Painting Yellow... The Gritty Imperial Fists Way!

Just how do you get the perfect yellow? Back in the old days it was hard to master and even harder to get an entire army looking the same. Well thanks to GW and their foundation paints and washes things have become a tad easier of late. Here is my recipe for getting what I like to call 'Gritty Imperial Fists Yellow'.

It is -
1) black undercoat.
2) 1 coat of dheneb stone.
3) 1 watered down coat of sunburst yellow.
4) 1 heavy wash of gryphonne sepia.
5) 1 watered down coat of sunburst yellow.
6) first highlights of 70/30 sunburst yellow and dheneb stone.
7) second highlights of 50/50 sunburst yellow and dheneb stone (not shown in pics).

It actually looks better in the flesh and doesn't seem so thick and patchy. I think my photo skills need improving and I need a lightbox. Give it a go... it takes a while but it is better than the bright yellows I have seen.

If you want more pictures and examples then check out my post 'Who Watches the Watchers?' (April 2011)

Who Watches the Watchers?

Welcome to what will hopefully become my blog for the forseeable future. I plan to fire off all my random ideas, army lists and conversions online so keep watching.

Well I have a fair bit of  free time on my hands this evening as I don't want to watch re-runs of the royal wedding (who does?) so I think I will start my first post with a few pictures of what I have been working on lately... Imperial Fists. Now they were going to be part of a 1750 point army I was taking to Cardiff Carnage 2011, but I changed my mind after I snapped up some Deathwing stuff on ebay. So now I guess they will become part of my selection of kill teams. Honestly I love kill team games, they are so refreshing compared to 5th edition and it means I only need 200 points of stuff painted at a time. That is just great as anyone who knows me will know just how slow a painter I am.

Still that is set to change as I have an army to finish ready for the end of August, and the plague wouldn't stop me from making it to the tournie without a fully painted army! Ok, ok maybe the plague would stop me, but my ever-growing pile of ironing won't.

So anyway on with the pictures. They are all pretty much work in process shots of getting the right yellow from a black undercoat. I'm not totally convinced, but I don't like the brilliant yellow that some Imperial Fists get painted.

Next up are a few shots of a Dark Eldar hellion I was messing around with one day. Nothing special but I was quite impressed with dheneb stone and the purple wash from GW as they really help when it comes to painting DE flesh tones. I think I started with a dark flesh base coat, followed by a layer of dheneb stone, a purple wash and then highlighting with more dheneb stone and skull white.

So that's all for now.

Next time I will talk more about my future project... Dark Angels.