Showcase: Ultramarines Librarian with book and staff

There he is, the finished Ultramarines Librarian of my 2nd Company. Quite a fun model to paint and welcome addition to my collection. More views after the jump.

You might notice how I used two shades of blue for the armour. The blue on the knee and shoulder pad is my regular Ultramarines recipe – basecoat of Mordian Blue, black shading, highlights with old Ultramarines Blue and VGC Steel Grey. According to the Codex Astartes, Librarians are supposed to wear blue armour in the same way that Apothecaries wear white or Chaplains wear black.  As Ultramarines already war blue, I chose a darker shade of blue to differentiate the Librarian from his battle brothers. A basecoat of P3 Exile Blue (Kantor Blue is similar but slightly lighter), black shading, highlights with Mordian Blue and old Ultramarines Blue.

I added a backpack from the new Tactical Squad sprue over the stock backpack that came with the blister. The icon comes from the Blood Angels Librarian Dreadnought.

These days painting metal models becomes less and less common. Nowadays I prefer the exactness of plastic sculpts, thanks to digital sculpting and 3- and 2-up design processes. Metal models are usually manually sculpted in 1:1 scale, so you might find some roughly sculpted and casted spots sometimes.

How do you like the Librarian? What’s your favourite Librarian sculpt? Tell me in the comments!