Beyond Light Speed painting - Imperials II

Following Part I which dealt with black armoured Imperials https://www.firstcommissionpainting.co.uk/blog-old this blog covers their white armoured brethren and also off white! I have used the Scout troops I was sent as the example of White white troopers and Shore troopers for the cooler off white.

As always I started from a black undercoat and employed the method I learned from an Angel Giraldez video some years ago which gives a cool white suitable for troopers. It uses the colours below but the base is essentially a German WW2 field grey over black.

Painting White blog https://www.firstcommissionpainting.co.uk/single-post/whiter-than-white

The key here is to spray almost all the mini only leaving black in the deepest of crevices. Normally you can get away with a more zenithal approach but as the only other colour will be black it is necessary to make sure there is clean separation. The foto below shows the guys after the field grey stage.

Next up is the deck Tan which significantly lightens up the surfaces as can be seen in the mini on the left. Despite appearances it is not really white, or tan. It is a slightly greenish tinged white in real life. This is applied pretty much zenithally!

Finally pure white. With non star wars imperials doing white as a final highlight i am much more sparing in application but here the white is literally the thing so as long as you keep some of the darker layers and try to focus mainly on the upward facing areas it is always going to be fine.

As an aside of all the troopers I was sent the actual physical quality of these was much lower, especially on the weapons which were very fuzzy. Edges were less clean cut as well.

Black. Before painting the black i bombed on a nice coat of matt varnish both to protect the airbrush work which being thin layers can rub off, but also to allow efficent and immediate clean up should the black slip!

I used slightly thinned black with either flow improver or retarder but you can as easily use a contrast type paint. All the main areas were blocked in as neatly as possible but with a wet brush ready for clean up.

The same approach was taken with the black panel lining. This was made harder than it needed to be due to the scrappy nature of the castings as can be seen on the helmets. I am a convert from winsor and newton to Rosemary sable brushes but either is necessary for nice lining.

VMC German Grey was used for highlights on the black. You can be quite strong with these as if it goes too grey just break out the thinned down black to reinstate the darkness. Essentially it is highlight to taste here and it is not eye catching so you can go quickly.

On any belts or black bits with prominent edges a quick VMC London Grey edge highlight makes it easier to see where the belt is or where the black ends. This grey edge highlight also is applied to the not very nice guns.

Finally it's white edge highlights. If you have the time and inclination you can go full GW here and edge highlight everything but for speed I tend to do the upward facing edges and the ones that will catch the eye. For me with wargames minis anything else is just taking time and adding cost.

A solitary bit of red in the optical thing was the only other colour! Bases were painted up and tufts added as described in other blogs here on the site.

This is the same method for Storm, Snow and Scout troopers and provides a decent result within a couple of hours.

Airbrushing!

For those who dont have an airbrush I would say just get one. If you are thinking they are too expensive my set up with a Badger airbrush and a decent compressor cost me just over £200 7 years ago. If that seems like a lot think about the time/money cost of painting you save over brush painting, the opportunity cost of not having an airbrush. Additionally I have spent easily over £200 on brushes in the same period!

Shoretroopers

Shoretroopers are pretty cool in their off white armour. I have no idea why their armour is different and their pants are brown but they are way cooler. Having explained the 3 paint method above all i really need say is that only the colours sprayed have changed. To be honest any similar set of colours would do the same job. You might have noticed I am airbrushing normal VMC paints not the cool kids airbrush paints. When I started I did use airbrush paints but quickly realised that you can just thin normal paints with thinner or flow improver or both and save buying two sets of paints!

Once again the base was black but the base coat the light brown Iraqi sand colour instead of german field grey. This was applied into the shadows as per the field grey rather than zenithally. The Dark sand was then zenithalled as can be seen below.

Instead of whitey white this time I used Ivory as the top highlight through the airbrush as it keeps the warmth needed for these guys.

Trousers and other brown bits were now painted using the colours below with a dark brown base supplied by German Dark Brown. I use this for almost all my browns as a base.

In the pic below you can see how it gets layered up by mixing burnt umber then flat earth .

For no good reason i then did the shoulder pads. I have no idea what ranks are being shown but it was a nice break to use some actual colours other than white black and brown!

But back to black...weapons, eyepieces were painted alongside any other black bits and panel lines though tbh there were few of these. Dark unber boots were painted at this point.

Lastly as with the Scout troopers the white edge highlights were added on upward facing edges and weapons and the pva/sand etc basing completed. The dark brown ammo pouches were highlighted with flat brown for a bit of variety and we're done.

And that was meant to be that for Legion.

However painting these guys got me watching a couple of batreps, than reading the 2.6 rules, then inevitably buying both the core sets for myself...So if you liked these blogs keep an eye open for much more Legion based content!