Castor and Pollux - basecoated (sort of)

I had some time for the twins lately. I basecoated them dark gray as I usually do and basecoated them with VMC Ultramarine blue. Much to my surprise it turned to be really ultramarine whereas VGC and Citadel ultramarine is not...
Anyway, I continued with adding some shade and zenithal highlight with my airbrush. After this I drybrushed the predators with a mixture of VGC Ghost gray and VMC ultramarine blue.
Unfortunately the pictures with the early stages fell to the warp, but here what they looked like then:

As you see they looked OK, but there was much chalkiness in the details, especially on the metal parts:

I was kind of expecting this and decide to give it a glaze at this point I heavily diluted VMC transparent blue (vallejo's transparent range is excellent, I can only recommend them, they are like heavy glazes) with liquitex airbrush medium and Vallejo's airbrush cleaner (which I use to dilute acrylics with great success) and gave the tanks two thin coats. Here's how they look like:

As you see the chalkiness is practically gone, and most of the highlights are still there. The new colour is much better suited for the mainstream Ultramarines, and since this is a commercial project, I tend to favour the mainstream... :-)

I think, after retouching the most extreme highlights, the predators will be ready for the painting of the details. I can't wait!

Previously on this project:

Castor & Pollux update