Speed Painting IG Veterans

My Imperial Guard force is my longest standing army.  It was started back in 1999 with the Steel Legion boxed army that was released with the Armageddon campaign, and still consists of mostly all metal figures.  I have begun slowly adding in plastic minis between working on my other projects.  The main additions are the veteran squads which provide me with much needed melta fire, since a meltagun was never released for the Steel Legion line and I have no interest in converting some.  I chose to use the cadian plastics to represent them, but swapped out the heads for ones made by Pig Iron Productions that have gas masks.  I dislike the helmets on the stock cadian models.  They are much too large for their heads in my opinion, and the gas masks fit much better with the ash wastes theme of the Steel Legion.



As for painting I firmly believe that getting models finished and on the table is at least as important as a high quality paint job.  And since my Steel Legion force was painting more than 10 years ago, they are not really up to my current skill level.  I wanted a scheme that was similar to what I already had, without matching it exactly, that was also fast to finish.

Here is an example of how my Steel Legion infantry are painted:

And here is what I ended up with on the new models:

I'm pretty pleased with the comparison.  They are a little washed out in the picture however.  Still working on my photography skills.  As for the paint job, I got the whole squad finished on only 2 days.  Just a couple hours a day.  Color used were:

Cloth: Krylon grey primer with a wash of Badab Black
Armour: Dheneb Stone with a wash of Gryphonne Sepia
Boots, hats, and weapons: Chaos black with no highlights
Metals: Boltgun metal with a wash of Badab Black
Gas Masks: Scorched Brown
Skin: Tallarn Flesh with a wash of Ogryn Flesh

I made extensive use of washes and foundation paints to get a fast consistent finish on the whole squad.  And now to paint another 60 or so of them.  Maybe after I make some more progress on my Orks.