Prepping, Painting, and Finishing our 'Start Collecting!' set of Cadian Imperial Guard Miniatures

In which we finish a set of Start Collecting! Astra Militarum Warhammer 40,000 by Games Workshop...

Model Prep

Every new army starts with a box of fresh minis. Pictured are sprues from the set plus a precision hobby knife, and plastic frame cutter.  Not pictured, but often helpful are precision side cutters.

The models all need to be cut from their sprues and have their mold lines carefully trimmed.

Assembly

Once cleaned, we assembled the models with gap filling CA plus accelerator. The infantry (photo below) were immediately mounted to the original bases to make painting easier.

We assembled the tank in a similar fashion, but we did leave the tank treads on the sprue to make painting them easier. The treads will be glued to the tank later in the process.

Priming

Mounting your models to a spray strip with masking tape will make spraying the models from all directions at the same time easier... and that's how we did it. We used good 'ol flat spray paint in camouflage colors from a local hardware store.

Ink Wash

With the models primed in the basic color, we went over each one with Army Painter Strong Tone to pick out all the details on the models. A heavy wash job will make sure the ink gets into all the detail. (see brush options)

Camo Color

Once the ink washes were dry, we chose compatible colors from the Army Painter paint line and game them a heavy dry brushing to cover all the flat areas. On your own models, making an effort to stay out of the small panel lines and finer detail at this step of the process will pay off later. After dry brushing with tan, we painted all the green parts of the infantry, and added camo areas to the tank. Once dry, we washed the green areas with Military Shader ink.

Edge Highlighting, Skin, and Commissar

We picked out the edges of the armor with a lighter green to define their shapes a bit better. Once done with that, we painted all the exposed skin areas of the figures with a base of light skin tone, then washed with Flesh Wash ink. Once dry, we highlighted skin with a lighter shade of skin tone.

At the same time, we also tackled the character model... the Commissar. We ink-washed dark tone over the grey until it darkened to almost black. Once dry, we picked out details in the base colors, washed with ink in complementary colors, then highlighted the final color. Lastly, we picked out other details and rivets... and that completed the Commissar.

Tank Highlighting, Tracks

We gave the green camo areas a lightly watered down wash of green tone. We followed this up with a dry brush of the base color, then a pale version of the color.

We also did the same pale dry brush of the tan areas. Finally, we dry brushed the whole model with light grey, only hitting the corners and edges.

With the tank hull and turret done, we moved on to finishing the tank tracks. We kept these separate to make painting easier and the final model cleaner.

First, we washed the tracks with Dark Tone ink to darken them up, then dry brushed with Plate Metal metallic. Next, we washed the tracks with a 50/50 watered down mix of Dry Rust paint. Once dry, we did a final dry brushing of Shining Silver to pick out the edges.

Basing

With the tank finished, we painted the bases brown, textured them with craft sand, gave the dry sand a wash of Strong Tone, and finally a dry brush of Skeleton Bone.

The bases were now ready for flocking.

Flocking and Tufts

Using thick super glue, we hit each base in three spots, sprinkled Field Grass static flock onto the glue, then flipped the models upside down and shook off the excess flock.

Finished!

How have your own painting and finishing adventures gone?