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Hi everybody. I've been making guardsmen for about a year now, but could never settle on a paint scheme. I finally decided to take the plunge and just paint a woodland camo scheme. Here are the pictures of my first test guardsman. I would really appreciate any advice about improving my painting so if you notice something crappy looking or if you have some camo painting tips I will gladly listen. Not sure how well the pictures will come out either so advice on photography or just plain old posting is welcome as well.

He does seem very "all camo´ish"... I´m not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, since that´s the way most modern day armies do it.

But in the far future the imperial guard often have armor in a different color than their uniforms.

It´s mostly a preference thing, at first it looked really weird, since I´m used to the other kind of paint scheme.

Camo guard always looks the best!

can't tell but did you try to paint the eyes? on guardsmen I skip em, the helmet hides them anyway so no one will notice if you painted them or not and it will save you a lot more time

The camo looks good, if you want less camo I'd maybe just do the cloth parts camo and armor parts a slightly darker green.

I did try to do the eyes. As you suggest, they were indeed a pain. I was using a 00 brush and if my hand was steady enough I could use the tip to make one white eye ball. Doing the pupil was even harder since it required to place a bristle or two right in the middle of the eye. My attempt resulted in a crazed, cross-eyed trooper who looked like an insane, cartoon squirrel. I suppose if you couldn't even tell that I had attempted to paint eyes there's little point to wasting time with it. As you suggest I will probably will skip it in the future, thanks.

I like it! Nice, crisp camo scheme. All the greens look like they go together without making the model look boring. Keep up the good work dude.

Looks good! Have fun with the other 149 of his brothers.

I started to regret the "urban camo" scheme after about 40 guardsmen. They look great when they're all lined up, but man, it took forever.

i would add one thing and that is make the armour a little worn with a bronze colour and a little boltgun metal just on the egdes. other then that it looks great

So the lonely guardsman found some of his friends. Now he has to go find 130 more of them....sigh.

For officers (since they are so bombastic and proud) you might want to try making one shoulder pad or their helmet a different color; grey and red seem popular choices.

Thanks for the idea. I was actually thinking about modeling the army after the Hussar regiments of the Napoleonic era with a bit of a modern twist. I was thinking of making the officers pretty audaciously dressed with red pants and yellow/gold top but perhaps that would make them stand out a little too much. The idea of making a shoulder pad or helmet different might be the middle ground that I seek.

This is a bit of in a new direction but I had a question that perhaps someone here could answer. Is there a good source for miniguns that could be used with guard. I think miniguns are pretty rockin' but you hardly see them in GW sets. I would like a few guys in my army that would be like Jesse Venture in Predator, but where do I get pieces for the conversion? I've come in possession of a Dark Angels Terminator assault cannon so that's my best lead at the moment. I was thinking of meshing it with parts from the grenade launcher to make the minigun. Any other ideas?

evergreen hobbies tubing. Any well stock train store or Hobby town USA should have this stuff locally. They make a line of rod/tubing that will make the mini guns.

Or heck, if you want to do the officers as special looks...
Try and get your hands on the Forgeworld conversion kits for Cadians, and you can special capped heads/uncovered heads that you can work with.

Kanluwen wrote:Or heck, if you want to do the officers as special looks...
Try and get your hands on the Forgeworld conversion kits for Cadians, and you can special capped heads/uncovered heads that you can work with.

Or westwind or pig iron. both make seperate metal heads for a fraction of what FW costs.

There was another guy in here that did somthing similar. He said that he based his theme off of US troops in the 1980's. You should search for it. It was totally awesome. This is nice work too.

Im curious how you are going to base them. That is what will really make these models look great.

You could convert commisars as officers. A good way to base woodland heavy wep teams behind a fallen/dead tree.

You can use a toothpick to "dot the eyes", that's what I do. As long as you like the pattern, that's all that really matters.