Painting the Fleet

Its been over a decade since I picked up a paint brush and tried to paint a miniature. And because I left off at a point where I felt my skills were developing nicely for a casual gamer, I am going back in with a certain degree of expectations. Expectations which I need to temper since my eyes have gotten worse with age and my hands have not gotten steadier.

Fortunately, Battlefleet Gothic ships have an advantage over say Space Marines or Eldar: they are generally big hunks of metal all the say colour except for a few highlights and contrasts. It makes them a good place to begin.

There is one problem though. Most of my paints have not been opened in a decade and a few of them have dried up into solid masses of pigment. I find myself with a more limited palette than I expected, and with the quarantine in full effect no easy way to replenish my stock. Nevertheless, I persevered. 

I have an air brush I got a rarely used years ago, so I broke it out for the base coat of the "chaos" ships, but the imperial cruisers I did not have the right colour for the air brush so it was back to the regular brush for them. I went with a dark green for the imperial cruisers, planning on bringing out the details with lighter drybrushing. The Chaos cruisers I planned to do a dark wash over bright red. I'm trying to remember all the tips and techniques I used to use and its harder than I remember. I forgot how much experimentation there is.

After a couple of coats of the green, I did a dark black wash for the crevasses and than the base green as a drybrush layer followed by a light grey drybrush very gently for the really raised edges.

Now on to the details.

The prow was hardest, getting white to look right without losing the silver contrast.

The engines I tried to make look like a blue to white glow without blending.

I'm now at the point where I need to decide "Am In happy with the result?" Or "Continue on!". I've heard it say that a painted never considers a painting finished and I really know what that means right now. I think I might attempt a bit more before I call this one done.