Showcase: Female Viridian Sniper

Just a quick post tonight as it's been a while since I posted anything. Here's another of my Imperial Guard figures, this one being a Viridian Sniper from Urban Mammoth. Their Viridians make great Imperial Guard although I think they look more like veterans than ordinary guardsmen. (I do have some GW figures in this army, honest!)

Viridian Sniper

Anyhow, I painted this some years back and did it as a bit of a study in painting different greens. It was quite fun to do and I was pleased with the results. The warm skin tones and the red lenses contrast with the cooler green colours which I think is what makes the paint job work. Picking a good colour scheme is half the battle in painting I think. 

Hmm, one day I'll actually have to finish the base and re-photograph it better. :-)

Showcase: Hasslefree's Mckenzie (a) and Grant

So here are couple more figures from my collection... After painting Debra I decided to add a couple more figures to my Cadian Imperial Guard.  Grant was one of the earliest figures from Hasslefree. I've often thought he would make great Sly Marbo but I've never gotten around to fielding him as that. Mckenzie I've always figured for a driver who's gotten out of her vehicle and is about to defend herself!  There is, by the way, another version of Mckenzie with a rifle which I'll post in the future.

Two soldiers show the power of drybrushing.

The painting on both figures was quite straightforward as they're basically just three colours. Together they show off a couple of simple drybrushing techniques quite well.  Drybrushing is when you wipe of most of the paint from your brush until there's almost nothing left. The brush should basically be dry rather than wet, hence the name of the technique. This can be a bit hard on brushes so either use an old brush, a cheap brush or a purpose made drybrush!

I painted Mckenzie's fatigues brown, probably Graveyard Earth by the look of them, and her armour and accessories in Olive Drab. I then drybrushed all of them with Khaki with an old standard size brush. It's a quick and easy way to give them some texture and highlighting.

You get a lot of bald, tough guy miniatures - not least of which are all the Space Marine sergeants I've ever met!  Whilst there's nothing wrong with that, it isn't really hard to give a figure buzz cut. Honest! I did Grant's hair and stubble by dry brushing Scorched Brown lightly onto his head. Obviously you need to use a small brush for something like this! So long as you do it gently and build it up gradually it's not hard though. When you're painting it's always easier to add more than to take off excess paint.  So long as you keep some flesh tone on your palette you can always go back and touch up the skin afterwards if you need to.  Cleaning up mistakes is something every painter does - including the pros!

Showcase: Hasslefree's Debra, Female Sci-Fi Trooper

Back in the days of fourth edition Warhammer 40k I was a devoted Imperial Guard player. Most of my collection was Valhallans, which I'll have to post pictures of sometime just to show what you can paint with a sponge! But, like everyone else I toyed with different colour schemes and army lists and at one time thought about doing some Cadians.   At the time I had just discovered Hasslefree miniatures and their fantastic modern day range.  I think Debra was their only sci-fi mini at the time.  I bought her as I thought she'd make a good female Cadian and painted her up to test out the colour scheme.


In terms of painting the figure was quite straightforward as it's mostly two colours. I started with a black undercoat since I wanted a subdued, natural look. After base coating with Vallejo olive drab and khaki it was mainly a case of using Games Workshop washes to do the shading and dry brushing almost everything to put on some highlights.

Since it was a test piece I spent a bit more time on the base than usual. I chose one of the lipped ones as they give you more room to work and painted part of it to look like swamp water. A coat of gloss varnish gave it a wet look. The rest of it got the usual brown earth paint job and static grass finish.

I spent a bit of extra effort on the face and it came out quite well. One if the eyes is wrong if you look at the close up but it isn't noticeable from a distance. The red lips and helmet light add a bit of colour to model.

I never did do a proper Cadian army in the end but I liked the colour scheme a lot; olive drab and khaki is simple to do and gives sci-fi soldiers a more realistic look. In fact I liked it so much that I continued to paint up the occasional trooper here and there, so watch this space for the rest of the squad..