The famous Ulthwè black and bone. Popular among so many new hobbyists joining the ranks of Aeldari players. One flick through the codex and it immediately grabs your attention as an easily replicable colour scheme across your new plastic men. At least it did for me when I was starting and knew nothing about painting. So, this was going to be easy now, right?
First you may have noticed that I had the head on the guardian while I was undercoating him, and then it was gone. It was just held there with bluetac and that had two jobs. The first was to provide an undercoat for the next few stages of paint to stick to, as all undercoats do. And the presence of the blutac meant that paint didn’t reach that area so that when I came to glue the head on later, I had bare plastic for the glue to really bond properly.
The Bone
I used my airbrush to apply a sand undercoat on the head. If you don’t have an airbrush, use the Games Workshop Wraithbone rattle can to do this stage (as I will probably do myself when I get onto the other heads).
You’ll see that I have drilled into the neck with my pin vice, added a small piece of paper clip into the hole, and attached that to a piece of plastic for ease of holding while painting. Bluetac can also do this job too if you want.
As with the zenithal highlights on the black armour, these next few stages could possibly be skipped if you wanted a simpler recipe.
Just apply the Wraithbone undercoat from the rattle can and I’ll talk about how to add other colours as we go along.
There is also the method I use to paint the bone on the Shruiken catapult coming up. If you want to copy that process for painting the helmet by hand that is also a viable option.
However, if you want to know what I did… I used my airbrush to apply an anti-zenithal of Citadel Steel Legion Drab. This was applied from below and I made sure I created a nice shadow for the other colours to go over and blend in to.
I then applied a layer of Citadel Morghast Bone with the airbrush, this time focussing on the front and again to the right for our light source.
I let the spray wrap round the helmet quite a bit, and as the paint was quite thin, you’ll see it created a nice transition between the previous Steel Legion Drab colour in the shadow.
If you’re doing this without an airbrush, I would probably apply two thin coats of Morghast Bone all over the wraithbone undercoat. It has a nice yellow tone that I think works really well for this scheme.
The last airbrush stage was a focussed spray from the front right with Citadel Screaming Skull.
Again, I let it wrap around the helmet a little bit but not nearly as far. I wanted the colours to blend nicely into each other and the airbrush is perfect for this effect.
No airbrushers… apply a thin coat or two of Screaming Skull to the areas that are facing our light source. Remember we are not highlighting yet; we are creating colour transitions. Don’t fret about how wide they end up, just keep your paint thin and look for the parts of the helmet that face up.
CAREFULLY paint Black onto the face plate.
My tip is to paint around the edges where the plate meets the helmet first and fill it all in afterwards. If you do get paint onto the bone, don’t panic. Hopefully it not too much and you can apply a small amount of Morghast Bone over the black spot, followed by a layer of Screaming skull to cover the Morghast.
You may find yourself doing this anyway to sharpen up the line where the black faceplate meets the bone helmet. I certainly did.
You’ll notice that with the eye lenses I left them a bone colour. I did this buy only painting black along the inside edges of the eye sockets. This was so I could apply a contrast paint onto the lenses and have the colour really show up over the bone. Easy lenses 101.
I highlighted up the edges of the eye sockets in the same method as I did the rest of the black armour. You could probably skip the Corvus Black layer if you really wanted to, but I’m a glutton for punishment.
The line down the front from the bottom corner is not really part of the model, but it follows the curve of the front of the faceplate. Take your time and make sure you are pulling your brush DOWN towards you to make your line as straight as possible.
A very thinned down ‘wash’ of Steel Legion Drab was painted around the ‘bumps’ on the helmet, any overflow was tidied up with Screaming skull.
I also painted the edges of the bone with pure Screaming Skull, followed by a sharper edge highlight on key areas of Screaming Skull mixed with a tiny bit of Vallejo Model Colour 70.918 Ivory.
Citadel Contrast Aeldari Emerald was applied onto the eye lenses.
This is where the black line we painted inside there came into effect – creating a transition of dark emerald where the black was, and the lighter emerald over the remaining bone colour.
I also painted the neck ribbing black, as you can see.
A final highlight of Contrast Aeldari Emerald mixed with a tiny bit of Ivory was used to highlight the lens and finish the helmet.
I hope you like my guide on painting Bone and that the tips above have given you thoughts or inspiration of how to do your next unit or army.
Next Up: Details and Weapons.
Thanks for reading.
Damien – s0ldierzer0
