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Looking for a fairly quick and painless way to paint IG guardsmen? I tryed the layer painting(pants, then boots then accessories) and it takes forever..any ideas?

Define forever? How long would you say is just about right?

I just spent 12-15 hours a model for rank and file

Hope this helps.

Go two tone is the easiest way but there isnt a quick way for guard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn-bkvIgAF0&index=2&list=PLpRfWTb1UMqalk3WNfUpivn-1KX6GLtWU

The quickest way? use a grey spray primer, paint the faces and hands in flesh, metal bits and eagles in silver, then dip in a pot of quickshade.

It's 3 colors with shading, which is table top standard, and its fast.

If you don't mind a somewhat dirtier look, dipping is about as quick and painless as it gets. With a simple scheme and appropriately colored primer, you can actually end up spending more time on model prep/assembly than painting (excluding drying time). Great for assembly line batch painting, which is especially handy for completing horde armies.

I've recently experimented with "dipping," myself, and am rather pleased with the results. I put that in quotes, as I'm not actually doing the 'dip and spin/flick' method, but brushing the stuff on. Minwax Polyshades Tudor Satin is my weapon of choice. It's dark enough to provide good contrast, but it's still a brown, which can be used to shade most colors reasonably naturally (especially good on browns, tans, and yellows, but doesn't look bad on greens or reds, either). Other schemes might warrant other colors, but the method is definitely viable, IMO.

One fairly quick method which I use is to find a primer that is the same color that you want the Guardsman's main uniform to be. Once the applied primer has dried, all you have to do is paint on the details, such as armor plates, weapon(s), skin, etc.

Keep in mind that nobody's going to be looking at your individual Guardsmen up close, you can go for a very stylized scheme and still look just fine because you're going to be looking at them from two or three feet away most of the time. Paint the cloth one colour, the armour another, wash the cloth, stipple the armour a bit for camo, make sure the face is vaguely flesh-coloured, and you're pretty much done.

Don,t do 3-4 different tone unique cammo schemes.
I foolishly invented 3 deset, 2 urbasn and Forrest cammo with woodland variety...

Keep it simple, you may need 100 guardsmen, no ones gonna look hard at any one model in large formation but HQ or odd specialists.
the basic lasgun trooper does not stand out, they just come in blobs, simple colour scheme, 2-3 tones, a wash or other techniques but in the end no need to go over the top with them.

Airbrush is your friend (please say you have one).

Base prime grey, black or white: whichever best suits the scheme you intend to paint.

Give shoulder pads an airbrush of colour you want.

Give helmet an airbrush of the colour you want.

Let dry.

Squish a blob of silly putty or blue-tac over the shoulder pads to mask: leave remaining of arm clear.

Wrap some cling-film around head to mask.

Airbrush the whole figure the main color you plan to have for the uniform.

Airbrush the base (works great on graveled bases) a little bit of overspray on boots look like dirt smeared on until you decide to paint further.

Brush-on skin colour and you are most of the way there without a huge amount of time or effort.

Sound good as a start?

I generally give them a gray spray priming, a flat coat of grays on their clothes, and a coat of flesh tone on the face and any exposed* skin. (For that i use white with a dot of red and various amounts of brown and yellow - think natural pigmentation.)

I'll highlight the clothes and skin if it's a character model, then wash the clothes in brown and the skin in an appropriate tone. I just drybrush the weapons and accessory bits after that.

1. Remember your painting gaming pieces. Don't go overboard on the detail. they have to look good at arms length, not close up.

2. Pick a base colour for the uniform (say brown). Go to a local store that sells coloured spray paint. Fine a matt spray close to the colour you want.

3. put your minis together, but don't glue on anything fiddly (like guns).

4. Spray everything the base colour.

5. Basecoat different areas like flesh etc. Quick and fairly neat if possible.

6. Spray the weapons black, drybrush boltgun metal, and glue them on.

7. Liberal wash of agrax earth shade. GWs greatest invention!

8. Do the bases.

On an assemly line like this you should get through batches of 20 minis in an evening, and they'll look fine on the table.

You can spend a bit more time making leaders pretty as these are the minis people will notice.

 oadie wrote:
I've recently experimented with "dipping," myself, and am rather pleased with the results. I put that in quotes, as I'm not actually doing the 'dip and spin/flick' method, but brushing the stuff on. Minwax Polyshades Tudor Satin is my weapon of choice. It's dark enough to provide good contrast, but it's still a brown, which can be used to shade most colors reasonably naturally (especially good on browns, tans, and yellows, but doesn't look bad on greens or reds, either). Other schemes might warrant other colors, but the method is definitely viable, IMO.

Just DO NOT USE THE MINWAX BLACK POLYSHADE! Sorry for the caps, but I tried it on a model (as I like the Quickshade Dark Tone) and discovered that the black Minwax does a complete coat of black all over the model.

I think I've narrowed down on a pretty fast way of painting Cadians, they may not look as awesome as some schemes, but they're fast.



It doesn't have to be a grey on grey scheme, the technique is similar for a lot of colours. Basically prime white, paint your base coats using quite heavily thinned paint (not as thin as a wash, but thinner than a layer) and use LARGE brushes to do it whenever you can. Once it's all basecoated, hit it with a wash, again use a LARGE brush. An optional final step is to go back and highlight the areas you want to stand out more (that's what I did on the Imperial Eagles, highlighted them Runefang Silver at the end).