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I hope the picture attachments worked. Please be brutally honest and let me know what you think of my color scheme. Sorry for bad camera quality.

EDIT: Last two pictures feature an added touch, a brown ink wash for dirt.

Not bad for a first go. Maybe work on getting a little contrasting areas into the scheme. The classic IW hazard stripes always break up this scheme quite well.

I prefer “brighter” minis. To me, these seem overly dark.

Iron Warriors can be tricky to pull off, as they’re a near non-ochrome army (no colour, just light and dark) so they kind of need the coloured parts to be close to middle brightness, to help define the lighter and darker parts of the steel.

Or, you can use the coloured parts to define the brightest and darkest parts, which again helps to define the brighter and darker parts of the steel. For example, you could darken the gold to a deep antique gold (perhaps with an Agrax Earthshade wash) and then use bright yellow / hazard stripes to set the brightness. Those two elements would help the eye to see the different brightnesses of steel parts, which would help to define the details of those parts.

Something to try to keep in mind, would be consistent brightness. For example, some shoulder pads are very bright, while others look oiled and kind of dingey. If you line them up, front to back, you’ll notice the highlights are inconsistent. To make the unit cohesive, those highlights should be consistent. That can be tough with drybrushing, but pretty easy with washing. In terms of technique, consistent washing is generally easier to learn than consistent drybrushing. My suggestion for IW would be to start with a metallic spray paint, followed by an overall black wash. That would give you consistent shade on the models, that will really help to pull them together.

I tried something similar, but a brown wash instead of black. Even though it made the models darker I do feel like the wash reigned them in and reduced the contrast between the brighter gold and dirtier metal sections.

New pics added.

Edit: I've heard Iron Warriors mentioned. I was never going for iron warriors. This scheme just happens to be metal based.

Oh, well all metal chaos marines are pretty much going to be assumed iron warriors 100% of the time. Might want to consider giving them some kind of identifying features or markings to differentiate them.

Part of the issue with your chosen scheme is that “dirty” looks “sloppy” and not realistic. Because there’s no chroma (colour) for the eye to work with, the eye sees shadow, indicating a recess, when placed against the light steel colour.

Having “splotchy” dirt / oil on the steel may look realistic at life-scale, but at 28 mm it looks like poor workmanship, which is not a critique of your skill! It’s just the nature of attempting that effect on a non-ochrome base.

Gold, by comparison, could be washed with Reikland Fleshshade (creating a warm, aged gold look) and then hit selectively with Nuln Oil or Agrax to make it look dirty.

Brown washes over steel give a rusty look. An unintended consequence can be that the brown, in the recesses, is colour dense, and looks instead like a raised patch of rust.

By going with a steel colour with gold trim... they’re going to look like Iron Warriors. I’d suggest looking at a couple of how-to videos. Regardless of your fluff... they’re going to look like IW. Might as well take advantage of the painting tutorials related to them.

I quite like the scheme, but I do agree that it needs some brighter colours. I'd grab some blue or orange/yellow first and hit the plasma weapons, eyes and maybe some conduits or other bits and pieces. It might still be too dark, but give that a shot before you go completely changing the scheme. Chaos minis also tend to have a lot of exposed flesh, and really pale flesh can look pretty good with a dark scheme (namely black legion). While raptors don't have a lot of flesh, keep that in mind when painting the rest of the army.

Thanks for the advice guys, I'm gonna sift through everything you've said and try to do better on my second box. I was going for extreme dirt and wanted my men to look like they've been in the swamp far too long, but I could see how some of that dirt and swampiness can come off as sloppy technique

I'm definitely keeping the color scheme but you guys are making me realize it can be improved upon.

No slight to your skill. It's just the nature of the colour scheme.

There are plenty of ways you can make your models look worn and weathered, but you need to get your basics down first before attempting these techniques really.

Maybe beating a dead horse, but lighter colours are easier to weather and have it look “good”.

If you google white scars and imperial fist weathering, you’ll notice the weathering stands out “cleanly”, if that makes sense. You need the contrast to make it look deliberate, and not sloppy which again is not criticism of your skill, just the nature of the beast. Brighter rust, or a textured mud paint gives the right bright / dark so that it doesn’t muddy the appearance... as much as that’s what you’re trying to achieve.

It’s the same reason that realistic camo doesn’t really work on minis, because you’re trying to accentuate the details of the model while simultaneously disrupting the shape of the model with the camo pattern. The skill can be there, but the very skill to paint what you want defeats the purpose of what painting does, which is to make the model’s details look like smaller versions of reality.

Iz tru. Much to fink about.