The last two weeks of painting has been a bit like high school: fun, repetitive, and awkward.

Some of the last figures of the Empire were the first goal, and that required a paint purchasing frenzy. My goal was to finish the Imperial Guards and the Imperial Officers to try my hand at blending.

The results weren't disastrous, but they were disappointing enough to wait on the Rebel heroes.

The Guards are easy to paint; they are red. The problem is making them interesting. Sorastro attempts to liven them up by applying highlights, so that's what I would do!

I decided to use Citadel's red wash, which is labeled for flesh, as the wash for the Guards. This wound up uneven after the first coat, so a second application of the wash was applied. The result was over-dark reds and largely uneven shadows, which would make the highlights contrast more than intended.

Over-washing the figures was my only major mistake on the Guards, and I am pleased with how they turned out; red and a bit boring, precisely like the Emperor's Guards in the movies.

The officers were another story.

My goal with the Imperial forces was to capture their clean appearance. One of the themes I find in the great Ralph McQuarrie's work is that evil is clean, shiny, and a bit bland. It is as if the evildoer's... evil removes them from the color and dirt of the universe they inhabit. Good on the other hand is often dirty and rough. It takes effort, sacrifice, and perhaps duck tape to be good in Star Wars, and I love that idea.

Using the idea that evil is clean, I decided to paint my regular officers in black uniforms, and the elite in a star captain's gray.

Making the figures interesting was going to be difficult. The essence of the sculpt is not the blaster, uniform, or even the face; it is the index finger. The officer points in a manner that is one part command, and another part condemnation.

My biggest mistake was not realizing the finger was the focus until after the figures were painted.

Instead, I focused on the uniform or the face, leading to some hilariously odd Officers.

My original thought was to make the uniform the focus, even on the two officers in black. I applied highlight after highlight, but made a few mistakes while doing so.

The first mistake was that my highlight layers were not thinned enough. This resulted in lines that were far too strong instead of gradual. It made the officers look as if they had zebra stripes.

The next big mistake was making overly bright highlights in places that should have been darker. The officers looked as if their skirts were glowing. Hardly the representation of Imperial might that I was going for.

Thankfully, with an additional layer of wash, I was able to tone the highlights down.

The next task was even more daunting: the face.

Instead of following Sorastro's suggestion of using a red wash on the Officer's faces, I decided to go with the softer Serapham Sepia wash in hopes that the Officers would look more pale. However, even this less-colorful wash made the Officers look healthy. Oh well.

Next, I decided to be brave and try to paint eyes. As you can see, it didn't go so well. For brevity, these are some of the things I learned about painting eyes:

Never try something on a special unit when there are grunts available to practice on.
It's easier to get the bottom part of the white covered, but that's not what you want. Try to cover the top of the white first.
Use a small brush and clean it between each attempt.
Be quick, the paint on the tip will often dry before applied. If it does, be patient and wash it out instead of trying to brush it on.

The truth, which you can even see in the photo below, is that the Officer's finger should have been the focus of my highlights the entire time. Sure, the uniform did need a highlight or two, and the faces needed some texture. However, if I had spent more time making the accusing point of the Officer stand it, it would have been a more interesting figure on the table. Instead, I barely spent any time on the Officer's hand, only applying a single highlight and a wash to the most interesting part of the figure.

Fenn facing down the newly painted officers.

Somehow, I only have the Royal Guard Champion, 2 AT-STs, and Darth Vader left to paint for the forces of the Emperor. Overall, I'm quite pleased with my Imperials. The Officers could be better, and if I paint more Stormtroopers, I am going to go with a much lighter wash on the armor.

That said, I do not have much confidence in my ability to do Vader justice and cannot find a good gray primer unfortunately. Before continuing with Vader and the Rebels, I decided to take a break to paint a bunch of Zombicide figures. Getting to play with colors and devise outfits for the zombies and heroes has been a bunch of fun, so I'll be writing about that in the near future.