture to feather 
the red highlight areas into the black. Just make multiple passes, getting closer to the black 
area each time. 

 
 
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You should now have a nice smooth set of highlights. At this stage, things got a bit shiny, so 
I painted some AK Ultra Matt varnish over all the blue areas. Finally, I did the final 
highlights using light blue and white. Mainly I concentrated on the edges and stippled a 
few highlight points. If the highlights look too strong, just glaze over them with the blue to 
soften the effect. Below is a picture that was taken with my digital SLR. At this stage, it is 
nearly done. I will probably glaze over a few areas to increase the saturation but essentially 
it is complete. 

 
 
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Part 3: Cape 

This was my first real attempt at painting white and I 

know a lot of people have problems with this colour. I 
was one of them! After a lot of trial and error and a 
restart, I finally got something that looks decent. 
Below are a few tips I picked up along the way. 

The first step was to create a mid shadow colour to form the base coat. This I mixed from 
white and black Kimera and light umber and golden brown from ProAcryl. In this base mix, I 
added some flow improver. I find this helps to get a smooth coat with paints with a lot of white 
in them.  

For my first attempt, I used this base mix and created a series of lighter mixes by adding more 
white, and a darker mix for the max shadows by adding black. I then painted in stages, first 
adding the maximum shadows and then getting increasingly lighter. The problem was that the 
transition from each layer was very visible and hard to blend. 

 
 
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For my second attempt, I painted all over with the same base mix. But this time, I didn’t make 
premade mixes for each stage. Instead, I took the base mix, added a little bit of white, then 
painted the next lighter layer and repeated. Each time my layers got smaller and smaller until I 
reached the maximum light points. To help blend between the layers, after each step, I mixed 
some of my current mix with matt medium and then painted very thin vertical lines kind of 
randomly crossing the boundary between the two layers. 

Finally, I mixed some Kimera phthalo blue red shade and matt medium and glazed this to 
create the blue reflections. It doesn’t look that blue in the photos. In real life, it is a lot more 
saturated. 

 
 
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Part 4: Shield 

The shield is a very interesting challenge and quite a bit different from the other NMM on the rest of 
Ares. As usual, I created myself some references to get an idea of the colours used. 

I also mocked up a different pattern in Affinity Photo compared to LAN’s original V shape. 

 
 
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Inner Pattern 

1. First, I found the center point of the circle and painted a small dot (1). Then I measured equal 
distances and marked the 3 points (2). Then using thin masking tape, I used this as a straight 
edge to paint up against to make the 3 center lines from point 1 to point 2. The outer lines 

 
 
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were then painted by hand trying to maintain consistent width and spacing. I find it is easier to 
use a long narrow brush rather than something like a W&N with a wide body. That way, if the 
angle you hold the brush at changes, the width doesn’t. Next, I painted each outer set of lines 
by hand, trying to be consistent with the spacing. If you make a mistake, just use the base 
colour to correct the width and/or spacing. 
2. Steps 2-3 show how to build up the maze-like pattern. Just fill in areas of the background with 
red and paint over parts of the existing red lines with the background. 
3. Now paint the first highlight using colour F
​ ​ _  
4. Glaze over some areas with Kimera orange and add shadows by glazing the background plus 
orange over the outer edges and specific points. 

5. Finally, add the final highlight. With Kimera paints, because they are so strong, you will end up 
with a hard edge that you need to feather using glazes of red and/or orange.  

For the lightning effect coming from the inner pattern, I simplified things a little bit. On LAN’s version, 
there are a lot more points and they are smaller than mine. I am not sure how he paints them, they 
are really tiny. 

1. Step 1 was to paint the initial lighting effect using a dark brown. I couldn’t paint the lines thin 
enough, even using flow improver. However, we will correct this later. 
2. Next, I added highlights, concentrating the brightest point to where the lines join. 
3. Now, I thinned the lines down by painting the background colour against the edges to thin 
them. 

 
 
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4. Finally, I used a glaze of the background colour to fade the lines the further away they got from 
the pattern. 

 
 
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Outer NMM 

For the outer NMM, I decided to use just Scale75 for 2 reasons. Firstly, the shield looks quite a bit 
different than Ares so I didn’t want to use any of my original mixes. Secondly, I wanted to compare the 
experience using Scale75 vs Kimera. I have quite a few different brands of paint but not many 
different colours. Instead, I rely on mixing. So above, are the only colours I used and the greyscale 
mixes I created when painting the base. 

The basic mixes where brown + blue for the dark texture. Brown + Yellow for the yellow band and 
slowly add birch for the highlights. The green areas where brown + green + birch. I also used brown + 
red for some glazes. Finally, I used the blue + grey mixes for painting/glazing the blue reflections. I 

 
 
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won’t go over the exact details, it is a very similar process as described before. Paint very thing lines, 
glaze over them to unify. Repeat this process for each subsequent brighter colour. 

 
 
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Part 6: Face 

The first step was to determine the base colours for Ares’s face by picking them from the original 
photo. 

I mixed these basic tones using the following Vallejo colours and black. 

 
 
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Part 7: Base Step by Step 

The first step was to create a reference picture and pick out some of the important colours. 
You will notice there are browns, purples and blues in the shadows of the NMM. 

 
 
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Base - Rocks 

For the rock colours, I used the following Creature Caster ProAcryl paints. I 
haven’t tried airbrushing with them yet and this seemed like a good opportunity. 
Using Vallejo airbrush thinner, they sprayed very well with little tip dry.  

First I mixed Coal-black with dark umber / Burnt Red and Purple and sprayed the 
entire base. 

 
 
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Next, I added some Golden brown to the mix and sprayed from above, leaving 
the darker colour in the shadow areas. I also sprayed less on the backside that 
has the dark blue light cast on it. 

Then I used some makeup brushes to dry brush a lighter mix (more golden 
brown) over all the edges. On the backside, I dry brushed some dark grey-blue. 

 
 
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Next, I used an old splayed brush and stippled texture all over the top. 

The next stage is to unify everything and add more shadows. I sprayed over 
everything with a very dilute (10% paint) dark brown/purple. This softened 
everything. Then using a darker brown mixed with 50% matt medium and some 
water, I painted more shadows into the cracks and underhangs. I may do a bit 
more of this at a later stage to increase the contrast. 

 
 
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Finally, I painted over all the metal elements with Kimera black thinned with a bit 
of Vallejo Airbrush thinner. This really helps it flow and get a smooth coat and 
sharp edges. 

The next step is to pick out the rock highlights again with the golden brown. I 
mainly concentrated on the edges that would catch the light (picture is from my 
SLR with better lighting) 

   

 
 
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Base - Front NMM 

I used Scale75 colours, mainly because these are the paints that Michal uses. In 
addition, they are quite thick out of the bottle and when thinned down, a bit 
more transparent than the Kimera Kolors. This made it a little easier to get 
smoother transitions. My first step was to create a series of shades from black 
through to white. I only used black + white to mix these. In each pot, I also added 
a couple of drops of airbrush thinner and some water to make the consistency 
less thick. The airbrush thinner contains some flow improver and retarder and I 
found it easier to paint fine lines using this. However, don’t add too much as the 
paint can become hard to control. In the lighter colours, I also added a drop of 
thinner medium. This very slightly reduced the matt and I found it resulted in a 
slightly less chalky look. 

 
 
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For the section above, I first started by stippling a dark grey somewhat randomly 
over the surface to add some interest to the darker areas. Next, I took that dark 
grey and mixed in some Brown Leather. Then I stippled this, leaving some of the 
dark grey and black still visible. Then I started the first layer of highlights using 
the next lighter grey. 

 
 
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The next step was to do some edge highlighting using lighter greys. I like to do 
this quite early on as the NMM effect heavily depends on it. If you do it earlier, 
you get a better idea if you are on the right track. You may go over it or increase 
the brightness later on but that is OK. The line indicated by the red arrow 

 
 
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highlights something interesting. That edge highlight is thinner than I could paint. 
To achieve this, I took advantage of the dark shadow above and painted over the 
bright highlight I painted earlier with black, making it thinner. Sometimes you just 
need to plan, rather than having some god-like control of the brush!  

Now I unified everything to make the stippling smoother. I did this by mixing 
some of the dark grey with matt medium and water to create a very transparent 
layer paint. I then painted this over everything. It may take a couple of coats to 
get it looking smooth enough. Then I re-edge highlighted, reserving pure white 
just for little light catches. 

Here is the final result, taken on my digital SLR that better shows the nuances of 
the colours. 

 
 
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In the above steps, you can see how I built up the highlights starting from dark 
grey and working up to a light grey. An important point to make is that all the 
highlights need to line up. For example, the line running up the center of the 
lower pipe corresponds with the line on the canister. If you get them out of 
alignment it breaks the optical illusion. I had to adjust mine a few times. 

 
 
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Next, I used some violet and blue red shade mixed with matt medium/water to 
glaze in some subtle colour at the top of the canister. Then I added some pure 
white highlights. Finally, I mixed the light grey and matt medium and 
glazed/stippled it around the edge of the highlights to soften them. You will also 
notice I cleaned up a few of the white lines by painting a darker grey next to 
them. 

 
 
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For the circular covers, the important lesson I learned was that you need to get 
the geometry correct for the pizza slice shaped highlights. Just painting them 
freehand is very hard. So, I use construction lines painted with a dark grey to 
help me. Mark a dot in the middle of the circle. All lines should converge to this 
point. Once you have your lines in place, paint in the highlights using thin lines, 
keeping within the lines. Then come back with black paint and remove the lines. 
Notice, on the highlight facing the back, I added some blue to the grey mix. For 
the little indents, a quick trick is to paint the highlight without being too careful. 
Then paint a black dot in the middle. This is easier than trying to paint a tiny 
semi-circular highlight. Finally, to get that soft look to the highlights, glaze/stipple 
a mixture of the mid-grey mixed with matt medium/water. On the back, I glazed 

 
 
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blue mixed with matt medium/water. I will probably add more blue at the end 
once I paint the back of Ares and he is mounted. 

Base - Back NMM 

Unfortunately, I don’t have any step by steps for the back NMM on the base. I 
struggled a bit initially, and the process was pretty chaotic as I tried to fix my 
problems and come up with a process. Once I got the hang of it, it was too late to 
photograph. I have included some images I took along the way. The main 
difference to the front was that I mixed in Phthalo Blue (red shade) to the basic 
grey shades. Additionally, I glazed over areas with a mix of Phthalo Blue + Black + 
Matt Medium/water. Some of the shadow areas also had purple glazed into 
them. Generally, I found this area the hardest because all the colours were more 
muted and the difference between the shadows and highlights was less.  

 
 
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