Painting dreadfleet

First entry of the new year! Happy New Year, everyone!

The Skabrus is essentially a big, dead fish repurposed as a ship by the Skaven. I want the ship to look like a dead fish. To achieve this I primed it black and then sprayed light grey over the entire ship, to make it look like dead skin.

While attaching the ship to a piece of cardboard with blu tack the middle section with the guns and the flag came loose. Since experience with the previous ships seemed to indicate it’s easier to paint ships in parts, I painted the to parts separately and glued them together again after they were painted.

Basecoat

For the basecoat of the different parts of the ship I’ve used:

• Model Color Chocolate Brown: the wood and what could be some sort of ropes that keep the ship together.
• Model Color Copper: the bell, the metal balls on the ship and the cannons. The cannons have the shape of Skaven Warp Lightning Cannons. So copper seemed and appropriate colour. (They have the shape of the old models for these cannons: https://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/172948-Skaven%2C%20Warhammer%20Fantasy%2C%20Warplightning%20Cannon.html)
• Black followed by The Army Painter Plate Mail Metal: the chain at the back of the ship
• Model Color Dark Sand: the skeleton and teeth
• Panzer Aces Old Wood: the rope of the bell and the planks beneath the middle of the ship.
• Grey primer followed by Model Color Carmine Red: the flag.

Wash

The next step was a green wash (Game Color Wash) over the entire model to bind everything together. This ship seems to have more need to be bound together in this way than most ships. First I used a watered down wash. The wash didn’t stay in all the recesses so I gave the entire ship another layer of green wash. Pure this time.

Finalising

Finally I dry brushed light grey on the “hull” of the ship and Dark Sand on the skeleton. The last step was to paint the Skaven symbol on the flag black.

This is the fifth ship I’ve painted from dreadfleet. We’re have way there!

Post Scriptum

I wanted to share the photo bellow with you. I painted grey primer on this flag before switching to red because painting red directly on a black primer didn’t seem like a good idea. One coat of Model Color Carmine Red gave the result on the photo. It took several more coats to achieve a nice coat. In a different project this “technique” could be used to paint a miniature wearing a light grey coat covered in blood.