NMM chrome

[strange phoenix]

I'm entering my first reasonably large scale painting competition soon so I'm trying to go all out on my entry. My entry is in various stages of completion so this picture isn't indicative of the finished article at all. But anyway I want to do the exhausts in NMM chrome and I wondered if anyone has any tips to make this look more realistic. It looks better in this picture than it does in real life. But it feels like something is missing/not quite right. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[wooden crystal]

• fully opaque coats. there are some parts where the underlying layer is shining throug into the white and blue and that will break the illusion.
• tidy straight lines, since you're painting chrome, ie not brushed metal, it's super important that the line between the dark and the light is super duper clean.
• highest value. I suspect the white is a little bit overexposed in this picture which is why it looks better. to achieve this in person you'll have to use other tricks like
  • increasing the contrast between the dark and the light. I'm assuming you're already using your whitest white, but if you make the line right next to the white really dark, it'll make the white look brighter
  • using gloss white for the whitest part, if it's in a place where it'll normally reflect your light source towards your eye it'll look brighter
  • using an airbrush, sick brush blending skills or more cartoony techniques to paint something looking like a light bloom. posted some image examples:

with that said, unless I zoom in a lot, what you have looks really good in the image.

this area also needs black lining and edge highlights imo.

looks like there's some kind of edge highlight, but it looks a bit smudged