Painting a Jungle themed Imperial Guard

By endurance we conquer.

Two years back, I went through a lengthy process of converting more realistic Imperial Guard from Elysian Drop Troops and making molds for them. I was really fortunate to have the talented Polysmith create some female heads to go with the models, due to a relative lack of good options from Games Workshop at the time. Unfortunately, I never had the opportunity to properly paint one of these completed Imperial Guard models. With the increased hobby time I have had due to the current pandemic, I decided to rectify this!

Rather than painting full face paint, I opted for more limited tiger stripes, as not to completely cover the skin I had already painted.

I derived a lot of inspiration from the Cold War-era military combat fatigues seen in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater when first converting the models, so I wanted to pick a color scheme that stayed true to this. I decided on a relatively simple olive drab scheme, similar to the first set of fatigues you start with in Snake Eater. When approaching the paintwork on the model, I wanted to experiment with lighting and shadows. With this in mind I painted in some of the shadows in the folds of the soldier’s fatigues and took special effort to focus most of the highlights on areas that would be exposed to light. I painted in heavy shadows on the underside of the arms and legs. The majority of the paints I used for the model were from the Vallejo Model Air range. For the fatigues I based everything with Russian Green 4BO (Vallejo Model Air; 71.017) and did a series of highlights mixing in more and more Tank Ochre (Vallejo Model Air, 71.081). Most of her combat webbing and holsters were painted Panzer Olive (Vallejo Model Air; 71.096). Highlights were done by adding increasing amounts of Sand Yellow (Vallejo Model Air; 71.028) to Panzer Olive. To imitate Nylon, some of these highlights were painted as small dashes on the straps.

I paid special attention to including a lot of gear and a sidearm on the model, wanting to make it look like she was ready for combat. All of this was painted in drab colors, like her fatigues, as not to draw attention to them.

The ferns on the base are laser-cut paper from Ammo by MIG Jimenez.

To create the base, I decided to test out some paper, laser-cut tropical ferns, created by Ammo (by MIG Jimenez). I had never worked with such thin paper details for bases before, but I was able to glue them down using PVA glue, and then strengthen them by brushing them with a coat of watered-down PVA. The rest of the base was textured with Agrellan Badland (Citadel Texture) paint and a few Citadel Creeping Vine leaves were glued on for good measure. Most of the painting was done with a mixture of green and brown oils and enamels. Some final brighter greens were added to the plant-life with acrylics (Citadel Moot Green, Citadel Warboss Green, and even the venerable Citadel Bad Moon Yellow).

The new Imperial Guard model next to an infiltration specialist I built in 2018.

I am thrilled to have finally gotten paint on this Imperial Guard trooper! After so many years in the making, it is really satisfying to see the model complete. The Polysmith’s head fits so well with the model; her smirk conveying so much character, a veteran who has seen hundreds of battlefields. I still have a few more of these Imperial Guard assembled and ready for paint. Should I paint more in this scheme, the previous urban one, or perhaps even another? So many potential projects! As always any comments and criticisms are welcome.

- Adam Wier