Painting Legion of the Damned trooper

I asked a friend of mine a few weeks ago if I could have one of his models to paint.

I didn't want to go out and buy a whole box just to paint one guy for fun.

I've always though these guys were cool looking and I might add some of them to my army if I ever get it built.

I really wanted to see if I could paint him up and keep him muted. You usually see the flames really bright and high contrast on the model. I wanted to keep this guy really subdued overall.

I started by priming him black and working through the flames first. I started with a dark red and worked my way up to a orangish brown color. I gave the whole thing a wash of Baal Red and then added the final light brown color again along the edge.

With the flames finished, I moved onto the black. I've always loved the P3 color Coal Black. It just looks so cool to me. I wanted to try it out on this model to see how the blues would look in relation to the flames. I wet blended it into the black as the highlight.

I picked out his helmet and all the "bone" stuff with some muted tans. I did push the front portion of his helmet a bit lighter than everything else to draw attention to it.

I kept the metals on the model really dark. I gave them a slight highlight, but wanted to show them as being aged and not really clean.

With so many dark colors on the model, it was a little tough trying to find subtle variations in hue that I could use to help differentiate between things.

Like his gun, it's a dark grey highlight as opposed to the Coal Black color of the armour.

All in all, I think he came out pretty good. I like the fact that he is very dark overall as I think it fits with the feel of the Chapter. His base was the one last place I tried to give him that dark, destroyed feeling. It's a resin base, but I don't know who from since it came on the model when I got it.


It's a nice mix of rubble and metal. There's a lot going on here though. I tried to pick out some colors I though would help pull the model and the base together instead of setting them apart like I normally do.

The metal areas were given a number of washes to make them look old and dirty along with some selective weathering with powders to pull the model and base together. In the end, he was a fun model to paint and a nice change of pace for the day.

Make sure to check out these posts as they might help:
How to paint Dirty Metal
Painting details on black models
A look at how to paint the color Black


Ron, From the WarpIf you've got any questions about something in this post, shoot me a comment and I'll be glad to answer. Make sure to share your hobby tips and thoughts in the comments below!