Who would’ve thought it would be so difficult to just paint green?

There’s something about the Horus Heresy paint schemes that just stand out against their 40k counterparts. I mean yes 40k Salamanders are a lot brighter and more saturated but the gritty, battle worn realism of Heresy just speaks to me.

Any how today I painted up a test miniature. It’s not complete I wanted to focus solely on the armour. I think I have it where I want.

I wanted to keep the paint list as small as possible so the scheme would be easy to repeat across a whole army. With just seven paints (eight if you count the primer), I think it does the job nicely.

I started with a black primer, then used white ink through the airbrush to pick out the highlights. From there, I built up thin layers of Vallejo Model Air Light Green Chromate, stopping just short of full coverage so the shadows stayed a little darker.

Once that was down, I slowly mixed in some Brilliant Yellow ink to brighten the green. This was sprayed in a very subtle, zenithal-style highlight — nothing too heavy, just enough to lift the upper areas.

At that point I moved on to battle damage, using a brush and Vallejo Flat Brown to chip exposed edges and larger panels.

To finish everything off, I applied an all-over wash of MIG Neutral Brown panel liner. After letting it dry slightly, I wiped away the excess. Finally, I used MIG Black Night in the deepest recesses to really punch up the shadows.

I really like how it’s turned out. For rank-and-file models it works perfectly, but I think adding a few extra highlights and details would go a long way in helping characters and centrepiece models stand out.

Tomorrow should be a productive day hopefully I can get a full squad up to this point!