Imperial Guard: Painting a close quarters specialist

These Skies are Dead.

For over a year now, I have been converting and making molds for some Imperial Guard models with a focus on realism and scale, rather than ostentatious “grimdark” elements. While Eric quickly assembled and painted a few for Iron Sleet’s Thorn Moon Crusade, they were more of a proof of concept rather than my final vision of the models. After a lot of consideration, I decided to paint my first of the Imperial Guard models as soldiers who excel in urban warzones. Although it was a slow process, I completed the first model and wanted to talk about the painting process!

I restricted my color palette to convey a realistic uniform that would allow a soldier to covertly traverse an urban warzone.

Rather than painting broad “tiger-stripe” camouflage, I decided to replicate a more delicate digital camo pattern.

My primary goal for painting the specialist was to create a believable urban scheme. Most important to the scheme was designing a camouflage suitable for an urban environment. I spent some time searching the internet for urban camouflage and found that digital patterns (a pixelated pattern of multiple colors) were common on modern military uniforms. With that in mind, I set about painting my best imitation of a digital pattern on the model’s uniform. I started with a base color of Thunderhawk Blue for the uniform. Next, using a small brush I carefully painted random pixelated patterns using Fenrisian Grey, Black, and Pale Greyblue (Vallejo Model Color 907).

Rather than using GW’s Sector Imperialis bases, which I find to be overly busy, I created a simple one using textured plastic card.

Although I purposely kept the model primarily subdued blues and blacks, I did add a slight accent color by painting her bionic lens a yellow-orange.

Aside from the camouflage fatigues, the guard have a lot of other gear such as straps, pouches, and gas masks. I opted to paint all of this equipment an unobtrusive black. For the black, I did a series of highlights adding increasing amounts of Ushabti Bone. I found if done carefully, this can create a subtle highlight without making what you are painting look grey. In addition to edge highlights, I spent some time adding scratches and wear marks on the black using the same greys.

Although it is difficult to make out in the photos, I put a gloss coat over the boots to make it look like polished leather.

I used a stippling technique to make the stock of her shotgun appear to be textured.

While it has been a long time in coming, I am really excited to have finished painting one of my converted Imperial Guard. It was really fun and rewarding to experiment with urban camouflage. Using a more modern digital style, rather than a tiger stripe pattern, was more difficult but also more striking. I am extremely happy with how the model turned out, thinking it effectively conveys what a trained reconnaissance soldier would look like.

- Adam Wier