Ok so this post is a bit of a cheat. As I write this I don’t actually know how I paint Ultramarines. But I’ve got a great system for finding out! These Ultramarines form my Kill Team roster. You can read about that here.
What am I trying to achieve?
I’m at a bit of a bind with this. All of the ip art of the Ultramarines has them painted in flat blue. Having spent a lot of time playing 30K I really like the candy red finish that you see on a lot of Thousand Sons armies. I’ve got the idea to translate that to blue for my Ultramarines. What I’m going to do is test a couple of different candy metal tests against a few flat blue finishes and see what I like best. Then I’ll really know how I paint Ultramarines!
To NMM or to TMM?
That is the question. Ultimately how I paint Ultramarines will decide on how I paint the trim (the pauldron edges, the eagle and the weapons). If I go down the candy blue metallic route, I’ll use TMM (mixing TMM and NMM on the same model looks shit). If I go down the flat blue route then I’ll use NMM.
Paint choices
How I paint Ultramarines depends on the top coat for the finish. I’m going to try Tamiya clear blue vs Vallejo Ultramarine blue, super thin in layers over the top of a strong basecoat. I’ve been here before with my Aeldari (here) so I have an idea of how this will work out but I’m a better painter than I was then so we’ll see. Whilst how I paint Ultramarines relies on the top coat for the final effect, it’s really the basecoat that decides the look.
The base coat stage
Ok, I’ve got six Ultramarines built ready to test. Note that how I paint Ultramarines for the final models going into my army will be in small sub assemblies (heads off, backpacks off etc). These test models are all one piece so I can speed this process up. I’m not going to show building and priming Space Marines, it’s boring. but here’s the group shot:
Now here are the six base coat / top coat combinations I’m going to try:
- Vallejo Metal Color base (over glass black undercoat) with Tamiya clear blue
- Vallejo Metal Color base (over gloss black undercoat) with Vallejo Ultramarine
- Purple, blue, bone base with Tamiya clear blue
- Purple, blue and bone base with Vallejo Ultramarine
- Black, grey and yellow base (it’s something I saw recently on Reddit and thought it looked interesting) with Tamiya clear blue
- Black, grey and yellow base with Vallejo Ultramarine
The airbrush technique
This wasn’t very hard really and almost anyone with an airbrush can do it. I did the darkest base coat all over the model, the mid tone from a 45 degree angle above and then picked out the highlights with the airbrush. Here’s how they all look:
The next stage
Ok so the next stage in how I paint Ultramarines is to apply the top coats over each of these. I’ll post about how I get on!