How to Paint a 30k Ultramarine



This time a bit of a longer post on how to paint an Ultramarine - Varcan Cluster style. 

I haven't don't a painting guide before, mostly because I don't consider my painting skills ground breaking or show stopping. They wont win awards, but do tend to look ok on the table top.

After painting my first squad of Ultramarines, I decided to record all the steps for the Sergeant of my second squad, and then share them with yourselves. 


The end result is the model show above and hopefully this provides some use to fellow painters out there. 

Lots (and I do mean lots) of pictures after the jump! 



Step 1:

After the standard undercoat (in this case Games Workshops black Spray paint), I went over all of the armour with Macragge Blue

I wasnt too worried about being perfectly neet here, but I did aim to get all of the armour.






Step 2: Caledor Sky blue is then applied to all of the armour, avoiding the rims of the shoulder pads, the knee pads and any recesses of the armour.

If this goes wrong then generally the rest of the painting will cover your sins, but here I am trying to be more careful, and ensure I only cover the sections of armour I intend to.





Step 3: Hoeth Blue, I use this blue for my highlights. I aim to highlight the edges of all of the armour I painted with Caledor Sky.

You want these lines to follow the endge and ideally be as a narrow as you can get away with and still see them, although as you look at the picture below you will see that is not what happened in all cases for myself!






Step 4: I used Warpaints Oak Brown here. I use the browns as the base colour for off colour white & gold as it helps in needing less layers of paint to get the gold looking right.

In this case I used the Oak brown on the shoulder pad rims, knee pads & helm. 






Steps 5: Still with Warpaint I used Gun Metal as my metallic base coat. 

Here I used it on all of the joints of the armour, the gun, chainsword, straps across the chest piece and on the back pack pipes and exhausts. 




And on the valve in the middle.  



I didnt cover the entire Chainsword as the paint scheme doesn't have this weapon being entirely metallic. 

Also dont forget any studs on your models legs or Shoulder pads! 



Step 6: Shining Gold

Step 7: Bone White

Step 8: Dark Red





Step 9: Highlight Red









Step 10: Nuln Oil

I tend to apply the Nuln Oil very liberally, and as you can see from the helmet, this is why I dont try and do any highlighting on the bone colour, the Oil does a job of shading it for me (not perfectly of course, but then I am not a pro painter!)



In Hindsight I think this guy could have had a better pose... ah well, better luck next time Kraggi!



And that is the model itself completed, although of course, to complete it correctly it really needs the base of the model doing as well. 

You may notice that from any models you paint that its actually really hard to judge (for me) the quality of the model and paint job until you have it based properly.


I always think this is like when you see the WIP shots of a movie, the actors all dressed up in front of a green screen... it doesnt work until that green screen is filled in.

Anyway, hopefully this proved useful for you, and I may even do some more in the future, although this is pretty much the colours I am using with 19 more Marines, 1 Chaplin and six terminators left to finish off! 

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