Iron Warriors Paint Scheme

[A D-B]

Just a short question, when Search turned up very little in the way of answers.

 

The stereotype for Iron Warrior armies is that they're very easy to paint, and that holds at least a little appeal for me. But even though I'm mediocre (at best) right now, I'd like to slowly get better, and if I throw some Iron Warriors squads in my planned army, I'm worried I'll get nothing in the way of progress done, because they're just too simple.

 

Or are they? See, I don't really know. That's why I'm asking. They seem simple on the surface, but has anyone seen any armies - or do they paint them themselves - with a technique that's more than: Prime Black, Boltgun Metal, highlight Mithril Silver? Does anyone bother with company markings or squad signifiers?

 

Non-metallic metals might be a bit out of my skill range, but I'm pretty much willing to try anything at this stage. There's got to be more out there than my own lame first steps; they look neat, but very plain.

 

Thanks in advance.

[DaemonPrinceDargor]

This is how i paint my Iron Warriors(the few that i have,the rest of the army is Black Legion):

 

Undercoat Black

Chainmail,this covers the entire model except the inside of the shoulder pads

Wash with Devlan Mud

Wash with Badab Black

Touch up the flat and high areas of the armour with Chainmail

Highlight with Mithril Silver

Drwarf bronze for the trimming

Wash that with Devlan Mud

Touch up with Vallejo Brass

Fine highlights with 50/50 Vallejo Brass and Mithril

Glaze the entire model with very very thinned Badab Black to tie the highlights together and tone down the Mithril a bit.

Highlight any black areas with codex grey and fine highlights with fortress grey.

 

The eyes are painted mordian blue,highlight with mordian blue and white(50/50) and a dot of white added to the back of the eye.

 

For Chevrons i use Iyanden Darksun,glaze it with watered down Snakebite leather and highlight it with Iyanden Darksun and White(again 50/50).

 

I use plain white for squad and company markings using roman numerals but written in a modern,industrial way.For the Legion icon you can either use the metal GW ones or the tranfer that comes with the minis(the latter is a pain to get it to look right).

 

This sounds sooo time consuming but its actually not.It involves a lot of washing and glazing that is done very quickly.I think it works out nice and is different than the usual "drybrush boltgun metal,highlight mithril".I will put up a pic for you sometime tomorrow.

 

 

Hope it helps you.

 

Cheers!

[Dan The Deamon]

I would paint them the way you would paint a red, or blue non metallic color. Granted I haven't painted one in a couple of years, but if you started with a flack black and went up through chardon granite, maybe to codex or fortress grey you would get the iron paint look. After that I would concentrate on placing badaab black or delvan mud in some cracks, recesses, and in some trim for wear and dirt. If you're up for battle damage and some paint chipping then you could get your boltgun metal/chainmail in there along the edges or torn up armor.

 

If I remember correctly the Iron Warriors still run around in Grand Companies (some) so you've got some room to make up your own squad or company markings that really won't interfere with anything written or established.

[Iron-Daemon Forge]

My own Iron Warriors where painted useing the old GW inks being

 

- Dry Brush Bolt Gun metal with a tank brush

- Brown Ink wash

- Cheastnut Ink wash

- Red dry brush with Bolt Gun metal with tank brush

- Highlighted with Mithril Silver, but I would also have line of the silver going up the leg/arm where the light would hit this to make it stand out like real metal.

 

While the Gold was

- Dwarf Bronze

- Brown Ink

- Purple wash (what ever the name of the new wash is).

 

Then the rest was detail.

 

However since Inks are no longer sold by GW/replace with the new wash I would do

 

Bolt Gun Metal dry brush

wash with Badab Black

Highlight with Mithril Silver like the above

 

I would not try None Metalic metal if you never done it before. With NMM it would maybe be best trying it on a fair few spare models first. It dose look cool, but it a bit hit & miss if you never try it before & last thing you want to do is spend all that time, only for it to not work out, re-paint & find most of the models detail are block due to the paints.

But as said use any spare models, or there is alway those GW clip together models which are pretty cheap money wise.

 

Does anyone bother with company markings or squad signifiers?

 

I alway keep squad marking on my models/armies. My Iron Warriors have a squad number on there right shoulder pads, on the botte corner of my banner (Icon of Glory) & on the right hand side of the tank. It just look cool, help me & my oppents out, just add a bit more to the army/unit. Whie in general I just tend to use the IW metal shoulder pads & Mark of Chaos Undivided in my own army.

 

If I remember correctly the Iron Warriors still run around in Grand Companies (some) so you've got some room to make up your own squad or company markings that really won't interfere with anything written or established.

 

Yep we still have Grand Company as well as warbands to single units. Since during the Great Crusade the IWs where split up to garrison some of the worlds they had return to the Imperial.

Apoclypse rule book 171 talk of a exile IW warsmith. Then you have the likes of Honsou stories from Black Library.

 

IP

[Rain]

Honestly the whole "Iron Warriors are easy to paint" thing is a bit of a myth perpetuated by the fact that an edition ago their good rules drove a lot of people who didn't care about how the army looks but only how it plays to play them. I am currently mucking about with some Death Guard, and just finished a test model that looks quite good if I do say so myself, and it was in my opinion easier to do than a good Iron Warrior. Iron Warriors require both freehand and the dreaded building to a yellow from a black undercoat to do hazard stripes, and the IW symbol is a lot harder to freehand than three red dots and some arrows.

 

Nowadays it's mostly a mantra of people suffering from unwarranted self-importance, and hilariously enough most of these tend to field armies garbed in the colors of the venerable Primer Legion with maybe one squad painted to a pretty "meh" standard in the colors of some "hard to paint" chapter. Also I really don't understand why people think metallics are "easy". Again, after painting the nurgle guy using browns, greens, and off whites, I found it a lot more forgiving, and far easier to do realistic looking highlights (Hell they practically do themselves), in my opinion the hardest colors to highlight properly are dark silver and black.

 

The only other thing is that Iron Warriors can be painted entirely with drybrushing, meaning that it's not as imperative to thin your paint as drybrushing by nature reduces the amount of paint per layer that goes on a model, but that's only one extra step, and you could teach a blind orangutan to mix some water in before putting the paint on your model, it doesn't exactly separate a fingerpainting preschooler from Michelangelo.

 

Here's some of mine with my always dependable cellphone cam, this time I put them on a white background so the pic is a bit clearer

 

http://i242.photobucket.com/albums/ff271/Allelsewastaken/Mobile%20Uploads/0_1-10.jpg

[isilvra]

• Tend to do my with boltgun metal over chaos black
  
• Highlight with chainmail
  
• Wash with mix of slightly watered down badab black and devlan mud. Repeat again to taste.
  
• Very thin wash of Baal red or Leviathan purple gives the armor a slight tinge
  

 

If I could just get the chevrons right I'd be good to go. Anyone have any ideas on those?

[A D-B]

Thanks for this, guys. I know it was a pretty basic issue, but I appreciate the time you took to deal with it.

[Brother_Kaelgrim]

Depending on what you are going for, a variant on the Viva Metallica method might also work for you. I'm a fairly new painter my self and have found the technique oh so easy to pick up.

 

I would say for the silver color, just Mithril silver and then a watered down asurmen blue or devlan mud wash (depending on the metal look you are going for) as for yellow, if you prime in say a grey color then I don't think it should be too bad, I honestly would use gold then yellow over it (as metallics seem to cover other colors alot easier)

 

I'm not too familiar with the Iron Warriors scheme, but I hope that helps!

[IronWinds]

If I could just get the chevrons right I'd be good to go. Anyone have any ideas on those?

 

Black base. Outline where you want the chevrons using white but put it on lightly, your goal should be the just slwoly drag the brush across making a straight line. If you like the outline you get fill it in with white. Working with white is easy because if you make a mistake black takes care of it easily. Once you have your chevrons done in a light white, put another coat of white on it. Then go in with the yellow. If you did the white part right you'll only need one light coat of yellow... and the lighter the better. Because if you only use a little yellow and you go outside the lines(onto the black) it doesn't even show and is a very easy fix.

 

To highlight your yellow stripes put a very thin white line on one side of a yellow stripe, and a very then codex grey line on the other side of you yellow stripe.

 

Rust spots/tears on Chevroned areas: These are easy to do and amazing. Take an area you have painted chevrons on... chainswords are the best place to experiment because it looks best here anyways. Apply tin bitz to the area you want the paint to be peeling away, make the edges look very jagged. Let dry, then come back and paint boltgun metal inside the tin bitz. Your goal is to cover the area but still have tin bitz showing around the edges, again make it look jagged. Finally paint silver over the boltgun metal and try to make sure the edges of the boltgun metal still show. This is easy and looks great.

 

 

My IWs.

Black bascoat. Lightly drybrush on boltgun metal. Then I follow that with lightly drybrushing on tin bitz. Highlight with mythril silver. Makes them look really dark and rustic. I've tried inks but I'm not a big fan.

[Brother Nihm]

If you haven't seen them then check out Chrono's stuff:

 

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/index.p...c=97263&hl=

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/index.p...t&p=1234228

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/index.p...t&p=1108810

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/index.p...t&p=1094303

 

Edit: his way of doing chevrons is outlined in one of the above topics.

[esinhorn]

Here is how I do it

The Iron Warriors Upgrade was used to make this model with a simple shortening of a melta-gun to make it compact

I primed it black because metallics look better over black

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f295/wilis516/Picture087-1.jpg

 

1)-Boltgun Metal for the armor plate,

-Shining Gold for the Trim

-Tau-Sept Ochre for any yellow

-I then gave a thinned wash of Badab Black wash

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f295/wilis516/Picture088-1.jpg

 

2)-2 coats Undiluted Badab Black wash,letting each coat dry fully before adding the next

-1st layer an undiluted 50/50 mix of Asurmen black and Badab Black

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f295/wilis516/Picture089-1.jpg

3)-Highlight the armor plate with Boltgun Metal

-Paint the yellows areas Iyanden Darksun and the stripes Chaos Black

-Give the armor another wash of Asurmen Blue/Badab Black

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f295/wilis516/Picture091-1.jpg

 

4)-Neaten up any stripes

-Shade Yellow with a few layers Delivn Mud wash

-Give the Gold Trim a wash of Devlin Mud

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f295/wilis516/Picture090-1.jpg

 

5)-Using Mithril Silver paint an outline of a skull

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f295/wilis516/Picture096-1.jpg

 

6)-Using a mix of Boltgun Metal and Chaos Black paith the eyes and lines for the mouth

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f295/wilis516/Picture095-1.jpg

 

7)-1 layer of Devlin Brown wash on the legs below the knees

-1 layer of watered down Graveyard Earth

-Devin Brown wash spoltched over the graveyard earth

-The end of the melta I used Scorched Brown and Chaos Black

-The old codex would let you use servo-arms I like to model them on mine

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f295/wilis516/Picture094-1.jpg

[sword brethren]

esinhorn has it down perfectly, not to many stripes, cold dark iron armour and gold trim.

 

as far as tanks go this is my hall of honour thread of my land raider

 

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/index.p...howtopic=202060

 

i think i havehow idid it on there if not andyou want to know ill post it on here

 

;)