Lil bit of background: I am working on different techniques to enhance my dragon drawing. The main dragon I'm working with has a metallic blood red shimmer to her black scales. Up till now I've been working with using stippling, line weight variances, and hatching to create a 3D scale effect then using a scarlet lake pencil over carbon to get the blood red on black appearance. So far it's doing good for small scale work, but I want to work in a medium for larger pieces (like 16" and above). I have seen a few artists who I am fans of use ink/pencil combos with either acrylic ink or paint for their 8x11 and larger pieces.

What is the most cost/time effective solution to get the blood red shimmer for the larger pieces (possibly using acrylic paint instead of pencil, that is yet to be seen)? So far in talking with different art stores I've gotten using embossing (very costly and time consuming), mixing red and gold paint (still kinda spendy), getting black and red metallic acrylic inks and blending, or putting red glitter paint into the acrylic paint....

Any use any of these techniques? I'm really interested in info on the metallic inks (may prove more versatile than paint since could use on the smaller ink projects). and yes am going for realism so a way to make it 3D and shimmery is a plus.