How to paint Iron Warriors Pretor (ENG)

In this short article, I will describe those painting recipes that I used when working on the limited edition praetor in the colors of the Iron Warriors Legion. I already described some of these recipes, others are published for the first time. On this miniature, I decided to experiment with  new paints, modifying old recipes for paints of other manufacturers. I hope this will show you that with colors you can and need to experiment, constantly changing and improving your style and technique.

Photos of the finished mini you can find here

Steel elements

I did the steel NMM with my "standard" scheme. Base - German cam. Black Brown (VMC) + a little bit of Andrea Blue (VMC). I made the highlights with a mixture of AB and white (1:3 approximately), and then - pure white.
Step by step guide about it you may see here

You can notice that in different parts of the miniature the NMM textures looks a bit different. Somewhere they are smoother, and somewhere - deliberately rough. This happened because on the surface, facing the light, I added more coarse textures to show that the armor had already been in combat many times. In addition, to increase the contrast and give a little more shine in the shadows, I stalked the shadows with a mixture of black and Smokey Ink (VGC). This is only my humble style preference.

Reds

In this miniature, I used three different schemes of painting red tones.

I made a brighter and more contrasting version based on the Pacific88 paints. As a base layer, I used a mixture of black and "Flesh Shade 2" (P88), which later hilighted to a pure Dark Vermillion (VMC). After that, I made the final highlights "Medium Red" (P88)

For a calmer reds, which I used on a tabard, the base was a mixture of black and Scarlet Red (VGC), also highlighted to a pure Dark Vermillion. In the second stage, I added a little Amarantha Red (VGC) and flashed it with Cadmium Skin (VGC)

 

Dark red came from combining the first two variants. The base was a mixture of black and "Flesh Shade 2", with the addition of a little Dark Vermillion in on e highlight layer. After that, the upper part of the diamonds pattern was highlighted by adding Cadmium Skin to the mixture, and the lower part - more Dark Vermillion.

Bronze Elements

To paint bronze on this miniature, I also experimented with the Pacific88 paints.
For the base layer I used a mixture of black and "dark red-brown" (P88), with the addition of a little "dark red-brown" of the first highlight layer. Later this mixture was highlighted to a pure "Brown" (P88).
At the next stage, a little bit of "Dark Tangerine" (P88) was added to the "Brown", after which the mix was highlighted to a pure "Pearl White" (P88).
If you don't have the Pacific88 paints, you may use Vallejo based recipe described here

Black 

For the basic mix I used Dark Sea Blue (VMC) and black. First, a bit of Dark Sea Blue was added to the base mix, after which I began to highlight the mixture with the addition of Iraqi Sand (VMC) to pure Iraqi Sand

Yellow-Black chevrons

The painting takes place in two stages. At the first stage it is necessary to do a underpainting. To do this, we will highlight the basic mixture of Armor Brown (VMA) and Scrofulous Brown (VGC) to pure Scrofulous Brown, and then to a mixture of Scrofulous Brown and Gold Brown VMC (1: 2). The purity and smoothness of the transitions for the underpainting is not particularly needed.

The second stage is to draw black stripes on top of our underpainting. And if the black is sufficiently diluted, then through the stripes it will be a little to look through the underpainting, giving a more worn appearance of the entire surface. After the strips, if desired, you can draw battle damage with pure Gold Brown and black.
The last step is multiple glazing with diluted Armor Brown to give a more worn look.