I have painted yellow

One of the biggest issues with painting an army is getting started. My son, a dedicated tyranids player, got a few boxes that included some extra space marines and I wanted to paint them. Instead of picking a lame blue or green or red I decided to attempt to paint yellow on a squad of infernus marines. They are not likely to be a core part of any army going forward and were safe to test. My goal with these models was to figure out if I could paint yellow.

As you can see above I had already painted them black, a bad color for yellow, and I decided to under paint them with pink after drybrushing layers of dark grey, grey, and light grey. I kept a single marine as a control with only putting yellow over the black. The models in the middle and second from the right actually look like they could be badass if I was looking to paint another chapter.

It wasn’t looking good after my first coat of thinned down golden yellow from Monument Games. While the second from the right looks the “best” it didn’t look very good at all and I wasn’t happy with the coverage or color.

Yellow is a paint that takes a lot of time and I’d had some success with pink as an undercoat in the past. If you would have asked me what I’d be painting right now I would have told you “Ultramarines” and just given up.

After about three coats of thinned down yellow I took another picture. I was pretty happy with the coverage and color, and if you can see the bloodcrushers in the back, I needed to get a things done for the Warhammer Grand Narrative. They more or less look the same with the second from the left being the “best”. The farthest from the left, squid pink, is by far my favorite “pink” paint to use when painting but it just didn’t mix as an undercoat like the second from the left.

It was at this point that I got really excited about painting yellow space marines and started to dream about a large army with all sorts of different marines getting painted up. However, in reality there is a lot more to do.

Every model needs a wash and I picked out three as a test. From right to left I have Feugan orange, Cassador Yellow, and Seraphim Sepia. Feugan Orange is one of my favorite washes and a key part of how I base my gloomspite gitz but was far too strong for what I was going for here. If I was making an orange unit I’d keep this as an option in the future but it completely changed the color of my mini. The second and third options were much less offensive and if I had agrax I would have used it as an option.

It took a few additional coats to clean up the middle model and I washed the rest with the seraphim sepia to “bring down” the color and hopefully add to the contrast with my next color block.

Next was adding some red to the aquila and weapons. I should not have painted the aquila yellow as I was afraid of losing some of the details and the paint just didn’t “flow” the way I remember it on prior models.

I think there is a “better” way to focus on the weapons and designate some of the with black or silver but the large exhausts on the flamers give a really nice focus compared to a bolter that needs some additional colors on it.

Seen from another angle these are basically ‘three color minimum’ marines and don’t look horrible considering they came from a starter box and I didn’t know what color they would even be.

The above picture is after I put a red wash over the weapons but before I highlighted them. While it doesn’t come through on the photo the wash significantly improve the look of the weapons and added a lot of depth to the models.

My next step was to choose a company and I picked the 5th company. Painting black over yellow is a significant challenge since every errant brush stroke shows up forever. It was at this stage that kept a damp paper towel around to attempt to clean up the models. Compared to the destruction models that I’m use to in Age of Sigmar the smooth lines presents a significant challenge to me.

Remember, these are the ultimate test models and as I run this series each group of models is going to have a single “goal”. despite starting from a black primer with different undercoats the most significant difference in the models was the shade I picked.

Below are my “Finished’ models with some additional highlighting, focus on the lens (green is the wrong color) and additional purity seals. While I could spend significant time on them in the future I’m going to move on to terminators from the same box.