Intergalactic Empire Productions

Welcome back everyone! Today we are continuing to work on motivating ourselves to paint our Squadrons. Today, we are going the TIE Defender.

This will be the same colors as previously used on TIE craft. The Empire is simple in its design and we love that about them. It looks united and it is not reinventing the wheel to figure out how to paint most of them.

We will be using Base Abaddon Black, Layer Ulthuan Grey, Dry Stormfang, Base Mephiston Red, and Shad Nuln Oil from Games Workshop. This is not a sponsorship or promotion, I just simply like their paints.

Getting into it, there will be a few schemes used here today. I personally like my named Imperial characters flying red TIEs. This is found most recently in X Wing Miniatures but exists in other sources. I like to have the two wingmen be a veteran scheme as well so help that Squadron really standout in giant games where hundreds are possibly present. Lastly, there are the blue grey and grey schemes seen throughout as well.

First and foremost, paint the cockpit glass and exhaust port black. cover the pane supports to, they will be corrected later on.

For now, set aside your hero pilot’s TIE Defender, we will come back to that in a moment.

For all other TIE Defenders, base coat them in Layer Ulthuan Grey. Lightly dry brush over the cockpit glass to only get the supports highlighted.

If you want to keep the A New Hope grey look, skip this step. Otherwise, put a coat of Dry Stormfang on the TIE Defenders. We will correct the color at the end. Once again, only dry brush over the cockpit glass.

Now, paint your hero’s TIE with Base Mephiston Red all over. While X Wing never had an ace scheme for Defenders, it did for the Interceptor which uses the same wing strut, just inverted plus an extra one. I used the red to make a ling along the strut support on both sides to help the veterans stand out and stay with the general scheme. Like before, just dry brush over the cockpit glass.

Next, we are going to use Base Abaddon Black again. This time we will do cockpit corrections, exhaust port cleanup, and then fill in the solar panels. Leave the struts and edges unpainted, but feel free to get right up to that edge. They are thick enough to maintain the look. Each craft as 24 solar panels, so take your time and don’t get overwhelmed. You may find it helpful to rinse and wipe your brush after each fighter to keep the thick base paint from gumming up.

After this, its time to clean up the edges of the wings where black got carried away.

Lastly, baptize them in Nuln Oil! Not really, it will go on too dark. If your Nuln Oil is getting low it will get thicker and darker. Dilute your brush as needed, but wash the entire fighter. This will pop details out and also correct the grey or blue grey color to be more screen accurate.

All done! How did you do?