Painting dreadfleet

The sails

My initial plan was to keep the sails white. After gluing them to the ship, the white sails made the ship look incomplete. So I decided to paint them after all. This meant I hade to remove the sails from the ship again by breaking them from the masts. Result: one of the masts broke off and had to be glued back to the ship. The damage can’t be seen anymore. The small sails at the bow and stern I left in place and painted on the ship.

To paint the images on the sails, I choose black. The black and white looks good on this ship, I think. It’s the reverse of the traditional black pirate flag white skull and bones in white. To separate black surfaces from each other, I left certain parts white (eg: on the ribcage I painted the first rib black, left the second one white, painted the third one black,…). It took some time, but wasn’t that difficult either.

The details

While working on the sails, I decided to add some finishing touches to the ship. The flags were dry brushed with Model Color Lime Green.

The cannons were painted black. For the cannons on the deck this is sufficient to make them clearly visible and recognisable as cannons, but the cannons sticking out of the side of the ship are barely visible in black. To make them more visible, I painted all the cannons in The Army Painter Plate Mail Metal. The metallic paint can hardly be seen when looking at the ship from the side, but the cannons are very visible when looking at the ship from above. During gameplay the ship will mostly be looked at from above.