I got out a few of my old spaceships the other day and decided that one lot needed a repaint as they were a bit dark and needed brightening up, they also had some paint chipped off and so needed a little bit of attention.
So the first thing I did was fix a couple of the bases and then gave them all a quick coat of very thin black paint just to bring them all back to a basic colour, using primer on the chips first.
I then hit them all with a slightly heavier than normal dry-brush using Army Painter Ultramarine Blue which brought out all the details, once this was dry I then went back over all the top edges with a light dry brush with Game Color Electric Blue.
Once this was dry I just added small amounts of Vallejo Environment Slimy Grime Light this just gave them a dirty look in some of the deeper crevices.
Then I covered them all with a good coat of matt varnish and that was that, I don’t really think they need much else, they are ready for the table which is my normal standard of painting.
I may come back to these at some point like many of my other ships and put on some numbers and markings to make them more individual, but as yet I have not found a way of doing this, my painting skills will not allow me to paint these markings freehand so I either need to find some sort of stencils ( which is probably unlikely ) or find some decals which I can use on the ships.
The second lot were given to me ages ago by a friend, he had painted them and they looked lovely ( much better than any painting I could do ) but their bases were old and some were broken and all needed tidying up and putting on my square bases which I prefer.
All the bases were coated with black primer and then I added all the numbers to the back corners, these are just printed out onto paper and then cut out and stuck on.
Once the numbers were dry I covered all the bases with a good coat of matt varnish.
Hi Mac,
The Brigade AmRep ships look good in that light blue scheme – and I agree, short of stencils or transfers, painting symbols or numerals by hand on models of this ‘scale’ is a nightmare. I’ve tried it in the past & although the ships looked OK the symbols, numbers & hull lettering looked obviously ‘not good’ … 🙁
Those Aquan ships from your friend are very good too (I wish I painted that well).
My own fleets will (hopefully) be seeing a lick of paint too. My method of painting ships is pretty much the same as yours – black undercoat/primer, dry brush primary hull colour (Klingons first, so gun metal grey) then either a lighter dry brush or wash to pick out surface details (in this case a mid to dark green wash should do). Then I pick out small details in silver or bronze. Fortunately for me the hull symbols (Klingon trefoil) in moulded onto the underside of the main hull – painting that should be easy even for sausage fingers like mine! 😀
Vic
Hi Vic,
I really like the Brigade ships especially the American Republic ones, the paint job was really quick and would be so much better with some sort of markings on the ships I am just not sure how to do them.
I am searching the internet to try and see if there is an easy way out there…
The paintwork on the Aquan ships is really lovely, I have loads more of these ships that still need painting but there is no way I could paint them the same way
I am looking forward to seeing your ships when you have painted them mate, especially the Star Trek ones, it will give me the push that I need to paint all mine.
Mac