Painting dreadfleet

The castle is the largest terrain piece in the box. It could be considerd a centre piece, so it deserved some extra attention. The rocks on which the castle is build, have already been painted, as you could read in my earlier entry about painting rocks. At the time I had no idea how to paint the castle itself. The overspray from painting the rocks, had already given the castle walls a dark grey look. Darker then the rocks. I liked the look of the walls. A bit of dry brushing and they’d be finished. Only the two towers at the centre of the castle were still only covered in black primer.

I gave the towers a base coat in model air concrete from Vallejo. The same colour I’ve used to basecoat the rocks. It took many, many layers to base coat the towers and get rid of the brush strokes. The next step was a black wash and many more coats of model air concrete. (I’m still not good at using washes. For others with this problem. A video with Sam Lenz has just been released by Tabletop Minions about using washes: https://youtu.be/PAKvwVSKqWI) A thorough dry brush with model color light grey followed.

Up until this point I followed the same steps I’ve used to paint the rocks. But I don’t want the castle to look like the rocks. For the following steps I’ve used different paints to create a difference in the look of the rocks and the look of the castle. I started dry brushing the castle walls and the two towers with Model Color “Blue Blue Pale” and a second final dry brush wit Model Color “Pale Blue” (both Vallejo).
The names are very similar, but they are very different paints. (Possibly the names weren’t translated correctly from Spanish.) Blue blue pale is more blue, where as pale blue is more green. These two colours gave the castle a more blueish/greenish grey look, while the rocks are neutral grey.

Now the roofs of the castle needed to be painted. For a ceramic look I base coated them with Panzer Aces Light Rust and then dry brushed them with Panzer Aces Yellowish Rust. Both from Vallejo.

Finally I wanted more earth looking surfaces on the ground within the castle. I’ve experimented with some browns, but perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea.

Now I could finish the castle with a coat of matt varnish, using the cans from The Army Painter. This is the varnish I will use for almost everything in this project.

I’ve finished the volcano and another large island as well. After varnishing I’ve put some semigloss varnish on the lava, to make it look more realistic.

My largest terrain pieces have been finished!