A selection of Primaris Imperial Fists

[Major_Gilbear]

A little earlier this year, I painted up a couple of small squads of Primaris for a friend's birthday, and they are in Imperial Fist colours as that's what he collects. The pix are not great unfortunately, but as these are not with me any more, I sadly can't re-take them. Anyway, hope you like them.

A combat squad of Hellblasters:



And a combat squad of Intercessors:

[Michi]

You managed to paint them in a wonderful yellow! Excellent paintjobs! 

[LouieN]

Excellent brush work. 

[MaleGriffin]

Magnificent brushwork! Yellow can be so hard to get right, but you nailed it! What technique did you use?

[Major_Gilbear]

Thank you for the kind comments.

Magnificent brushwork! Yellow can be so hard to get right, but you nailed it! What technique did you use?

Over an ivory undercoat, I blended some baby pink paint into the lower/shadowed areas. I then used a magenta thinned down quite a bit to carefully line in the deeper areas and panel lines. After this, I used an all-over wash of Citadel Contrast (1 part Flash Gitz, 2 parts Imperial Fist, 1 part mixing or Contrast medium), and then did some final small highlights in Vallejo Ice Yellow (first some subtle volume highlights, and then a second pass for edges and spots).

It sounds a bit complicated because I mixed the colours; but actually, it's pretty straightforward and quite forgiving to do, and it's not difficult at all to get consistent results.

A few things I learned doing these:

• This works just as well over a white undercoat as an ivory one. I prefer the ivory a bit more, as I can then use white to do some initial highlights before the yellow wash stage if I want.
• I started with Vallejo Xpress Color Magenta, but later on I also used P3 Magenta. If you have the really old Citadel Warlock Purple, that would work too - as does any other brand.
• If you add a tiny bit of magenta to white or ivory, you get a soft baby pink. The darker the pink, the darker the shading. It's really easy to make this too dark, and then it goes brown instead of a golden colour, so it's better to err on the side of paler pink.
• I mixed the Contrast paints, as after some inital tests I felt that Flash Gitz was was too pale on its own, and that Imperial Fists was too orange. However, you may find Imperial Fists, thinned a little, is enough on its own - especially if you used white basecoat rather then ivory.

Hope that helps, and if you paint any yellows yourself using this method, I'd love to hear how you get on!