Legions Imperialis - Heavy Support Batteries

 

Teeny tiny troops.

Painting Legions Imperialis a certainly different to anything larger scale. The brutal lesson from these is: don't bother much with volumetric highlights on the smaller models. It's simply not worth it, not at this scale, for anything other than competitions or purely display purposes (box art, that kind of thing).

Here I wanted to try not using the airbrush, just because I didn't want to setup and later clean for such a minor amount of use. Instead I used a spray primer (Wraithbone) from the top and then Terradon Turquoise with a brush. It didn't work very nicely at all. The primer was hit & miss, the Contrast paint pooled badly, and I spent a little while fixing it up. In future I might as well just mix up a base coat for troops and evenly cover them with an airbrush - no Zenithal, or volumes, just even coverage. Later I can use thinned Black Legion to help define some of the model.

Most of the the rest is fairly straight forward: I used Sons of Horus and Lupercal Green to tidy up some mistakes, Black Legion for the black areas (it has very nice coverage, so I'm starting to favour it over other blacks for a base coat), and some minor edge highlights with Dawnstone (for black), and Gauss Blaster Green mixed down with Sons of Horus for the green. A little Troll Slayer Orange for lenses, which are barely visible at all, but do add a nice touch.

The metallics are kind of drybrushed in places, using an old an worn out small layer brush. This allows black to remain in the recessed areas, but the brighter silver defines the shape overall. Ironbreaker for select highlights on barrels, and Hashut Copper for a bit of visual interest in places (notably on the weapon platforms and left pauldron studs). 

The treads on the weapon platforms I didn't want to be just black, but neither did brighter dusty tones seem to fit with the bases. Instead I went for a 1:1 mix of Snakebite Leather and Agrax Earthshade and lightly shaded over them. Just enough to dirty them up a little, but not enough to make them look muddy.

Simple is key to these models I think. Basic colour blocks to define shapes, some shading, and minimal edge highlights to help pick out some details. I did try putting a basic Eye of Horus symbol on the shoulder pads, but at this scale it's not really visible. Instead it merely gives the impression of something being there, so I didn't even bother trying to be neat about it. I also clipped the little bump between the feet of the troops because I felt it would look nicer that way.

So that's it. Nice and simple - but sometimes simple can also be very difficult. It's a balancing act to make them look presentable and readable at scale, with too much effort, and focusing on what's important instead of getting lost in the details. I'll see if I can use some of these lessons on the next batch of models, which hopefully won't be too far away.

-- silly painter.