Imperial Fist Contemptor - Part II

Yellow!

Yellow is an interesting colour. I have experiments on Imperial Fist models from before, and while they worked out well enough I wanted to try the approach of filtering yellow on top of other paints to see what I could make of it.

It did not work.

To look at why, first consider that it's rare to get "pure" colours - pure yellow, red, blue. Some colours are very close (Mephiston Red for example is very red, without too much deviation in the direction of purple or orange), but yellow pigments are seemingly not the best at this. Phallanx Yellow is actually closer to "bright yellow with a hint of green". Averland Sunset is a "dull yellow with a hint of orange".

The idea was to undercoat with red, then zenithal highlight with white, and then cover with Phallanx Yellow. The red areas would turn more orange, the white would give a brighter yellow for highlights. I strongly suspect a strong pink undercoat would have worked better, pulling the result further into orange rather than just the weak yellow it turned out as. The highlights worked ok, but really stood out as shifting more towards green.

The latter issue I could work with: I wanted the upper surfaces to be hinted at from sky reflections, which might give that subtle yellow colour shift, and the ground shadows and reflections being warmer tones and giving more of an orange. I decided to go with that and try add more depth by using Angron Red (Clear), but made the double mistake of not waiting for previous layers to dry first, and applying it too heavily. The result was far more fluid than I intended and pooled improperly on the model.

At this point I could simply have stripped the model of paint entirely and started again, but I rolled with it and decided to see if I could recover the painting with a brush and weathering. Firstly I mashed Averland Sunset into select areas - and yes, mash is the correct verb to use. It wasn't drybrushing, it was more like putting some paint on and then mashing the paintbrush around to kind of smear the colour out. If done quickly enough, and occasionally mixed with Phallanx Yellow, then actually it's a very fast approach at blending. The trick really is to use a heavy hand and move fast - don't feather the paint, smear it like butter instead. Copious amounts of this restored some kind of yellow gradient to the overall miniature, covered up some of the worst mistakes, and was just enough to work with.

Next steps are weathering, something I'm not that good at. I don't normally do weathering, but the large panels with hard edges lends itself nicely on these dreadnoughts. Stormvermin Fur, some black, and some edging of Dorn Yellow or Phalanx Yellow gives plenty of scratches on the armour, hides more mistakes, and still fits with the feel of Imperial Fists.

Decals have been added to further give visual interest, but I didn't varnish over the surfaces first. The decal softener I used therefore reactivated some of the paint (the Angron Red clear in particular) and messed up more areas. Back to weathering to fix that. One decal even has a pink tint to it in the white areas, which again will need to be fixed later on. I've done the decals now (or at least most of them) so that weathering is applied over the top of them, helping to further incorporate their design into the rest of the model.

Next time I think I'll just go with the more traditional base / layer / highlight / edge highlight when airbrushing Imperial Fists!

I haven't rushed to coat the model in a varnish yet, which is typically my next step before applying shades / panel lining, explicitly so that I could do the weathering. I've noticed that airbrush paints (or at least the Air range from Citadel) rub off easily, especially with a stiff bristled brush. This isn't the best for handling models, but when adding realistic weathering then it's actually very useful - I simply attack with a suitably old brush and the result guides where to paint scratches, dints, and dents. It gives a very natural result because it is natural - it's a result of normal wear and tear.

I'm confident that the model has now been recovered enough that I have a solid base to work from. It's by no means anywhere near finished, but I can at least start to visualise better what it will look like.

-- silly painter