Ultramarines Librarian

I'm not sure this is a word, but this Ultramarines Librarian might be the most 'kitbashingest' model I have.

There's bits from all manner of marine kits from the Dark Angel Veteran robed body, to the Sanguinary Guard axe. One of the best things you can have in this hobby is a well-stocked, and well-organized, bits box. That certainly came in handy for realising this model.

I had to do a little basic sculpting on this guy to create the traditional Librarian horned skull icons. I cheated, really. I used bits that already had a skull on them then added the horns myself. It's not too difficult; all you need to do is use a small 'sausage' of green stuff, make it a little pointed at one end, attach it to the model and make some cross-wise impressions to create the ridges of the horns. The professionally sculpted skulls are the focus, and my efforts benefit from the diverted attention of the eye here.

I really enjoyed painting the yellow robes, despite the nightmare reputation of the colour yellow. This was actually created by adding Bleached Bone to Snakebite Leather and gradually working up to almost pure Bleached Bone. The old Snakebite Leather is quite yellow once you lighten it up a bit, and the brown is a good shading colour for yellow.

I like the addition of the pinky-red inner lining of the robes. It contrasts with both the blue armour and the yellow robes.

Speaking of the armour, I went for a different sort of blue for this guy. I darkened my normal blue base colour (which was Mordian Blue in this instance) with an extra wash of Asurman blue (so two washes instead of one). I would normally use Ultramarine Blue and Space Wolves Blue to highlight, but instead chose Enchanted Blue and White mixes. Since the rest of my Ultramarines are blue (of course!) I wanted to try and get this guy to stand out as different and perhaps look a little more ethereal.

The Psychic Hood is made from a shoulder pad. It's not as good as the normal sort GW sculpts, but it's not too bad. A bit big and chunky, but the overall effect is fine. I added a few bits of green stuff to the head as a sort of skull–hood interface thingy (I believe that is the technical term). I also sculpted the power cables in a very similar way to the horns on the skulls.

As normal for Librarians, I painted glowing eyes. It's not as daunting as it first appears; just use a night bright colour of the eye (perhaps with an almost white dot at the centre) and a glaze (i.e. very watered down paint) of a less bright tone around the eye socket.

Hope you like this fellow. Comments welcome as always (unless you hate me, in which case leave me alone you big mean bullies).