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Hello Dakkafiends,

I'm looking for some advice on colours for my Imperial Guard. I started the painting these a while ago so the red and the gold were meant to be in homage to Ad Mech (then they were released! doh) / Praetorian Guard of old .
My concerns are two fold;
1) While the red looks alright on infantry, the tanks look really blocky and I'm not sure how to break it up, especially without paint large flat areas of gold, which I can never quite get right.
2) I'm sorely tempted to give up and paint everything a cadian style camo as this looks more 'realistic' (yeah I know).

Cheers Guys!

I like the scheme!
For the tanks you could:
weather the tracks to break up the red
paint the rivets a metal color to break it up
paint more detail on the tanks, hatches/lights/doors etc
apply transfer/decals
do some battle damage effects to break the red up also

Looks solid.

The infantry might benefit from a wash to really bring out the shadows in the cloth.

As for the tanks there are many things to do.
Apart from what Ratius said above you could always do a sort of camo scheme on the tanks with red and perhaps grey/black. Sure it's not really a realistic camo but if done well it'll break up the monotone feel and could look pretty good.
You could also try some freehanding if you feel comfortable with that. Making it feel like the crews have personalized their vehicles. A few slogans/quotes or a kill count or something perhaps. A prayer to the machine spirit?

The army in general to also benefit from a contrasting color somewhere to really make it pop. Perhaps some green lights/details somewhere?

Oh and imo don't mind realism. This is a universe where most factions run around in bright colored armor and the more important you are the less likely you are to wear a helmet. I'd rather say paint what you feel looks good.

Thanks for the speedy advice guys!

There is a wash, I'm just worse at taking photo's than I am painting

I like the ideas of customisation from the crews and the battle damage/transfers.
I just worry (worry about these things waay more than normal) that if I add camo/accent colours to the tanks, they still won't match the infantry.
Maybe a red/ grey camo and repaint everyone's trousers grey?

Siegecrafter wrote:
Thanks for the speedy advice guys!

There is a wash, I'm just worse at taking photo's than I am painting

Ah, yes. Flash photography tends to wash out (heh) any washes and details.
There was a really good guide on how to take good miniature pictures without any fancy gear somewhere here on dakka but it's been a while since I looked for it.

Siegecrafter wrote:


I like the ideas of customisation from the crews and the battle damage/transfers.
I just worry (worry about these things waay more than normal) that if I add camo/accent colours to the tanks, they still won't match the infantry.
Maybe a red/ grey camo and repaint everyone's trousers grey?

I'd say keep the infantry as they are now. Imo they can get very "messy" if you start adding more colors to the cloth and stuff. I'd say that if you make sure that you keep the main color of the tanks etc. red and only have smaller segments of another color in the camo it still should look uniform.

Or you could try what Ratius suggested and make all the small details on the tank pop.

If you for example look at this tank while it still looks pretty plain the details make it pop a bit more imo. (Sorry for the self promotion, just trying to help out.) While it's blue and not red it's really simple to achieve. Basecoat. Wash everywhere you want shadows and then redo the basecoat where there shouldn't be shadows. And then just finally an edge highlight on all the edges and rivets etc. If you want you could also replace some of the red (blue in my case, imagine my tank is red xD) with gold and do the same for the gold.



If you then add some decals and crew customization it could look really good. You could also use leftover bits like bags and weapons and stuff to make it look like a real workhorse of the army that's not only used for combat but also to carry gear along with the troops. Or just extra fuel and ammo/spare parts.

Perfect, thank you!