The time before Christmas is contrary to common belief (my) not a time for hobbying. One might think that once the Christmas holiday is here there will be ample of time to tackle all those projects that need you attentions. But that is the problem. Why do to day what can be done tomorrow, and you have the whole holiday yet to hide in the hobby hole. And there is off curse all the other things that needs doing before Christmas, even though, shopping for presents has not been an option this year.
But I managed to sneak away for a couple of hours to paint some Ultramarines. I Choose a Primaris captain and a standard bearer and following my example with the Necrons I also need to paint two rank and file together with character model (just so that the rank and file ever gets done). I thought I had the recipe down for the Ultramarines and set to work, but in the end I realized that they were a bit dark compared to my first batch, and it turned out I had used wrong blue (Kantor blue instead of Altdorf guard blue). The difference is subtle as the blue is applied watered down over a dark background, but in the end they sometimes look almost black, especially if I use a bright contrast color.
Left is Kantor and right is Altdorf
Which brings med to the gold trim. I am not sure what I did to the trim in the beginning or why, but is was a very pale, almost towards a silver gold. For these models I did a brighter gold which I sort of like better, which meant I needed to go back and redo some of the paint I had already done. This included my Guilliman model, and I must say that I am not sure what I did there. It is very tempting to get a new one and do it properly this time.
The free hand on the models is not great. I am not sure how others do it but I can't get the brush to produce thin enough lines. Also, for some reason I am having problems with the raised areas as on the standard. I think it might be that the raised areas are slightly raised to much so that it is difficult to get god coverage on the sides of the relief without getting paint on the lower parts, i.e using one stroke of the brush.
All in all I am happy with the result, I will have to finish the five man squad in the darker tones, but I think for the rest I will return to the brighter blue.