Imperial Guard

Back on the treadmill again with another squad o’ Guard. To break up the sea of green I finished off a Jokaero.

I plan to add an Inquisitor and retinue to fight alongside the astra militarum. I’ve had my head turned by the grimdark style, so may adopt that. This lad was too near complete to change so I just finished him off. I’ll get another if I do go grim and dark.

Some of the “tutorial” minis finished off and the first character for the project: a Commissar! I’m told he’s not much use in the game but they’re cool af; have a great uniform; aren’t green fatigues and black flak armour; and most of all, you get one in the Start Collecting box.

I had to split this into two as I was going to exceed the max chunks of content I could add. Nearly there though.

My flesh recipe is simple enough. I base coat with Game Colour Cadmium Flesh, shade with Game Ink Flesh Wash (watered down because that stuff is so pigemented), highlight back with Cadmium Flesh, and a tiny final highlight with Pale Flesh – also from Game Colour.

I finish with a quick highlight of the khaki and metal areas (again just using the base colours) and a general tidy up. I don’t really highlight the black at all, but I do go over the larger areas (the shoulders and top of the helmet) in case too much ink pooled there.

My paintwork might be shoddy but it’s protected with gloss varnish. I go over that with some matt and finish the bases with leaves and a tuft. The last stage is very low effort but does make a difference to the models looking less shonky.

Then I film all this crap and call it done.

A quick few pics on how I do it. Not how to do it, just how I do. I’m trying to bash these out quickish so I’m using as few paints as possible. I’ve bunched them into two groups: everything that gets a black wash and skin tone.

I begin with the bare plastic model, texture the base, prime (a brush primer for a plastic model) and paint the base. Painting the base means no excuses for skipping it, and I can make a mess drybrushing before I’ve put on the actual colours.

With the base done I move on to the first set of base coats (i.e. most of the model). I start with Model Air Nato Black. This is a really dark grey, which will show some definition when I wash it. I continue with Model Colour Medium Olive, a nice bright olive green for the trousers and jacket. I pick out the aquilas in Model Colour Khaki and a few metal bits in Model Air Gun Grey. I then slop a load of black ink on.

After the wash has dried I reclaim some raised areas with Medium Olive again. No further highlights.

This time the clippy gaurdsmen. I really love these nice simple kits (especially that they’re £6 for five guardsmen). I’ll be using a lot of these in future.

I’m really not happy with the faces. I’ll leave these as they are but do something a bit nicer with future batches of guardsmen.

I want a lot of these guardsmen, really a lot. Well here’s another four plus the test model. I’m still not sure on the skin, but keep going ..

A good few years back I painted a squad of Cadians and a handful of characters – just as something to paint, never intended as an army. They took a while and I thought I’d never get anywhere using that paint scheme for a full army. This is intended to look good from three feet away and use very few colours. I’m happy with the test mini.