Want to get your IV legion painted up but not sure where to start? Then pull up a pew my friend. 

 Following on from Ead’s army showcase, I asked him if he’d be so kind as to knock up a painting/weathering tutorial for Perturabo’s lot. His tanks look great, and given how popular both loyal and traitor Iron Warriors are, this is gonna come in useful for a whole load of folk.

So paint recipes: The armour is a fairly light drybrush of Boltgun Metal heavily washed with Badab Black to get a nice dark basecoat, with a slightly heavier drybrush of Runefang/Mithril Silver over the top to pick out the details. That’s where the majority of the ‘pitted and battered’ effect comes from.

For the hazard stripes, I used masking tape to block out areas to be striped, before doing the drybrush stage above. I then used a scalpel to slice (roughly) even ‘stripes’ into the tape. Remove every other stripe, and then the yellow was done with a mix of Tau Sept Ochre and Calthan Brown (? the mid-brown in the old Foundation paints), thinned down to get a smooth layer. Then a layer of Tau Sept Ochre on its own, then a 50/50 mix of Tau Sept Ochre and Averland Sunset. You can go brighter, if you want, but I didn’t.

The armour chips method is this:

Get a bit of sponge (the old blister pack foam is ideal) or wire wool. Use a dark(ish) brown as your base layer, dip a bit of the sponge in the paint and dab the surface to the required degree. Then repeat using something like Boltgun Metal or Mithril Silver (Runefang in new money, I think?). It’ll be really bright, but that’s fine. Devlan Mud washed over the top makes it dirty and battered-looking.

For the dings on the non-striped armour, I just omitted the brown stage and focused on edges, front-facing surfaces and corners.

I asked Ead to give us a quick lowdown on the muddy tracks too, as these are straight out of a military modellers magazine, he kindly took some pics as a guide.

Track surface liberally flooded with pigment fixer (I use a GW large brush)

Pigment scattered and the second stage of fixer flooding in progress (where the powder is turning darker). The sheet of paper is added to stop the pigment sitting on my paint station and staining every bastard thing it touches.

Now fully flooded and the texture partly broken down. I just stipple the wet powder with a brush loaded with fixer.

And there you have it folks, a comprehensive guide to painting Iron Warriors, and a guide to weathering them up in your choice of filth. You can add different tones, stick with one, do whatever your heart desires with the powders so long as you fix them, white spirit is usually the modelers choice but brands like AK and MIG to specialist fixer, no idea how this performs though.

Stay tuned as well have armies from those two jokers over on Eye of Horus Podcast Tim and Michael, as well as JP from the Age of Darkness cast coming our way soon, as well as my own Word Bearers, and a guide on painting and weathering.