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Painting: Ultramarines - BigJim | |
Step 8Right, the backpacks are pretty simple, it’s exactly the same process as the bodies, but “condensed” as it were, into a shorter amount of time, and a smaller model space.So, give the backpacks an all-over in Midnight Blue, a quick coat of Blue Ink, & then give any metal parts a quick coat of Black. Quickly drybrush the black areas in Boltgun Metal, and if they’re a bit shiny afterward, a very, very watered down wash of black. Now, go over the “flat” areas with Ultramarine’s Blue, again, avoiding the cracks & recesses, and once again, give each area a few highlights with Skull White added to the mix.  The backpacks have a lot of detail, so it may be tempting to leave the paint a bit thicker, & lessen the chance of getting runs, but try to keep it as watered down as before, & use less paint on the brush to get the neater strokes required, again remembering that you can get away with the most outrageous jumps in highlight-colour, if your paint is watered down sufficiently. Directional highlighting sounds dead fancy-pants, but all it is is highlighting only one or two sides of an object to make it look like light is coming from a particular direction. Here I’ve painted a small curve directly below the bottom lip of the holes on the packs. Try holding a glass horizontally under a light source. You’ll notice a small curve of light playing around the bottom edge of the rim, this is all I’m trying to do with the curved highlights. Giving a little highlight under each hole tends to make them stand out a bit more, good for a fairly bold look. This also works well on Plasma Gun vents, Bolter barrel holes, etc.. Don’t panic about being 100% neat on the insides of the backpacks, remember that very little of the rear side will be seen, as it lays flat against the Marine, so a decent coat of Midnight Blue & Blue Ink should be enough. Step 9Right then, very nearly done.The last job of the paintjob is to get the guns done, & if the Marines have come out ok, they shouldn’t stand out too much. Not to say you can be slack painting the guns, but all being well they should draw less attention than the Marines themselves, so there’s no need to kill yourself over attention to detail here, and once again, sticking them to the tops of paint pots makes them much easier to handle, if a little slower to actually paint. As ever, when there’s metal parts, do these in black first of all. After a quick drybrush of Boltgun Metal, apply the first basecoat. In this example, the guns are going to be a Mustard-Yellow colour, & so we’ll choose the darkest available stock-colour, Snakebite Leather, and give a single, fairly watered down basecoat. I know I’m going to want a similar, deep recessed look to the guns as we had on the Marines, so we’ll use some more of the ever-useful Chestnut Ink, & straight from the pot, apply it to any cracks, edges, recesses & holes, giving a similar, deep brown colour as we had on the chest eagles from much earlier.  Once the ink is dry, you should be able to apply your first basecoat colour onto the flat areas, leaving the brown in the recesses, in a similar fashion to the backpacks previously, of course being careful not to leak onto any of the metal parts. Instead of using white as a highlight colour, in this case we’re using Bleached Bone. This can often be very handy as an alternative to white, especially on lighter colours, where pure white as a highlight might give too much of a pastel shade, a perfect example being, funnily enough, yellow. Again, no more than 3 highlights are entirely necessary, indeed on parts as small as the Bolters, you can get probably get away with just 2. A quick highlight of pure Bleached Bone along the upper edges will help define the guns’ shapes, & also avoid them looking out of place with the rest of the Marines. The Heavy Bolter is done in exactly the same way as the other guns, just making sure to water the paint down that little bit more on the larger, flatter areas. | |
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