Painting dreadfleet

Dreadfleet comes with several small terrain pieces. The rocks and sea have been painted following the same methods described in previous entries.

To paint the wooden wrecks:

• Bade coat: Model Color chocolate brown
• Wash: Vallejo black wash
• Dry brushing:

1. Model Color orange brown
2. Model Color Japanese uniform WWII
3. Model Color dark sand

This project was an opportunity to try out Vallejo’s wood & leather paint set. When I bought it, the colours surprised me a bit. After testing, I conclude the lighter colours in the set complement a chocolate brown base coat very well and the this combination of colours succeeds at creating a wooden look. I can recommend this paint set to create the look of wood. In a future project, I will try out painting leather with this set.

The smallest terrain pieces contain a mast with a flag on top. I painted these red and green.

Base coat: Model Color Medium Olive

Wash in the fold of the flag: black wash

The round, outer parts of the flag: dry brushed heavily with Model Color Lime Green, followed by a final dry brush of pale blue. Pale blue was perhaps not the best colour for this, but it was what I had available.

This made the flags look lively.

Base coat: Model Color Carmine Red

Wash in the fold of the flag: black wash

The round, outer parts of the flag: dry brushed with Model Color Lime Orange Red.

The carmine red was surprisingly glossy, but this will disappear after varnishing with math varnish.

The heavy dry brushing on the flags makes them look more lively. I must remember this when painting the flags of the ships.

Painting the sails was problematic. The terrain pieces were primed black, which was the suitable primer colour for the rocks, the sea and the wrecks. Not for white sails. I brushed several layers of white primer over the black primer. Eventually I switched from primer to Model Color White. Brush strokes remained visible and the overall appearance of the sails was to rough for sails. I tried to give some shading with:

• Black wash. Bad idea!
• Washes with watered down paint of light browns. Not great.
• Game Wash Sepia Shade. Hmm, still not great, but I wanted to try out this wash out because I just bought it.

After much experimenting and a final white highlight/reparation attempts I consider the sails “good enough”. I don’t think I can get them any better and I want to move on to painting ships.

Perhaps I should have painted coats of grey paint over the black primer, starting with dark grey and building up to light grey to end with white.

Well, they were supposed to look like sails from ships that wrecked long ago. The definitely look weathered!