Painting Ultramarine's Symbol

Perhaps one of the most common chapters out there and perhaps the most painted space marine chapter, the Ultramarines are sure to be found in every gaming community there is and (some of you may disagree) won't be complete without one!

From box covers to mouse pad and mugs, ultramarines is synonym with the brand of Games Workshop.

Here I'll post some simple ideas and tutorial on how to freehand paint the symbols on shoulder pads of the minis and avoid using those painful decals (leave them for the vehicles for goodness sake and pick up your brush and paint like real soldiers!)

Here's is an abstract on the methods and will be followed by pictures of an actual demonstration of the painting methods. More pics will be posted soon…In addition to that, I’ll also demonstrate how to paint a customized symbol of my ultramarines chapter with a modification of the traditional symbol. This method can also be applied to other chapter with similar pattern.

PICTURE 1 Prepare yourself with a 0 brush (fine), some towels, water and let’s get started!At this point your model should be well covered with the finish coat and ready for highlights and other smaller details to be done. Prepare some regal blue on your palette and give it a good add of water but not too dilute (say 20% water and 80% paint), thick but easy to run.

Step 1: make sure that the shoulder pad is well covered with the finish coat of ultramarines blue.

Step 2: Use regal blue and color and fill a sizable circle on the shoulder pad. Now I don’t want to dictate the size and position as others may have a personal preference, so you may move the positioning around as desired, or resize it to your liking.

Step 3: Use Ultramarine blue again and mark another circle of centre within the first one and this time much smaller as shown here.

Step 4: Continue with the ultramarine blue and create an ‘opening’ on the top as shown here, now the regal blue part resembles a crescent.

Step 5: Add the ‘wings’ on the symbol with regal blue and you can see that the ultramarines logo is getting familiar there.(note that so far, don’t worry about the edges and how neat it should be as this is just the base of the skull white that shall be applied later)

Step 6: Take skull white and follow the inside edges of the regal blue and draw a line of the symbol. After which fill it up with all white and your ultramarine logo is almost ready! Take the regal blue and touch up the edges as and when necessary…Simple right? Well, I’ll post more on the actual execution of the above steps and along with it further tips to make it convincing.

PICTURE 2 Moving on, before I show the real picture, here are some notes on edges.A well done symbol really makes the difference and the edges says it all. A simple and effective symbols always have clean edges.

Now, on picture 2, look at no.1. This is what we have most of the time when we try to free hand a symbol, uneven edges, blotches from brush and shaky hands.

Now, on picture 1, we have a darker tone below the skull white (regal blue over ultramarine blue) This provides a buffer for the symbols and any uneven edges can be corrected by just running over the white edge with the darker blue and you can create sharp and crisp corners. As shown progressively in Picture no.2, no.2,3 and 4

PICTURE 3 – Shoulderpad.jpgHere, I’ve 8 pictures to show how the ultramarine symbol can be drawn in freehand, in a rather quick and effective way.

No.1 Cover the areas with Regal blue of where the desired symbol is. You may control the size by layering with Ultramarines to control the shape and size.

No.2 Outline the shape of the symbol here crudely and allow yourself to sketch with the brush to get the right proportion and shape.

No.3 Continue on the shape drawing and outlining and you may overlay it with regal blue in between to control the outline shape or erase any errors

No.4 Once satisfied, fill up the space and you should have a reasonably well drawn up symbol

No.5 and No.6 Notice there are some smudges and uneven lines on the symbol, again this can be corrected with the regal blue on edges.

No.7 and No.8 You may also use the same technique to sharpen the edges and make the symbol cleaner and sharper!

PICTURE 4 – Jetpack.jpgWith the same principle, this technique is applied on the jetpacks as well

Good luck and happy painting!!

(Note: click on the pictures to zoom in for details)