Star Wars Legions painted at light speed* - The Dark Side.

As a commission painter time is literally money, well not literally but painting stuff reasonably quickly to a decent standard is obviously the key to the whole thing. For my own figures I mostly use the 'speedy paint' technique described in previous blogs but for commission work I always go with the airbrush to do the heavy lifting as it does give a better quality finish. Some figures such as Marvel, some 40k and Infinity are almost designed for the airbrush approach but none are better to airbrush than Star Wars Imperial troopers. In this blog I will try to show how to paint these Dark and Death troopers efficently and attractively. In the next blog I will cover Storm, Shore and Scout trooper,

Firstly get a really solid black base. I use black primer and then go over with actual vallejo matt black. This is handy as if you bodge at any point you know that the black you will be correcting with is identical in everyway to the basecoat. If you just left the black primer the tiny differences in the black through more or less mattness would be annoying.

The first proper painting is using German grey to mark out where the highlights will be. Looking at the pictures helpfully provided by the customer showed these clearly and rather counter intuitively the shoulder pads are lighter on the edges than the ridegline. Elsewhere its common zenithal.

Second highlight is with a bluey grey. I use either french mirage blue or field blue, both are lightish blue greys like the 'Horizon bleu' of WW1 French uniforms. Again its upper surfaces and panel tops. You can see quite clearly in this picture.

Lastly I add pure white into the dregs of the blue grey for the dramatic highlights on shoulder pads helmet tops etc. At this point there is often not a lot of black left

So using the same black as the base coat originally I go back to reinforce the areas which need more black that have become too grey. This is the natural shadow areas, the lower parts of each lecg section, weapons and the ridgelines along the shoulder pads. None of the work done to date is difficult once you have practised with an airbrush and I would absolutely recommend getting an airbrush/compressor combo and putting in a few hours getting to know how to thin your paints and unclog your airbrush. These are the two hardest and most frustrating things to learn as each colour is different but once you have it nailed anyone could do what I have done here.

Edge highlights up next. Again a good brush and using the side of it is the key skill. If i was charging more than i do i would use 3 shades for edge highlights but on these we are just using sky grey everywher and then going over the most importanttop facing edges with white.

The same approach is than done on the weapons with the first edge highlights in grey and the dramatic ones in white. You could honestly get away with less highlights if you are doing your own guys and if these were mine for just my use I would do less as I can accept a lower standard if they get to table quicker!

Lastly the eyes were dobbed in with red then scarlet which is again probably one step more than you really need. For these guys you can see that I was not careful doing this as with these models it takes less time to tidy up a bit of splodge than it would have to paint in super carefully. Here the left eye is before tarting up and the right after correction.

Jet effects and flames were sprayed on afterwards and desert effect base added using sharp sand, pva and brown paint from a 5l emulsion I bought years ago from Wilko's which will see me good for another 5 years. Cheap and easy.

Death Troopers

Seath troopers were even more straight forward as looking at the art they appear to have glossy armour which means we can be even more contrasty, cutting out the German Grey midtone and going straight to field grey and white highlights. This foto shows field grey in a different place on the shoulder pads this time, again as supplied artwork.

As you can see I generally use standard Vallejo (or AK 3rd gen) paints in my airbrush. I used to use the airbrush colours but that meant two sets of paints, one for airbrush and one for brushwork which often did not match excatly so for many years now I have just used standard Model color for both uses. Thinning is easy enough with either water, thinner and flow improver.

With the white highlight we are done except for a bit of black reinforcement as previously done on the Dark troopers. I used to use ink for this but am happier with thinned black as previously explained.

Edge highlights as previous but with even more white for contrast. It may have been my imagination but the Dark troopers seemed a cleaner cast than the Death trooper , especially on the weapons which seemed a bit 'shaggy' in places.

They then had green lenses added which have not photographed well and given a coat of gloss varnish to make them look like the shiny artwork

Basing was identical as it was for the whole commission to match the customers previous Legions job I did some time back. I believe some AT ST and Dewbacks will be inbound soon so may well do a guide on those.

*Title not strictly true.