Painting dreadfleet

Its been a while since my last update, but I have kept painting in the meantime.

The bases of the ships consist of sea surface. The miniatures of the cogs, sea monsters and the smaller terrain pieces contain sea as well. Here I only describe the bases, but I’ve followed the same steps for the other pieces containing sea.

To begin with, I primed the bases in white. I left the bases on the sprue for priming, but the result isn’t what it should be. I removed the bases from the sprue and gave them another layer of white primer.

The next step was to base coat them blue. The game comes with a gaming math in a nice saturated, dark blue. I want the bases of my ships to look similar. The goal is for the sea to have a “painted look”, like you’ld see on a painting. Not so much a realistic look.

The bases were airbrushed with Model Air Blue “Blue Angels” from Vallejo Model Air. Then they were dry brushed thoroughly with Jade Green (Game Color from Vallejo). For the second layer of dry brushing  I dry brushed the raised areas with blue green (Model Color). Finally the most raised areas and the peaks of the waves where dry brushed with pale blue (Model Color).

The result looks nice. While working on the bases as well as on the rocks, I noticed dry brushing gives a really good result after the third layer of (different) paint.

With the sea painted, many details still need to be done. Each base has details that reflect the ship it’s for: the dwarf battleship has a little steam boot on it’s base, the elven ship has dolphins accompanying it,…

Painting the details will be for another time.

On to something completely different: I still had to varnish my golden gaming aids. At the store I asked for the glossiest gloss varnish they had. They recommended gloss topcoat from Mr. Hobby. This is the result. Some very shiny golden gaming aids. 🙂