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Painting: Ultramarines - BigJim | |
Step 5Ah, done at last! Now we can get on to the highlighting. Using the same blue mix you used on the basecoats, add a few drops of Skull White to make a roughly 30w/70b ratio, and a lot of water.I know you watered it down to almost drinkable levels earlier, but add some more now, as it’s probably thickened up a bit, plus this needs to be even runnier than the basecoat mix. Give a quick run with the brush over the edges of each & every armour plate, about 3mm thick. It will look very stark, but panic ye not. Since the mix is very watery, it will look stark as it goes on, but as the mix dries it will lose much of it’s contrast, & by the time it’s dry it should be very difficult to see where you have actually highlighted. If you look at the plates & actually have trouble seeing if you’ve highlighted that bit yet, then you’re on the right track. Basically the idea is to do each plate with about 3mm of 1st highlight, then repeat the process, going thinner each time. So, once you’ve done, go over each bit again with the same mix, leaving the tiniest (and I mean tiniest) amount of the first highlight showing. Even though you won’t really be able to see the difference between the two shades once you’re finished, you’ll be able to tell if you don’t. Once that’s done, add a few more drops of white to the mix, pushing it up to about 40w/60b, and go over each bit again, encroaching about 2mm onto the armoured plates. As well as being more subtle, another bonus of using a very watery highlight mix is that the “edge” of each stroke tends to blur into the background colour, giving you a more gradual transition, if you’ve ever used the “Paintbrush” tool in Photoshop or Paintshop-Pro you’ll know exactly what I mean. To try this out, just try mixing up the same tone, but without watering down the mix, & try using that. You’ll quickly see the difference using a lot of water in your highlight mix makes!  Once you’ve done the second highlight, and gone over it again in the same way as the first, it’s time to move onto the third. Again, mix some more white into the mix, around 50w/50b, and repeat the process, but this time only encroach onto the armour about 1mm. Again, go over it once more with a bit more water in the mix, and the main highlighting’s pretty much done! Once you’ve done the main highlights, you can choose to go back & do all those little squares around the armour edges, I prefer to paint a little “L” shape around 2 of the edges, this in my opinion helps to accentuate the square shape, even if it’s not technically the most realistic approach. We’ll go back & touch it up later on, but hopefully you’ll be able to see fairly well what the finished job will look like now. Step 6Right then, we’re getting there, the last real task to complete on the bodies are the chest-eagles.Earlier we painted them in Bestial Brown & darkened them with raw Chestnut Ink, now we’re going to take some Snakebite leather, water it down a-plenty, and carefully apply it to the individual feathers that make up the wings. The Snakebite Leather would normally be a bit too much of a jump to go from such a dark brown, but since it’s so watery (about 30/70 to 40/60) and since it’s only a single coat, the final colour will be darkened suitably so as to not look odd. We’re aiming not to cover the whole area, but to get little Nike-logo “Tick” shapes along the edges of the wing. Obviously with the paint so runny it will be easy to have a few rogue splotches, if this happens don’t worry too much, if it’s only a small mistake it shouldn’t show very much if at all, & if it’s very noticeable, you can always flood the are & dab it off as before, another good thing about the watery paint.  Once that’s done, then as before, just repeat the process, allowing a bit of the previous layer to show each time. In this example, I’ve progressed from a single layer of Snakebite Leather, starting from roughly two-thirds the length of the feathers, to a layer of Bronzed Flesh – a bit shorter this time, to a layer of Dwarf Flesh, then Elf Flesh, and finally a very small layer at the ends of Bleached Bone. I find it very useful when doing fiddly tasks like these to use stock colours, without mixing paints, so that if I have to take a break, or the paint dries up all the tones will still be uniform across the unit.  Don’t fret if you end up totally covering some of the individual highlight layers, keep the paint watered down & the translucency of the paint will still allow the previous layer to show through. Be careful on the wings, remember to keep very little paint on the bristles, as it’s easy to flood the area by mistake at this point. The final highlight layers are effectively just a dot at the very tip of each wing, in Bleached Bone or even white, depending on how far you want to go - I only went as high as Bleached Bone in the examples. Step 7Right, things are really starting to take shape now, the last thing to do before the guns & backpacks are the Sergeant’s helmet, and the shoulder pads.We’ve specifically left these until the end, as it’s very easy to ruin a nice paintjob by smudging it with your fingers while handling & painting the rest of the mini. First off, cover the helmet with Red Gore, again, very watered down. Don’t worry about being too neat, as it’s going to be covered in ink. Now, slightly water down some Chestnut Ink, & give the whole thing a liberal wash. This will tone down the red, & provide deep shading for later. Once it’s dry, carefully apply receding layers of Blood red mixed with Red Gore, bringing the tone lighter toward the front. Finally mix in some Blazing Orange to the mix, and last of all give a very watered down highlight of pure Blazing Orange to the very edges of the helmet & faceplate, taking care around the eyes. Again, be careful of flooding the area here.  The shoulder pads are much easier to highlight than any other area, since they’re so large. I attach them to empty paint pots, this helps you to paint them without getting dirty fingers all over the place. After the usual basecoat routine of Ultras blue over Midnight blue, mix some white into Ultramarines Blue (about 30w/70b), and water it down so it’s almost as runny as an Ink. Carefully apply a single line, about 3mm around the perimeter of the shoulder pad. Once done, add a bit more white to the mix, and give each one another highlight, again, encroaching onto the pad by about 1mm less each time.  Personally I do no more than 3 main highlights on a gaming-quality rank & file mini, and so once 3 highlights are down, mix in some more white, so the paint is a slightly bluish-white, rather than merely light-blue, and paint a small “L” shape into the corners of each pad, for the final highlight. Keep the paint very wet during this process, again, the wet edges helps to blend in each layer to the previous one. Once that’s done, it should be a fairly simple process to fill in the trim-colours. I personally use white, for my 1st Co army, but of course, this will depend entirely on what company you play. If doing white, then first off, cover the areas with Fortress Grey, & once again with Ghostly Grey. It may sound long-winded, but 2 layers of grey will give you a much better base to apply the final coat of white than 3 or 4 coats of actual white would have done. Once the Ghostly Grey is dry, it should provide an excellent base for the white, & 2 watered-down layers should cover perfectly. | |
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