April Hobby Challenge: Roboute Guilliman Week 1 Update

Well, a week has passed since we started the challenge of painting up Roboute Guilliman, the recently returned Primarch of the Ultramarines, and there still seems to be a long way to go.

For the past week, I’ve been concentrating on the blue of his armour, taking my time to get into all the detailed areas as best I can. Initially I brushed on an undercoat of Citadel Abaddon Black (yes, I know it’s not an undercoat, Mike, but it was the nearest thing to hand in the absence of my airbrush!) over the whole miniature. Once the whole thing was undercoated, it was onto his armour.

For this I used Citadel Macragge Blue (base) and a few different brushes. The initial coat I did with a Medium Layer brush, leaving it to dry before washing it with Guilliman Blue wash. Once this was dry, I went back and picked out all the blue areas with Macragge Blue again, ensuring there was an edge of Guilliman Blue around all the details.

I then added some Vallejo White to the Macragge Blue to lighten it, and went over the blue sections again, this time leaving the Guilliman Blue, and an equally thin section of Macragge Blue. I did this a second time, adding more white and painting all the sections again, leaving the Guilliman, Macragge and the mix layers visible. So far it’s made the blues quite vivid and Im pleased with how they look so far.

Sometimes it’s a slog to get through extremely detailed miniatures; I find it exhausting ensuring that everything is painted as well as I’d like. For this though, I’m resisting the urge to just whack on the gold and have done with it.

I’ve concentrated entirely on the blues, and for that reason, the rest hasn’t even been touched. And now, the pictures of where I’m up to:

So that’s me for the first week. We have two bank holidays next weekend, so I should be able to have the blue finished and get cracking through the metallics.

Over to you, Mike. – Rob

Thanks, Rob!

Okay, so as I suggested in the first hobby challenge post, we would take different approaches to this model. And it seems that I’m right.

The first thing I wanted to talk about was assembling the model. How you assemble and clean up the model is vital to a good paint job. (I’ll be posting a video on this soon).  Guilliman is a really well thought-out model, and goes together very nicely, in a fashion that mostly covers up any mold lines. The only slight difficulty is where his left leg joins his waist. Make sure that you hold it together while it glues so that the gap is properly filled.

I’m not normally one for sub-assemblies – I find they usually convolute things. There are parts of the model that you won’t see when assembled, but waste time painting, and you also have to be very careful when you glue it together that you don’t ruin your lovely paint job – however, there are certain times when it is necessary. Such as using a different colour undercoat (primer), or a different basecoat.

The majority of Guilliman was going to blue, so I started by assembling his body and armour. The sword is the only thing that is going to be a different colour is the sword, but that’s easy enough to do on the model, it also means that his gauntlet will match the rest of his armour, and it’s easier to hold whilst I paint it.

His bare head was going to have a white undercoat, so that the flesh tones go more naturally over the top (I also assembled the helmet, but that will just sit in the neck join while I paint it, and I will be able to use either), and I also thought it best to leave the base separate so I can attack that with a big brush/airbrush. In order to handle the parts better I just cut a bit of sprue and glued it to the model in a place that would later be glued to the rest of the model. I used super glue for this as it’s an adhesive rather than a solvent (a solvent melts the material so that it can bond and dry, forming one piece), and means I can easily snap off the sprue piece when done.

I started by undercoating the model and base with Vallejo black primer, using an airbrush. (It says that you can use this through an airbrush but make sure you still thin it down, and if necessary do a couple of thin coats). I used Vallejo white primer for the bare head, also through the airbrush.

I’m mainly following the White Dwarf (March 2017 Issue) guide for painting Guilliman, with a few changes/additions of my own. So, I started by spraying the armour with Citadel Air Macragge Blue. Again, I thinned this slightly and gave it a couple of thin coats, allowing it to dry between each coat.

The first colour I attacked was the gold of his armour. You have to be a little bit careful, but what this allows me to do is to clean up the blue afterwards and then highlight the smaller blue armour sections. (i.e. there’s a lot more gold than blue!) I used Citadel Retributor Gold for this, and painted it a bit at a time so it didn’t become monotonous. I started with the legs, which are possibly the least focal point, so that I could get a feel for the paint over the blue, before tackling the larger, more noticeable sections.

I often get bored of painting intricate, metallic sections, as the paint is such a pain to work with. So I had a break and tackled another, unrelated part of the model, the sword. This is one of the Emperor’s own – okay, borrowed – flaming swords, so it needs to be impressive. I started with a basecoat of Citadel Averland Sunset. This is quite a think paint, so I watered it a little (it might be better to use Lahmian Medium) and brushed on two coats, to make sure that there was a nice, deep yellow colour to the sword.

And that’s all I managed to get done in a week. This might be a tight one!