Horus Heresy - Shattered Legion - Salamander Scheme #1

The following post details the colours used for the core areas of the Salamanders Legionnaires. I'll cover the colours used for the details (flesh, flames etc..) in a further post. Due to real life I ran out of time for those stages...

Likewise this post will likely be updated as I tweak things further.

So I originally planned on doing a step by step this week, after all I had the scheme laid out pretty solidly in my mind. Needless to say, things didn't quite go according to plan the first time round. (Either me being too keen with the glazing or some other painting faux pas)

Instead what I have is a model with which I practised a few techniques and also figured out the just how much I needed to tweak said scheme (it turns out, not a lot).

The bulk of the work will be done with the airbrush. For basecoat and undercoat, I have a generic cheap thing of which I don't even know the needle size but it blasts out the paint so it's all good for me. For detail work I have just got myself an Infinity CRPlus with 1.5mm needle. This should help me to make quick work of shoulder pads, faces and the lightest highlight colour on the armour.

Cheap and Cheerful

Oooo shiny...

Originally I was going to give the models a zenithal white spray of primer. I've also nixed this idea for now. I am aiming for an element of realism to these models and from my test piece I am pretty sure a similar effect can be obtained using just my main colours. I also don't want the effect to be to extreme either.

Paints

This scheme uses a number of different ranges. To keep things fairly simple all paints generally follow a theme:

• If it is in the airbrush use an airbrush specific paint (with one exception).
• For brushes, anything goes. 

The scheme itself is based around the Forgeworld scheme. I replaced the Tamiya Green with the Gunship green as I wanted something that I could shoot through the airbrush without any mixing/thinning. Unfortunately I couldn't find a good substitute for the Lorien Green so decided to stick with it.

Green Armour

Colour	Layer	Applied With	Brand
Dark Green	Basecoat	Airbrush	Vallejo Model Air
Gunship Green	Basecoat	Airbrush	Vallejo Model Air
Lorien Green	Directional Highlight	Airbrush	Citadel Layer Paint
Straken Green	Edge Highlight	Brush	Citadel Layer Paint
Biel Tan Green	Wash	Brush	Citadel Wash
Agrax Earthshade	Wash	Brush	Citadel Wash
Waywatcher Green	Glaze	Brush	Citadel Glaze
Dryad Bark	Battle Damage	Sponge	Citadel Base Paint

Green Armour - further dirt and battle damage will be added to the actual models.

Black Armour

Colour	Layer	Applied With	Brand
Dark Blue Grey	Basecoat	Airbrush	Vallejo Model Air
Dark Sea Green	Directional Highlight	Airbrush	Vallejo Model Air
Medium Sea Grey	Directional Highlight	Airbrush	Vallejo Model Air
Black	Shade	Airbrush	Vallejo Model Air
Medium Sea Grey	Edge Highlight	Brush	Vallejo Model Air

Gold Detail

Colour	Layer	Applied With	Brand
Rhinox Hide	Basecoat	Brush	Citadel Base Paint
Viking Gold	Basecoat	Brush	Scalecolor
Dwarven Gold	Basecoat	Brush	Scalecolor
Dwarven Gold / Speed Metal	Edge Highlight	Brush	Scalecolor
Agrax Earthshade	Wash	Brush	Citadel Wash

Silver/Metal Detail

Colour	Layer	Applied With	Brand
Black	Basecoat	Brush	Vallejo Model Air
Black Metal	Basecoat	Brush	Scalecolor
Heavy Metal	Basecoat	Brush	Scalecolor
Speed Metal	Edge Highlight	Brush	Scalecolor
Nuln Oil	Wash	Brush	Citadel Wash

Metal, Gold and Black(ish) areas

These core four make up the bulk of the model so I can get on with this whilst working out how to paint some of the other areas. They should also provide a good base for the Iron Hands models in the force, which should make the two legions tie together quite nicely.

Test Model - note the subtle difference in green as I played with the colours

Once I crack on with the models properly I'll try and pop up a stage by stage as originally intended.