Ultramarine - Part I

 

Red guns shoot faster.

With a model bought on holiday as a kind of memento, I had the inspiration to use it for testing some more of my approach to Ultramarines. There is a reason for this: I have a certain Primarch in a box that I would like to start within a year or so, and these attempts at blue are directly for planning how to paint him.

Last time I painted an Ultramarine I had some ideas on what could be changed, and so this time I put those ideas into action. The main thought was to remove a Calgar Blue highlight step, and to pre-edge highlight with white before the filter of Asurmen Blue. This would make the entire armour:

• Night Lords Blue (Air) over the whole model.
• Macragge Blue (Air) as a top-down zenithal of sorts.
• White Scar (Air) to give additional highlights in selected areas.
• White Scar, with a brush, for edge highlights. This just strengthens the white along those parts.
• Asurmen Blue to act as a filter across the white.
• Naggaroth Nightshade in recesses.

After having done all of that, I've decided that the original approach is better. The Calgar Blue needed to be used later where the edge highlights weren't strong enough anyway, and the airbrush step served another purpose of smoothing out the gradients. White is always slightly speckled for me. I can minimise the noise with multiple thin layers, and Asurmen Blue again helps to fade everything together, but it's still noticeable. Using Calgar Blue beforehand, even if it's mostly covered up, helps to blend everything together that little bit more.

Now that the armour has been done, I needed to decide how best to finish the model. I basically only cared about the armour, but looking around I remembered old school Ultramarines and how they had bright red weapons. Naturally, the heavy bolter is now a very eye-catching red. I will try to finish the rest quickly and move back to all the other models on the go. If nothing else, it's more good practice for doing standard troopers, and even if I'm not that invested in the model itself, I can't just leave it half-done.

-- silly painter.