Imperial Guard Painting Scheme

[DigitalNinja]

Hi! This is my first post and I need some advice.

I had a Imperial Guard Army in the past and it went no where fast.
So I said, "Lets sell it and make some money." So thats what I did.
But now I'm missing it and want to get back into it. So I'm playing to go heavy infantry with this one. For my first trip out I'm planning to get:
1 commander with a heavy bolter team

60 men consisting of 3 squads. one will be to take out tanks and be equiped with lascannons and the other will be for troops equiped with autocannons. And for heavy support (I really like basilisks) is going to be 3 Bassies with indirect fire!

Problem is I don't really know what to paint them... I don't wanna do Cadia because a lot of people have that. So if you guys could give me ideas... I was thinking like city camo or desert or ice cammo stuff... So if you guys could give me a paint scheme and tell me what colors and I'll see what I like best! Thanks!

[slorak]

Before locking in a color scheme I would recommend deciding on a basing scheme and determine how much effort you will put in to painting them. for example if you went with an urban theme with possible camo - would you be willing to invest the extra time to do the camo pattern on all the units vs. going with a solid scheme.

My advise is to pick a primary color and find a matching neutral to go along with it. For example blue with bone as the secondary color. I would choose a scheme that is powerful to look at yet easy to brush on. limiting your pallete will help you achieve this.

Cheers,

-Mike

[DigitalNinja]

I ment full painting scheme with the base color, sorry for the miss information.

[slorak]

I know you were asking for color schemes. My point is that a more general suggestion or guideline would probably be best for you. People can suggest color combinations until they are blue in the face but they will never be you - what I mean by that is - you need to find a color combination and theme to go by that you will feel comfortable painting - otherwise you will end up painting a couple figures get tired of it and quit.

What colors do you like? If you had to pick one color to use what would it be?

Some colors that can tend to be hard to paint are: Red, white, Yellow, and even black.

If you are thinking about an artic theme soft blues and greys would probably be appropriate. Again how much time would you want to spend mixing colors. Vallejo model colors come in a whole plethora of shades - that might be a route to go away from the standard base colors.

I would pick one main color reds, greens, blues, etc.(the bulk of the figure should be this color) and then a secondary accent color in a neutral tone (greys, tans, browns, etc.) as they tend to look best together. You can add details in silver, gold, a leather color, etc.

Hope this helps more...

cheers,

-Mike

[MisterDutch]

The GW website has lots of examples for really cool guard color schems. Might wanna check it out.:yes:

[Commisarlestat]

The best way to go about painting guard is to look at the fluff of your army. What are they based on? What type of planet do they come from? where do they fight?

I tend to use a lot of historical reference to paint my guys as I base a lot of their fluff on history however there are other ways. One of my armies is from a frozen wasteland so Ive gone for blue cloth and lightening blue armour highlighted white.

The easiest way to do an army is to choose a simple scheme for the bg standard soldier (say 1 colour for the armour and one for the cloth) then add in a little extra for the elites with the same colours, I used the same armour and then changed the camo scheme to a splinter scheme.

You say heavy infantry for your theme, well perhaps look to artillery regiment style unifimrs (with those bassies)

Oh and on a side note have you got an army list up in the guard area as your numbers dont seem to quite add up 60 men in three squads is 20 men in a squad, when squads are ten men, and you avnt mentioned platoon commands. An idea of the list may help you decide the scheme aswell.

hope that helps

A

[RecklessFable]

I have a piece of chip board that I've primed and use to test different paint combinations. It has served me well over time. After I come up with a few that I like, I try them on test models.

Or you could just use the GW Cadian Painter tool thingy

[=][= Defib =][=]

iused cadians as ist's in my inquistior army and i mostly played cities of death...i found that black as the main color and blached bone for the armor is a good urban scheme...add some codex grey/skull white highlights and your squads qould look pretty good...i also will admit it really donsnt look that impressive on tanks though

[silver_scout]

im going to agree whole heartedly with slorak here, its not a colour set you should be looking for, but rather colours that are easy on the eye (goodbye hot pinks, fluros and bad moon yellow... *twitch*, i really hate that colour), are easy to paint, and depending on how much time you intend to spend on a single figure - how many layers and shades you intend to use.

so, my advice is:

Pick a colour, then either pick a contrasting colour, or a darker or lighter shade of your colour.
eg:
bleached bone/snakebite leather
scab red/zombie flesh (yay, i use this one)
white/grey
white/scab red (my marines)
catachan green/dark angels green

then decide how your going to detail them, wether its silver, gold, black, purple, or wtv. something that will show off the rest of your paint scheme. generally you would want to pick a colour that will stand out and draw attention to the detail, so using a colour thats going to fade into the rest of the area isnt a very good choice (i.e. silver edging on white armour, doesnt always work)

another choice you should then make is wether you want your armour plates to be glossy or matte. for example, the catachan/dark angles scheme blends together quite easily, so would need a definite edge, or the armour plates would need gloss to make it stand out that little bit more.

hope that helps

~Silver

oh, and by the way, welcome to LO

[thantos]

I, of course, used a tried a true method for picking a uniform color. I went for what was cheap! (No seriously its true, in fact my old alma mater acutally changed their school colors for that reason). As a result all my guard wear olive fatigues with grey flack vests and black helmets since I picked up large bottles was able to get a bunch of 60 ml bottles for less than 2 dollar USD on clearance.