Nikolai Krylenko, the Red Guardian, Russia’s answer to Captain America is the focus of today’s How to Paint Everything. This Russian super soldier is actually the seventh person to take up the mantle of Red Guardian and member of the Winter Guard, Russia’s equivalent of the Avengers. A mutant, he is capable of generating a body wide force field that can repel physical and energy attacks and brandishes a shield similar to his American counterpart.
Red Guardian’s miniature has a very simple color scheme of red and white which means he’ll be one of the quicker Marvel: Crisis Protocol miniatures to paint up. In this tutorial we will go over how to paint the red of his suit, the white gloves and an easy NMM red and white for the shield.
Let’s get to it.
Painting the White
I’ve decided to start by painting the white areas first. I began with a white primer, not only to make coverage easier for the light greys and white tones, but also to keep things brighter in general. I’ll be painting over all of the white areas with Citadel Administratum Grey, Citaldel Ulthuan Grey, Vallejo Model Color White and Citadel Contrast Apothecary White.
- Basecoat: Citadel Administratum Grey
- Layer: Citadel Ulthuan Grey
- Contrast Wash: Citadel Contrast Apothecary White
- Layer: Citadel Ulthuan Grey
- Highlight: Vallejo Model Color White
Painting the Red Suit
Normally for red suits I like to start out with a basecoat of Mephiston Red and work up the brightness from there. For Red Guardian, I wanted to deeper red for his suit and decided to start with Khorne Red. From there I follow my usual steps of mixing in a green for shadows and highlighting with brighter reds to crank up contrast.
- Basecoat: Citadel Khorne Red
- Shadows: Citadel Khorne Red: Citadel Caliban Green
- Clean-up: Citadel Khorne Red
- Layer: Citadel Mepthiston Red
- Layer: Citadel Evil Sunz Scarlet
- Highlight: Citadel Wild Rider Red
Painting the Shield – NMM Red
Like I’ve said before, We can do a non-metallic metal without going crazy detailed with it. For his shield we are going to start with a basecoat of Rhinox Hide and then work it up with the same reds as his suit. The goal will be to keep the contrast between the Rhinox Hide layer and the final red layers.
- Basecoat: Citadel Rhinox Hide
- Layer: Citadel Rhinox Hide: Citadel Mephiston Red
- Layer: Citadel Mephiston Red
- Wash: Citadel Agrax Earthshade
- Layer: Citadel Mephiston Red
- Highlight: Citadel: Evil Sunz Scarlet
- Edge Highlight: Citadel Wild Rider Red
- Edge Highlight: Vallejo Model Color White
Painting the Shield – NMM White
We are going to go even simpler with the star on the shield, a whole 3 steps! We’ll start with a basecoat of Adminstratum Grey, then highlight it with Ulthuan Grey and White.
- Basecoat: Citadel Adminstratum Grey
- Highlight: Citadel Ulthuan Grey
- Highlight: Vallejo Model Color White
Painting his Face
The tiny bit of skin showing on this model will be pretty easy to do. We’re going to start with a blue tinted skin tone and then just do some simple highlights with Reaper’s Rosey Skin and some White.
- Basecoat: Citadel Altdorf Blue: Reaper Rosey Skin
- Layer: Reaper Rosey Skin
- Highlight: Reaper Rosey Skin: Vallejo Model Color White
And there we go, paint up the base as you wish and Red Guardian is ready to push back the foes of the Motherland! Have you painted Red Guardian? If you have, find me on social media, hit me up on Twitter/X (@brushwizard), Instagram (@brushwizardry), or Goonhammer’s own Crisis Protocol channel on the Discord server and share your work! I’m always interested to see what the MCP community has been working on.
Next time I’ll be covering the Winter Guard’s Iron Man proxy, Crimson Dynamo!
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