Welcome to a guest post by TerranRaida. I asked him to do little how to article on his painted Shadewarith, and as you’ll read he begrudgingly obliged me due to mostly to bribes.
You can catch up with this Master of the English Language over on his blog C.R.E.A.M (Change Rules Everything Around Me).
So MBG asked me to write an article as to how I painted up my Dreadfleet ship, The Shadewraith, for the Halloween painting contest at the shop.
Mumbling about how easy it was, just washes and drybrushing, eventually I was conned into writing it up, by promises of the internet fame that would befall me. Now here I sit, in the theoretical man cave I call my loft, typing up this painting article. Sorry, as I don’t have any work in progress photos, as I was in a rush painting this and decided against wasting time taking pictures.
My initial inspiration for how to paint the ship came from a old aquarium terrain piece I had in a fishtank from a lifetime ago. From there, I decided that it would be a eerie ghostly color, similar to the old disney pictures I had lying around in the house. With my source material handy, and a gleam of hope in my heart, I began the process of turning a chunk of plastic into something that looks half decent in time for a contest.
Priming the mini the night before, the model was ready paint the next day, which was good because the speed painting I would need to do for the ship to be ready for the contest, in 4 hours. Welp.
Starting with a basecoat of Astronomican Grey, I hit everything on the ship with it. Everything, not a single detail was spared from the wrath of my brush. With the ship drying, I worked on the base, deciding I wanted it to have a roiling and turbulent sea, after all, the name of the game is Dreadfleet, not ships in calm seas.
I basecoated with Regal Blue, and applied a heavy drybrush of Vallejo Enchanted Blue. a further, more deliberate drybrush of Steel Grey was applied. Then I washed it all with Badab black, to darken it to storm sea colors. Once the wash dried, I hit it with Dead White just barely on the crests to simulate sea foam.
Now that the base was ready, I began working with washes. Already deciding on Thraka Green to give it the ghostly look from cartoons made in the 90’s (Scooby Doo, you where such a inspiration). I washed the entire hull with it (sails and all), and then after it was dried I drybrushed it Astronomican Grey over.
It was then washed, again, with Thraka Green – but I added just a hint of Scorpion Green, to make it look like it was under water for a long time. I can’t take credit for this tip however, it came from one of my friends who suggested it to me on the fly, as I hit the two and a half hour mark. When that dried, I proceeded with another drybrush of Astronomican Grey, and then a super light drybrush of Dead White.
Painting the entire ship took me approximately 4 hours, and apparently was well recieved by the bayying wolves at the store, hungry for pizza and magic cards.
That’s how I painted it, and I hope that you enjoyed reading this, now I have to work on more ships. Ships that will one day, hopefully soon, see the table top.
TerranRaida~~
Also, a big thank you to MBG for taking the picture, otherwise I am sure it would have turned out like a pile of garbage (I am not all that great at taking pictures of minis…yet…)
Check out the Three-Sixty below of the Shadewraith.
So whats your favorite Dreadfleet ship and why?- MBG
About the Author: Rob Baer
