Less Yellow, more Blue (and a bit of Red)!
Over the last few days we've had an almost overwhelming number of yellow miniatures on the blog - it's never looked so bright and colourful. From Dark Eldar to Skaven, and Lamenters to Imperial Fists, it looks like yellow is the colour of the month at the moment. In an effort to tone down the brightness of the blog this week (it is the grim darkness of the far future after all), we thought it would be nice to show some Space Marines from the most famous of Chapters - the Ultramarines. First up is Trevor Goddard and his gritty Heresy-era Ultramarines:
Having read the Horus Heresy novel, Know No Fear, Trevor found himself inspired to start an Ultramarines army based around the scouring and purging of Colchis. This is why most of the Space Marines you'll see in the pictures above wear Mark IV armour, which was prevalent at the time in the Ultramarines Legion. Many of the models are converted using parts from the Red Scorpions upgrade set combined with parts from the Tactical Squad box. Curiously, while Forge World now sell a Land Raider Proteus, Trevor's Land Raider is actually one of the original ones from the late 80s - a sure sign that this man has been in the hobby for quite some time! To bring the weapon systems up to date with the rest of his army, Trevor used parts from the Baneblade Upgrade Sprue and the Venerable Dreadnought to rebuild the sponsors (lascannons have changed a lot since the 80s). If you look carefully you can see how he has rebuilt them in one of the pictures.
Starting from a Chaos Black Spray, Trevor used Macragge Blue as a basecoat, followed by a watered-down layer of Agrax Earthshade. Once the Shade was dry, Trevor then drybrushed the Ultramarines with another layer of Macragge Blue followed by a neat highlight of Altdorf Guard Blue and a final edge highlight of Fenrisian Grey. Metal areas were painted with a solid layer of Leadbelcher, which was then heavily shaded with Agrax Earthshade.
The last stage of each model was the transfers. After each transfer was dry, Trevor added chips and battle damage to them to make them look weathered. He also used this opportunity to add battle damage to the rest of the model and paint the eyes (essentially all the little details).
And in other news:
Okay, so it's not blue, but it it's certainly not yellow either. When the Stormraven Gunship came out over a year ago, Matt Hutson promised me a fully-painted Blood Angels Stormraven to show off on the blog for the release day. For those of you with excellent memories, you'll recall that Matt spent so much time painting the interior that he ran out of time to paint the outside. Well, twelve months on, Matt has finally finished his model, and there was much celebrating in the White Dwarf office by his colleagues (I heard there was cake involved). Apparently Matt thought he needed to get it ready for May 2012, not May 2011. Yeah, yeah, a likely story...
For the most part, Matt painted his Stormraven using a 1:1 mix of Mephiston Red and Khorne Red, and stippled Abaddon Black on it to simulate smoke and exhaust burns. He even used Chaos Black Spray on the underside of it to represent reentry burn marks (yes, he sprayed it after he'd painted it - dangerous but dedicated). You may also notice that Matt's Stormraven appears to be swooping down across the battlefield, a look that Matt achieved by carving off the front corner of the flying stand so that it meets the underside of the Stormraven at an angle. Clever stuff, Mr. Hutson, clever stuff.
