paint: iron warriors: test schemes

Spent the last week trying to figure out how to paint up my Iron Warriors. Inspired by a Google search that brought me to the work of Chronophague, Dark Eye Studios, and Stempe, I decided I wanted to tweak the traditional mithril marines with black and yellow chevrons. My mind kept coming back to rust, so I decided to try my hand at rust effects. Not having an airbrush available to try salt-masking, and not being able to get the sponge technique to work at this scale, I muddled my way through several test minis...

It's tough to tell in the small version above, but clicking to the large version shows that each model is slightly different from the others. I tried several new (to me) techniques and many variations of each. None of the above minis called to me as a whole, but there were pieces I liked in just about all of them. I took the bits that worked and blended them to create this...

I'm not 100% sold on it yet, but I think I'm getting there. I want to try a couple more things with this mini and a completely different recipe on my last remaining test model before I call it a day, but it feels like I'm almost there!