Heresy Era… Imperial Fists?

by | Mar 14, 2015

Been feeling a bit rudderless on the hobby front of late, while I've made great strides in clearing out a bunch of detritus from the Closet of Doom (Link to auctions ending today and tomorrow!) I just haven't been feeling the spark of creativity. I'd tried out a couple test paint schemes for the Alpha Legion, but found I didn't much enjoy the results, and as such I went back to the books to see if any other legion caught my interest. I'd been focusing on the 'bad guys' but my eye fell on the boys in yellow and I figured it might be a fun challenge to try out some Imperial Fists! Dragged out a couple test models and took a whack at a couple different ways of painting the base yellow:


First up I thought I'd see if a metallic yellow might work, with a boltgun metal/silver highlight base color being washed multiple times with Cassadora Yellow wash. Interesting effect, but not quite what I wanted, and would be too streaky when applied to vehicles. Next up was a light tan basecoat washed again with Cassadora Yellow which didn't really work at all, just sort of turned into a muddy mess. Next was light tan, followed by a Golden Yellow highlight, followed by the Cassadora Yellow wash again - getting closer, but just not well defined. On a lark I tried a light tan, golden yellow and then an Agrax Earthshade wash, followed by a further yellow drybrush, and I think we might have a winner!

 

One of the things I'm looking to do is push my weathering techniques a bit more, and really dig in to a dirty/weathered army with painted/sponged chips and scratches, and I'm thinking this might be a great somewhat grimy base color to work from. I want to try one more test model with a more involved light tan/averland sunset/golden yellow/bright yellow/earthshade wash/yellow highlight to see if I can push the initial yellows just a little brighter before it gets darkened down by the wash (in person the model above is a little less vibrant than it appears in the pics). I've been feeling stuck in a 3-stage Basecoat/Highlight/Wash rut for a while, and I think the models could really benefit from a few more color gradients. Definitely worth trying out some further schemes on throwaway models before committing to resin, that's for sure!

Gotta say, I'm feeling the hobby mojo coming back - this could be a fun project!