Dreadfleet: Swordfysh and Painting Sails

The Swordfysh is the first of my Dreadfleet ships with sails. In this post, I detail the process I used for painting its sails.

 

 

The ship's hull and masts were all painted first.

 

For the sails, I primed the fronts white and the backs black. The white allows me to keep the icons bright, while the reverse side can be drybrushed up from the dark undercoat. I kept the sails on the sprues so I had something to hold while painting them.

 

The skeletons were basecoated with GW Screaming Skull, and drybrushed with Formula P3 Menoth White Highlight. The Tridents were basecoated with P3 Rucksack Tan.

 

The fish and snakes were basecoated green. The specific color is a mix of P3 Gnarls Green, lightened with some P3 Thrall Flesh.

 

I washed the bones and tridents with brown ink, and the green areas with GW Coelia Greenshade. The fish teeth were then picked out with white.

 

GW Nuln Oil was carefully washed into some of the recesses and over the rest of the sail.

 

With the washes dry, I drybrushed all of the iconography with a very dry brushing of Screaming skull, just enough to accent all of the edges and high points. The bones were further highlighted with Menoth White Highlight, and a little more Coelia Greenshade was thinly washed over the green portions.

 

With the icons on each sail finished, I painted the background color. This was a mix of black and P3 Coal Black.

 

The sails were further highlighted with a mix of P3 Coal Black, GW Fang Grey, and P3 Menoth White Highlight. The highlighting was brought up witha series of fine cross-hatching, brighter than it needed to be, then I brought the color back down with a thin glaze of Coal Black.

 

The masts were glued in place and the spars were painted. These were simply a basecoat of Screaming Skull and a wash of brown ink. The tips were drybrushed with a little Menoth White Highlight to punch up the color.

 

 

The last step was to clip the sails from their sprue frames and touch up the edges. They were all pegged into a piece of wood and sprayed with Testors Dull Cote before finally gluing them onto the ship.

 

 

 

 

 

 

'Til next time!