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I am working on Ultramarines right now, and I have always loved John Blanche's 40k artwork. I'd like to achieve a similar aesthetic on my Ultramarines, but I'm not quite sure how I could capture Blanche's sepia hues on the vibrant blue of Ultramarines.

Any tips are appreciated, thanks!

(P.S. If you haven't seen Blanche's paintings and models, I recommend checking them out!)

There are a few important things to keep in mind going for a Blanchian style, although blue is probably one of the harder things to pull it off with!

1) Limit your palette. Keep to no more than about 5 colours, 3-4 of which should dominate the model and the remainder you should use as highly contrasting spot colours. Try and do a bit of common mixing between them to keep the tones consistent; for instance, if you are painting your holster and belt brown, throw some of that same brown into the red you use for the purity seal or bolter casing, so on and so forth.

Blanchian models tend towards either very warm, with orange, red and brown, or cold, with grey, black and off-white, so try and stick to one or the other. For instance, if you're doing your bolter cases red, go for a rich, leathery brown on your holster/belt, almost an orangey red for the purity seals, so on and so forth.


2) See the armour as your canvas rather than the focus. You're going to struggle to get that classic, grimdark sepia look on the blue armour, but with everything else, you can go Full Blanchitsu and compensate a bit. Make any purity seals, cloths and hanging cloths washed out and frayed, keep your faces gaunt and pale (use very faint purple or blue washes for this, works a treat), when you're doing metallic areas keep them worn and rough (lots of drybrushing and washing).

3) Beat up that armour. Apply sponge chipping in silver and black (whichever gives you the highest contrast), wash some of your basing colour around the recesses of the boots and greaves to look like dust or mud clinging to the plates, You might even want to go as far as giving all the armour recesses a brown/sepia wash, but that might be too much so maybe test how it looks over your blue first.

4 and possibly most important) Everything about this style of modelling and painting is about character, and getting your minis to tell a story. To that end, don't worry so much about the technical aspects, but think about what you want the viewer to see when they look at those models. Tie together the pose, the face, the base, the weathering and damage on the paintjob, all to tell a story. Add marking or deviate from the standard scheme a little, give your sergeant a tilt plate bearing his squad's heraldry or your meltagunner a red knee pad with the devastator mark on to show his recent promotion, that sort of thing.


This is certainly an interesting idea, and after a quick google I can't see any UM done this way... Good luck, and do share the results on here when you have something!

^ That.
the only thing i have to add really is maybe go for a cold blue grey highlight that isnt too bright. get some weathering powders and give them a dust over to dirty them up. experiment with battle damage, dirt and weathering, maybe even some streaking effects..going for a look that doesnt look like neglect, but suggests a long period of conflict with little chance for respite and little time to clean and refurbish armour and armament. i wouldnt suggest trying to keep this up for a full army though. maybe use it on one unit, one that would be a forward special forces type element and be in the field for long periods.

You're going to have a hard time doing a literal sepia look with Ultramarines because blue and sepia are two completely different colors. So you need to ask yourself what defines "sepia" as a style. And the answer is two things: a monochrome palette, and very muted de-saturated colors. Monochrome is hard to do with fixed chapter color schemes, but you can absolutely use subdued shades of those colors. Instead of a bright primary blue use a gray base with a bit of blue tint added, then use a lighter gray instead of white for the squad markings. Instead of red for the bolter use brown with some red added. Use a base color/style that matches the palette of the model. Etc. It's a lot more work with mixing colors, but you should be able to capture some of the sepia concept.

That said, a sepia filter* is still an option. It's very definitely going to skew your model in the direction of heavy weathering, because your eye will always read a brown tint over a non-brown color as dirt, but it's an option. I would strongly suggest using oil paints for this, you can thin them a lot more than acrylics and they'll remain wet and possible to adjust for hours/days instead of a few seconds/minutes. A very translucent brown oil layer will reduce color saturation and, at the same time, unify the colors of the model in that brown-ward direction.

*NOT a wash. A filter is much more translucent and applies a tint to the entire surface, a wash is a heavier shade that settles in low points and is intended to add variation in light and shadow.