Category: Ultramarines

Ultramarine Veteran Sergeant, Golden Demon 2023

On By Chris B.In Golden Demon, Horus Heresy, LEDs, Painting Recipe, Space Marines, Ultramarines, Warhammer 40,0002 Comments

Allow me to present the Ultramarine Veteran Sergeant, my entry to the ‘Warhammer 40,000 Single Miniature’ category at this year’s Golden Demon. So now you know why I haven’t posted many new miniatures since the end of February!

The Road To Golden Demon

I originally started on a different model for the single miniature catergory, but after a few rounds of testing I couldn’t quite get the LED effects to look how I wanted, so I shelved that project and decided to have a re-think. Then, while browsing old rule books for inspiration, I rediscoved the classic art shown below, and was suddenly inspired!

This art was reused a number of times, on everything from colour inserts, book covers, and even on the box art of the short-lived Ultramarines board game. I think it is one of the iconic pieces of Rogue Trader art, so I decided to give it a modern reimaging – with a little added LED magic of course. I did briefly consider planning the whole unit as a ‘Warhammer 40,000 Squad’ category entry, but decided that was a little ambitious in the time available. I decided to concentrate on the veteran sergeant at the front of the unit, as he is definitely the most recognisable part.

Painting & Modelling

Both the sergeant and his fallen comrade are made almost exclusively from the Legion MkVI Tactical Squad kit, with a couple of minor exceptions. The power fist came from my bits box, and I think it’s from an older version of the Space Marine Tactical Squad sprue, and I chose it because it was a closer match to the art. The skull in the fallen marine came from the Citadel Skulls set. The LED helmet eye lenses are achieved using the technique described in my LED Eye Lens Tutorial. I did the same thing for the fire inside the casualty’s skull, only in this case I used an LED from a LED Tea Light to achieve that flickering fire effect. The flames themselves are sculpted from acrylic gel. Both LEDs are connected in parallel and operated by a single switch and coin cell battery. I’ve tested it, and fingers-crossed the battery will last for 48 hours in the Golden Demon cabinets!

My recipes for the Ultramarines blue armour and the silver metallics are below, if anyone is interested. The whole model was undercoated Chaos Black.

  • Ultramarine Armour
  • Macragge Blue basecoat
  • 50:50 Kantor Blue:Abaddon Black shade
  • Altdorf Blue highlight
  • Calgar Blue fine highlight
  • Fenrisian Grey fine highlight on top edges and corners
  • Blue Horror dot highlight
  • Silver Metallics
  • Leadbelcher basecoat
  • Nuln Oil shade in deepest recesses
  • Gryph-Charger Grey shade
  • Ironbreaker specular highlight
  • Runefang Steel edge highlight
  • 60:40 Runefang Steel: White Scar edge highlight on sharp edges and corners

This model included quite a lot of freehand, much of which you can see above. My biggest tip for this type of freehand is to “sketch” the words or shapes with thinned Administratum Grey, and then go back and fill it in more firmly with Corax White. I try to avoid using White Scar, as it’s just to bright. I normally then finish off with a thin glaze of the base colour over the freehand – in this case that’s Macragge Blue. This helps to dull it down a bit and make the insignia look weather-worn and faded. As an aside, while studying the word ‘ULTRA’ on his shoulder, I noticed the font used in the artwork was Times New Roman! It’s good to see some things never change, even in the grim darkness of the far future!

I think it’s also worth discussing the base. Not a lot of the ground is visible in the artwork, so I felt I had essentially free reign. I’ve always interpreted this picture as showing the Ultramarines breaching a wall or fortification, and I’ve tried to echo that feeling with the way the veteran sergeant is clambering over the fortifcations and even his fallen battle brother. There’s no time to commend his soul to the Emperor, the breach is not yet secured!

The ground in the artwork is a red-brown, and I decided to skew red. This was to enchance the “retro” nature of the model, and call back to some of the weird battlefields you saw in White Dwarf in the late 1980s, before everything became uniform green flock grass in the early 90s. Dark red is also quite an 80s colour by itself. This is also why I chose a square plinth for the model, rather than a round one, to further enhance that retro vibe. Now I think about it, I kind of wish I’d put the miniature on a square base!

  • Red Rock Base
  • 50:50 Rhinox Hide:Gal Vorbak Red basecoat
  • Seraphim Sepia shade
  • Gal Vorbak Red drybrush
  • Wazdakka Red drybrush
  • Wild Rider Red drybrush
  • Trollslayer Orange drybrush

That’s it for today, but I should mention that this is the first of two Golden Demon entries that I will be submitting this year, so there will be more from me again soon. As always, thanks very much for reading, and please don’t forget you can also follow my work on social media at Twitter, Mastodon and Instagram.

My Ultramarine Primaris Lieutenant on WarhammerTV

On By Chris B.In Space Marines, Ultramarines, Warhammer 40,000, Warhammer Community, Warhammer TVLeave a comment

Yesterday I was fortunate enough to have one of my models make it onto Warhammer TV again! My Ultramarine Primaris Lieutenant featured alongside the work of other hobbyists on this Thursday’s ‘#WarhammerCommunity Hobby Round-Up: March For Macragge’ episode on Warhammer TV (Thursday 14th April episode, at around the 1 hour and 20 minute mark, if anyone would like to see it).

I’m very honoured to once again have had my work exhibited in this way, and as always a big thank you to Nick, Simon and the rest of the Warhammer Community Team for their kind words and high praise!

Ultramarines Primaris Lieutenant

On By Chris B.In LEDs, Social Media, Space Marines, Technical, Ultramarines, Warhammer 40,0001 Comment

What if…the Ultramarine from the ‘Epic Space Marine’ box art had survived to cross the Rubicon Primaris? That’s the question that I asked myself for this year’s #MarchForMacragge side-project!

If you’re on the ‘hobby’ parts of social media then you may have seen the #MarchForMacragge hashtag being used a lot in the last few weeks. The premise is simple – paint something Ultramarine-related at some point during March and then share the results. Last year I painted an Ultramarine Veteran, and this year I tasked myself with recreating and updating the Ultramarine shown in the central image above. My goal was to bring the character up-to-date with Primaris proportions and Mk X armour, while retaining as many of the characterful details of the artwork as possible.

Building & Painting

For those not familiar with the artwork I’m referencing, here is the cover art for the ‘Space Marine’ box. This version of ‘Space Marine’ was the second edition of the 6mm ‘Epic’ game system, a successor to the original ‘Adeptus Titanicus’ game, and a precursor to today’s game of the same name. This art is one of the iconic pieces from GW in the early 90s, in my opinion, and we saw it reproduced and reused on book covers and promotional materials throughout the decade.

The Lieutenant is mostly based on the limited edition ‘Lieutenant Amulius’ model, only with the head replaced with a Blood Angels head and that arms from an ‘Easy to Build’ Primaris Intercessor to more closely match the pose in the artwork. The laurel wreaths on his head and chest were sculpted from modelling putty. This is what my gaming group jokingly refer to as a “wallet bleed” class conversion, i.e. something that requires the cutting-up and repurposing of rare or difficult to obtain miniatures.

The LED bionic eye was mostly achieved using the basic techniques described in my LED eye lens tutorial, with one key exception; instead of recasting the head in resin I used one of the GW plastic heads. I drilled a 1mm hole into the bionic eye of the plastic head, and then a larger hole up through the neck to meet the eye hole in the middle of the head. I then fed the wires of my 3V red ultra nano SMD chip LED in through the eye hole and out of the neck, then gently pulled the LED into the hole. I then ran the wires through the torso and legs – again, as described in my LED eye lens tutorial – to connect to the battery in the base. Then I applied a small blob of Water Splash Effect Gel, available from Green Stuff World, to fill in the hole of the bionic eye.

Once the gel was dry I applied three successive coats of Citadel ‘Technical’ Spiritstone Red to give the eye some colour when the LED is off and also to prevent the LED appearing too bright. Looking at the two pictures above, the LED is switched on in the left hand image and turned off in the right hand image.

When it came to the heraldry on his right shoulder pad, I thought I was going to have to make an educated guess as to what was on the rear half of the pad. That was until I realised that the full heraldry is repeated on the flag of the Land Raider! At first I assumed those were small stars in the top right blue square of the banner, but it was only when I noticed they weren’t on the Lieutenant’s shoulder pad that it occurred to me they were probably bullet holes in the banner.

The heraldry is painted on freehand, except for the Ultramarine symbol on the left, which is painted over a small transfer. One of the best tips I’ve ever received about freehand heraldry is from my good friend Apologist, and that was never to use pure black or pure white for heraldry and text in miniature painting. The reason for this is that the pure colours really stand out and draw the eye too much. Therefore the dark lines in the heraldry and 50:50 Abaddon Black / Mechanicus Standard Grey, and the white areas are Corax White.

Anyway, that’s all for today. I hope you’re enjoyed this little side project! Hopefully see you back here again soon. Don’t forget you can also follow my work on Twitter and Instagram.

My Ultramarines Veteran on WarhammerTV

On By Chris B.In Social Media, Space Marines, Ultramarines, Warhammer 40,000, Warhammer TV4 Comments

Yesterday I was lucky enough to have one of my models make it onto Warhammer TV for the seventh time! My Ultramarines Veteran featured alongside the work of other hobbyists on this Thursday’s ‘Community Hobby Round-Up #MarchForMacragge Edition’ on Warhammer TV (Thursday 1st April episode, at the 46 minute mark, if anyone would like to see it).

I’m very honoured to once again have had my work exhibited in this way, and a big thank you to Ben, Nick and the rest of the Warhammer Community Team for their kind words and high praise!

Ultramarines Veteran

On By Chris B.In LEDs, Social Media, Space Marines, Ultramarines, Warhammer 40,0004 Comments

It has been a long vigil my brothers. But as we endure, so endures the Imperium.

Stolus, Ultramarines Veteran

Something a little left field this week: an Ultramarines Veteran, based on the limited edition ‘Imperial Space Marine 2016’ model and painted in the Rogue Trader era Ultramarines colour scheme. A friend recently gave me this model brand-new-in-box as a gift. My first instinct was to paint it up as a Crimson Fist, especially as that is how the box art miniature is painted. However I realised that it might look a bit strange alongside my Primaris Crimson Fists due to the size difference, so I started to wonder if I might go down a different route…

If you’re on “hobby” Twitter or Instagram then you may have seen the #MarchForMacragge hashtag floating around. If you’re not sure what that is, basically it’s just a bit of fun to encourage people to paint Ultramarines or Ultramarine-adjacent miniatures during the month of March and post them online with the hashtag. This set me to thinking about the Ultramarines army that got me into the hobby.

Back in the early 1990s I was introduced to Rogue Trader – as the first edition of Warhammer 40K was known – by the son of one of my dad’s friends. He had a large army of classic plastic ‘RTB01’ and metal space marines all painted up as Ultramarines. He would split this army in two and we would play games of Ultramarines vs Ultramarines so that I could learn the rules. Thinking about Rogue Trader era Ultramarines gave me a warm nostalgic feeling, and suddenly I knew exactly what I was going to do with my Imperial Space Marine!

Building & Painting

The LED effects for this model used my standard LED Eye Lens Tutorial. The specific LED used was a TruOpto 1.8mm Green LED, but otherwise it followed the LED Eye Lens Tutorial to the letter. I went for a green LED mainly to differentiate this Ultramarine from my Crimson Fists, and also because I felt the green went very nicely with their particular shade of blue.

The paint recipe I used on the armour is fairly simple and uses Citadel paints: Macragge Blue base, Nuln Oil shade, Calgar Blue highlight and Fenrisian Grey final highlight. Readers with long memories may recognise some of the Rogue Trader era iconography; the chequered helmet stripe indicates a veteran and the small icon to the bottom right of the Ultramarine symbol indicates a ‘beamer’ operator. This seemed like the closest match between the ‘disintegration gun’ the Imperial Marine is equipped with and the established weapon icons from that era.

That’s it for this week. I hope you’ve all enjoyed this slight tangent from the normal marines that I paint and a trip down memory lane! I’ll be back again soon with more Crimson Fists, so stay tuned, and please don’t forget you can find me doing hobby stuff on Twitter here and Instagram here.