Tutorials
Imperial Fist Armour
Many people say that the colour yellow is one of the hardest colours to paint and I get a lot of emails from people each week asking how I achieve the yellow you see on my Imperial Fists in my gallery pages. Well, I have finally got round to writing a tutorial that will take you through an easy step by step guide and hopefully at the end you will have some cool looking Imperial Fists.
Prepare all the pieces as you would normally. I usually paint everything separately then assemble the mini at the end as I find it easier to paint. But for the purposes of this tutorial I have assembled the mini at the start (FIG 1). I always start my painting from a black undercoat (FIG 2) but you do not have to follow this (I have not tried a white undercoat but I presume it will just give you a brighter finish at the end).
Difficulty Level:
Updated: 26 May 2008
MATERIALS:
TOOLS:
Paints: Vomit Brown, Bleached Bone and Skull White
Inks: Brown and Yellow
Standard Brush
Detail Brush
Fine Detail Brush
Detail Brush
Fine Detail Brush
STEP I
Give all armour a nice smooth coat of Vomit Brown. I usually apply four or five thin coats to get a nice even coverage of the armour plates. This is important to get right as it will effect the final results if the base coat is patchy. I use an airbrush to get this right as it gives me a nice even coverage quickly which is especially usefully when you have whole squads to get painted. (FIG 3)
STEP II
Run some watered down brown ink into any recesses and joints between the armour plates and also around any rivots etc. (FIG 4)
STEP III
Take a 70/30 mix of Vomit Brown/ Bleached Bone and apply it to the edges of the armour, taking your time to make the highlights neat. (FIG 5)
STEP IV
Use the same colours for the next highlight but the mix is now 50/50 Vomit Brown/ Bleached Bone and is applied again to the edges of the armout, but slightly thinner coverage. (FIG 6)
STEP V
Mix in a little skull white to the mix and apply it to the very edges of the armour and then use some pure skull white on the extremes of the armour. (FIG 7)
STEP VI
Water down yellow ink. When using washes etc. I always use a tiny amount of washing up liquid to break the surface tension and allow the ink to flow a lot easier over the armour. If done properly you shouldn't get any of the horrible pooling on the flat areas which usually puts most people off using inks.
Once the first wash is dry reapply more washes until you are happy with the colour. You will see that the wash has changed the overall colour to a rich, warm yellow. (FIG 8)
It is best to reapply the final two highlights from Step V again, as they will have probably been tinted yellow after the washes. (FIG 9)
Now you have followed these steps all thats left is to fill in all the details on the mini and paint the base in what ever colours you want. Hopefully you should have ended up with something that resembles the final picture. (FIG 10)
I hope this tutorial has been helpful to you all and remember this guide doesn't have to be used just for Imperial Fists, it makes some impressive Bad Moon Orks too.
If you use Vallejo Paints you can substitute the GW colours as below:
(GW) Vomit Brown Medium Flesh (VMC)
(GW) Bleached Bone Pale Sand (VMC)
(GW) Skull White Flat White (VMC)
MINIATURE ART BY WIL DAVIES
