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Painting: Ultramarines - BigJim | |
Step 3Ok, now you should have a group of very sullen-looking dark blue Marines, more than likely very shiny from the ink. You probably also have blue ink all over your fingers. Now would be a good time to clean those, you mucky pup.Right then, now’s the best time to deal with any metallics on the model, or at least to make a half-hearted stab at it. Because we’re going to want to be drybrushing (unless you’re some kind of NNM-pro, & in that case what are you reading this article for?), it’ll quickly make a mess of your nice paintwork later, so let’s get it out of the way now.  Very quick here, no need for anything fancy. Just a medium drybrush of Tinbitz, followed by Boltgun Metal. If you’re anything like me, you’ll probably have rubbed much of the Boltgun Metal off the edges of the mini by the time you finish, but don’t worry if this happens, we’ll give the metallics a once-over at the end if necessary.  Don’t panic if you get the odd fleck of paint onto your dark blue basecoat, again, it can always be touched up, plus very little of that Midnight Blue will actually be visible at the end. If you choose, you can give the rubber bits in the elbows & knees a quick drybrush of Shadow grey followed by Fortress grey now, but personally I wait until the very end. (Too much to do at one time makes my head hurt) Also at this time it’s a good idea to get the basecoat for the chest eagles done. I’m going to go for a very contrast-ey look, after all, what’s the point in being a kick-ass Marine with a cool lookin’ double headed eagle on your chest if no one can even tell from a distance because there’s not enough contrast? None, that’s what. Take it from me & Bobby Guilleman. So, water down some Bestial Brown, & give it a quick coat. No need to make it perfect, it’s pretty much just a placeholder at the moment, but do try to make sure that there’s no run-off onto the blue areas, or at least as little as possible. It’s easy to get spillage on the chest eagles, but if you only use a small amount of paint on your brush it’s pretty simple to avoid. Remember, less paint on your brushes people! It ain’t going anywhere soon.  We’re going to use Chestnut Ink to darken the eagle now, it may sound a little early to do now, but getting these niggly bits done before we start on the blue-proper makes fixing mistakes infinitely easier than having to do it later on. So, once the Bestial Brown is dry, carefully apply Chestnut Ink, straight from the bottle, to the cracks between the feathers with the smallest brush you have. Inks tend to bleed even worse than paint, so try not to put too much on at one time, as this will overload the area & you’ll end up with ink dripping from the base & onto your desk. You’ll have to use at least 2 coats, possibly more to get it dark enough, so start with the first Marine, give his eagle a coat of Chestnut, & then go down the line until you’re back at the first one, with luck he’ll be ready for his second coat. We’re basically aiming to get the cracks in the eagle as dark as Chestnut Ink looks in the bottle, don’t worry too much if the ink bleeds a little round the edges, the blue-lining & Chestnut Ink is more forgiving that you might think, but if you do end up with brown runny fingers, then chances are you’re using too much. Step 4Second basecoat. Ok, now for the long-winded & boring part.Water down some Ultras blue as much as you dare. Personally I like to water it down a lot, to the point where it could be mistaken for an ink - you might be tempted at this point to skimp a little & make it thicker so you can get away with a single coat, but don’t, it doesn’t pay later. It helps to water down the paint as much as possible, so when you’ve done & you end up with blue armour plates over an almost-black-blue, the edges seem to blend in slightly. This is much easier to do with thinner paint, as it just tends to happen naturally, whereas if you don’t use enough water, you’ll have to spend ages either blending it by hand, or just leave the very stark outlines as they are. Another bonus of using very liquid paint is that when (notice how I didn’t say “if” just then?), you make a mistake, you can simply dunk your brush in the jar, flood the area with water & be pretty confident that you can dab off the offending paint with a tissue. When using thicker paint, one mistake can often see you starting from the basecoat all over again. Chances are you’ll want about 3 coats here, and yes, it’s time consuming & long-winded, but it’s probably the most important part of the job, once you’ve done the bulk of the work here, the rest of the paint job is pretty much just touching up this basecoat. Carefully block in each separate armour plate, leaving about 1mm of dark blue around the borders of other armour plates (for example where the shin meets the knee-pads), and all the way up to the edge of the cracks & detail hatches.  It takes a little while, but it’s much easier to control the shape of the black-lining by covering over the black (dark blue in this case) than by trying to apply the black lines - again, dark blue really - directly over the top of a pre-existing basecoat. Odd but true. Again, use as little paint on the brush as possible, I used a Detail brush here, & the paint came up to about a 3rd of the bristles’ length. If there’s too much paint on there, as soon as you touch the bristles to the model, a load of paint will run off flooding into the cracks & recesses, so only try to dip a small part of the brush into the paint at any one time. It’s a good idea to pay particular attention to the lower legs, as these tend to be the largest flat areas & will show up any patchiness in the coat more than elsewhere. | |
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