Okay, so I’m a little late on this update…

A lot late. The project is half done already!

In my defence. A whole new edition did kinda come out?

---

So painting a legion is the focus of this article, or more importantly deciding your scheme. Christ knows whilst my ego is large, I will not assume I am in any position of authority to lecture people on painting! But theme and style, those I can talk about.

What am I after?

Having already committed to a theme - the Reaver Company - I needed a scheme that would appropriately match the tone I want to take. Thinking on that there was a few key concepts I wanted to ensure I included:

• Plenty of Red panels on the Reavers themselves, to best represent how these guys were veterans of the Heresy and the late Crusade.
• Heavy weathering. This company has been operating in the rear of the war, well away from regular supply lines and forces. They are not a bunch to care for parade ground imagery.
• Some Legionaries needed more green, particularly the non Reaver squads. This would clearly define the more ‘important’ aspects of the force, and visually draw the eye on the tabletop.
• The Green needed to be simple, and doable without too many extra colours. I had 2 months to put out 3,000 points, I needed simple.

Step 1 - Black Books

So bearing all this in mind, I took a gander at the best places I could. The black books! Now obviously if you’ve read my article on ‘Historical Sci-fi’ (and if you haven’t, you ought to!) then you’ll know I love the black books dearly. One of the best elements was the lore and heraldry, which clearly laid out a plethora of images and descriptions of how the Legions adorned themselves and their armour. Everything from rank markings to specialist squads could be found depicted in the various pages. And as these came from the designers themselves, where better to begin a quest of deciding a scheme?

So to Black Book One I went, and found lots of lovely heraldry, including this fine fellow.

A great bit of inspiration here really, heavily weathered, clearly not a bright sea green. A perfect style for my own Reavers to work with, that would nicely emphasise the veteran elements of the force. Although as noted in the description this is quite clearly a Reaver specific scheme, so doing the entire force in all black may be a bit much.

Thankfully though, this was a great foundation to work with. And after scanning a few more pages of the heraldry, including pauldron markers etc, I moved myself online for stage 2!

Step 2 - The Internet!

So the online world is a magical place, mostly for reasons entirely unconnected with this hobby. But if you’re looking for inspiration for you models then there really is no better place to look that at the utter plethora of art and existing models already online, often created by people far more talented than yourself. Some of them even have guides!

Models

Other people’s models are a great place to begin looking for inspiration. We do not exist within a vacuum, nor do we hobby in one, and its entirely human to base our understanding and ideas off the work of others before us. ‘No such thing as an original tune’ and all that jazz.

With this in mind I found a few key sources of inspiration which I will throw down here.

1. Forgeworld. Honestly, they created the damn stuff, it makes sense to look at what they did when it comes to colour. Again the Black Books are handy here, but just going onto the website will probably help. Especially with the new edition theres loads of promo images of various forces and legions to choose from. Although do bear in mind certain Legions have a tendency to see their paint schemes changed over time…

2. Instagram There are loads of hobbyists on Instagram. Thousands you could say. Its worth taking a look on there (you don’t even need an account) to see what you can find. For example there are currently over 22,000 pictures under the #sonsofhorus tag. There’s a really great mix of new beginners to pro painters on their, and all of them will have their own styles, own schemes and own images to work with. Even if its just one lone picture that sparks your thoughts, its worth the 5 minutes of browsing!

3. Google. Just google it! Seriously. There must be millions of pictures out there of people’s models. Again same as Instagram, its a few minutes of searching, and in return a webload of possible inspiration.

4. Forums If you know what these are, then brilliant! If you’ve never accessed a hobby forum - do it! They are a time capsule to a lost world of hobby pre-social media, and I cannot stress how amazing they are/were. You’ll find forums dedicated very likely to any legion of your choosing, and if you blow away the digital dust, and hope the images are still hosted, then you’ll find yourself a real gold mine of amazing work. As to why they all seem a little dead, I’ll get onto that in another article…

Fan Art

So its not canon? Who cares?! Fan art is just the same as ‘your guys’, if thats how you see the hobby then sure thing! Take full advantage of other’s creativity and see what inspires you. Certainly for me it was the fantastic work of [https://www.deviantart.com/hammerthetank] - go check it out! The various Reaver pictures that this artist has done are utterly inspirational, and gave me some fantastic ideas for how to paint not only the Reavers themselves, but how to adapt the dark green for the more mainline troops. Hammer’s is not the only art out there obviously, but for me it was certainly the final point of deciding my scheme.

What Next?

So I’d got a scheme.

• Black Base
• Dark Red Markings for Veterans
• Dark Sea Green for ‘mainline’. The more green, the less important.
• Brass metalwork.

All that was left to do was actually paint the damn models… Oh and base them.

N.B. It should be noted I am now 100% writing in retrospective here. As most of the army is fully painted, based, and magnetised in a carry case right this moment. Definitely going to have to write this blog quicker!