Step-By-Step Imperial Guard

With bonus Cadian Marbo! (at the bottom)

Step 1: Basecoat

Step 2: Charadon Granite
For the boots.

Step 3: Dheneb Stone
This is for all flesh and cloth.

Step 4: Skull White
Lightly drybrushed over both the cloth and the flesh.

Step 5: Calthan Brown
All actual armour plates were painted Calthan Brown.

Step 6: Kommando Khaki
This was edged on the Calthan Brown armour plates.

Step 7: Vermin Brown
This is for anything leather. Ignore the old paint pot, the color is still around, but renamed "Vermin Brown."

Step 8: Bronzed Flesh
This was lightly drybrushed over the leather parts. I used to do a mix of Bleached Bone and Vermin Brown, but I experimented with Bronzed Flesh instead and it worked out rather well.

Step 9: Mechrite Red
Mostly for the grenades.

Step 10: Fiery Orange
This is a drybrushed highlight over the Mechrite Red grenades.

Step 11: Gretchin Green
For canteens.

Step 12: Iyanden Darksun
This was drybrushed over the canteens, and used for the sergeant chevrons on the sleeve.

Step 13: Boltgun Metal
For all the metal bits.

Step 14: Shining Gold
Imperial Eagles and knife/bayonet hilts.

...ok, we've built up the model pretty bright, complete with highlights. Let's bring it down with washes. Washing after a highlight also works to soften harsh highlights and bring it all together.

Step 15: Badab Black
Washed over the boots and Boltgun Metal bits.

Step 16: Ogryn Flesh
Washed over the fleshy bits.

Step 17: Devlan Mud
This was washed over all the gold, cloth, armour, canteens, leather, and red grenades. Pretty much anything you haven't covered already with the previous two washes.

Step 18: Skull White
Shoulder insignias.

Now with the model basically done, I move on to the base. Since Guard is a horde army, I'm going for a very minimalist base. Urban streets.

Step 19: Charadon Granite
Basing the base.

Step 20: Fortress Grey
Drybrushed and stipled on the base (hard to see in the pic). Drybrush to get the natural texture out of the base, stiple when you need more.

Step 21: Iyanden Darksun
Street paint. Crosswalks, lane divides, etc.

Step 22: Devlan Mud
Now mud it up.

It's a relatively low number of steps, which suits me fine given how many guardsmen I have in my future ;P

I never was a fan of the traditional Cadian scheme of olive green on khaki (especially since I already collect Dark Angels, which is a very similar scheme). The scheme I chose was actually inspired by the game Dawn of War: Winter Assault. The 180th Cadians were this cool brown color-scheme, but the cloth was dark and the plates were light. I tweaked with the painter to lighten up the cloth and darken the plates and thought it looked awesome. And here we are, my 221st Cadian regiment.

...as promised, Marbo:
There's an Ork Tankbusta bomb on the base, to represent his demolitions charge. Marbo was painted using the same techniques as above with a couple additions. The green on his bowie knife (off of a Marine sprue) is Scorpion Green.

To represent his unique pistol, I latched onto the 'Sniper' rule that came with it. The above pistol is a chopped up sniper rifle.

The wound on his arm was a small drop of Baal Red wash on the bandage. The overloaded backpack came from the Heavy Weapons Team sprue. Marbo is prepared for anything.