I've come to the realisation that I just love painting Warhammer! I spent the last two years forcing busts or large scale models on myself in the delusion that this is what "proper" painters painted. I didn't waste those years, I learned a tonne about colour theory and lighting, painting a good face and material rendering, all the good stuff. I have no regrets, it's absolutely made me a better painter. But anyway, I paint Space Marines now...
Below is part 2 of my Ultramarine Lieutenant painting wippage. Thanks for reading!
Steel and Gold
This guy is pretty much all non-metallic metal. The armour is bright blue NMM and the intended metal elements are either silver or gold NMM. For the steel, I kept things simple. A low value, desaturated purple as a base coat, then up through some greys, ending in a highlight of ice yellow/white. This maintains my universal shadow and highlights of purple and yellow, albeit very subtle. For the gold, I used Rhinox hide as a base, which is a brown that contains, you guessed it, purple. I then went up through ochres until I end in a highlight of ice yellow/white.
I used some references for my steel, and there's a story behind my choice. Last year I attended the Miniature Painting Open (MPO) in Bristol, hosted by Cult of Paint. When Magnus Maegtig (magnusmaegtig) wasn't looking, I of course picked his models up and had a really good look at them in hand and noticed something that I hadn't really seen on other peoples work - his extreme contrast. I knew of course that to have convincing non-metallic metals you needed to utilise high contrast, and lighting be in the right places, but this seemed, well, MORE. The darks were pretty dark, sure, but the highlights were SUPER bright and much larger than I expected. When the opportunity came to try this out myself, I went straight to his instagram to grab some references.
For the gold, I knew I wanted it to be less saturated than the blue armour so as to not fight for attention. Nothing too special here, I think I'll go in at the end of the project and glaze in some orange where gold faces gold.
The Head
There's this bloke that not many people may have heard of, Darren Latham. He used to paint for some mini company before becoming a sculptor. Anyway, Darren (darrenlatham) once created some incredible Youtube tutorials on painting in the "Eavy Metal style". Painting heads at such a small scale was something I needed to improve at, and I followed his tutorial on painting a space marine head almost to the letter and enjoyed the process a lot. I think it turned out well!
The Gem
Golden Demon Essen, 2025 was full of incredible pieces. Once piece stood out amongst them however. The Magister of Hammerhall, by Albert Moreto Font (albert.moreto.font). There was a lot to study on this piece, but the elements that really caught my eye were the glass and gem elements. When it came to painting the small gem on my piece, I went straight to his instagram to reference his work. The gem on the chest was something that really appealed to me, the huge gem on the staff is incredible, but the softness doesn't suit something of this smaller size. It's worth noting how Albert has intentionally softened and diffused the light on the staff gem so as not to create a distraction. As always, perfectly balanced.
I used a base of my dark desaturated purple, then worked up through turquoise to teal. Its worth mentioning this is also how I painted the plasma glow on the gun, just adding a lot of white towards the end.
I guess my next post will be the finished thing! Thanks for reading!
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