Grimdark Iron Hands Questions

[Aothaine]

Hey family! I need some help. I'm finally at a job where I make enough money to actually build an army and start attending events. I know I want to go with Iron Hands and I will be using the Primaris line. 

 

So, here are my questions. I have been watching a bunch of different Grimdark painting guides on Youtube and I am starting to get the hang of what is required for the look. It looks like Grimdark paint jobs end up using some oil washes to really bring out the model.

 

Example:

 

Source: Richard Gray

 

 

Now I know this is blue for Ultramarines but Richard Gray used Burnt Sienna and Burnt Umber and mixed them for the oil wash on this model and I absolutely love how it turned out. Will this combination work on the black of Iron Hands?

 

Does anyone have any good youtube video recommendations on learning out to Grimdark with Black and Metal? I just found Grimdark Compendium and plan on watching as many of their videos as possible so I'm ready to go when I start painting in a few weeks. 

 

I really appreciate all the help anyone can give. Really looking forward to finally getting a force on the table and to hopefully meeting some of you folks if you end up going to LVO2023. 

[N1SB]

Hi Brother Aothaine. So I played Iron Hands during Horus Heresy 1.0, and swore I'd never paint black power armour again...a vow I've broken time and again, to the point I rarely paint Marines that aren't in black. It's ridiculous. But since then, I've tried different things, even Contrast paints like people suggest, but this is my favourite way:

It's my favourite way, because it's fast, and when you have to deal with an army, you want to do it fast to get to the tabletop.

Basecoat a Matte Black. Drybrush with a Teal, like Dark Reaper Turquoise. Then this is Paint Heresy, I drybrush Stormhost Silver. This took 1 or 2 nights.

These aren't Iron Hands, these are models I used for Deathwatch for a previous edition of Kill Team, but similar principals. Spedpaint to be ready for tabletop.

[Noserenda]

Broaden your search to look into washes and weathering more generally, thats all "grimdark" is with a bit of pretension but those techniques and very widely used especially in scale modelling circles or terrain building especially and you will find a plethora of guides.

[Aothaine]

Thank you both! I definitely like oil washes. From what I have seen so far you put broad highlights and paint your base coats down, add some damage marks then oil wash. After the wash you matte varnish and then highlight and touch ups.

 

Richard Gray did a easy gray blend on the gun before the wash and it turns out amazing! The gun was so simple! Pretty sure I will be using his black Templar video as a guide as well. If anyone else has any ideas please share. Just getting into oil based washes and grimdark. This is going to be fun!

[Closet Skeleton]

There is no such thing as a 'Grimdark style'.

 

The main popularisor of the term on this forum was neonmole's GrimDark Blood Angels and that was just a regular air brush style with dark tones.

 

Grimdark Compendium on youtube is a weathering effects heavy tutorial channel operated by a group that also uses the name Zatcaskagoon Miniatures. Most of its videos are from after neonmole used the term with their even earlier ones also focusing on weathering but not under a named style.

 

Grimdark Australia is a much more recent channel that is clearly inspired more by Zatcaskagoon Miniatures than neonmole but doesn't have that focus on weathering effects. Mostly he uses airbrushing and basic highlighted sponge weathering of the type you'd get from a GW tutorial. For washes he used an AK Interactive enamel wash rather than an oil one.

 

Trovarion miniatures has a oil and enamel free

tutorial with a much brighter and orangier colour scheme closer to a classic BA one.

but he doesn't really do batch/speed painting.

 

Mostly 'Grimdark style' just seems to be an attempt to balance high tonal contract competition painting with batch painting. That or its just Blanchitsu with the characterful conversions swapped out so it could be marketed to the social media 'vibes generation'. Painters just seem to use skills and techniques they're already familiar with to aim at a certain 'mood' more than a unified 'style'.

 

Ironically the term "Grim Darkness of the Far Future" comes from 2nd edition where everything was brightly coloured while most of the nostalgia so called Grimdark styles attempt to capture is more 3rd edition. The casual use of the term on the internet robbed it of any of the 'black humour and rediculous exageration' that characterised 40k to just be any over the top edgy setting/story.

 

Personally I tend to be pretty skeptical of how overly dark mood based schemes actually work in armies. For Inquisitor warbands or instagram photos they look okay but when I see a full army of darkly painted miniatures laid for for best army voting at a tournament they just tend to be a visual mess. That can be fixed with a contrasting themed display board but readability doesn't scale linearly. A bunch of uninteresting troops gathered around 1-3 centerpiece models can be a more visually effective army than a bunch of troopers who could each be a tutorial video thumbnail.

[Imren]

Check this out if you want to do something not just black:

 

[Brother Carpenter]

I searched for grimdark black templars and found a few really good tutorials. I thought Duncan Rhodes also has one on his youtube channel.

I find the grimdark style fasterand better looking than my older clean style.

Good luck searching and experimenting.

[Xenith]

I think firstly you need to define what you mean by 'Grimdark'.

 

Do you just mean dark colour pallette, or almost sepia-scale, like blanchitsu, or really heavily weathered, or really ornately painted and heralded like 2nd ed models?

 

Generally, I think the 'grimdark' aspect would be portrayed through the weathering, which can be readily achieves through drybrushing, pigments and washes. 

Edited May 9, 2022 by Xenith