Dreadfleet – The Bloody Reaver

 

Otherwise known as the Bloody Hard paint job…..

The Bloody Reaver was the ship I wanted to save until I’d had some ‘practice’ – reason being, this is the largest, most demanding ship for Dreadfleet, and, ultimately the hardest paint job for me yet. The Reaver is filled with detail, from the wrecks comprising it’s hull, to the Fortress to the small anchors and various stone effects, all of it needs to be done with great care and precision….

I decided early on that there was no way I could rush this thing through in one night, it would be a job of several evenings and in the end took me 8 hours, spread over 3 days to get this done to the level it’s now at.

I started with a Chaos Black undercoat and got the base prepped as I described in my earlier post.

I then went over all the rock with Adeptus Battlegrey – as you will note from the pics I did this before I assembled everything so I could get right down into the features.

This was then washed down with a 1:1 ratio of Devlan Mud and Badab Black washes.

After that I decided to pick out the anchors – for this I wanted to apply a rust effect….

Now in the midst of all this stone work, you can’t forget about the cavern entrance (like I did….ahem…,) so after the rust effects, I went back to the cavern and applied the same initial rock effects to it as well. When it dried, I applied the finishing touches to all of  the rock effects by dry brushing them with Fortress Grey.

 

After that, I moved on to paint the wrecks, for this I used base colours of Mechrite Red, Mordian Blue, Gnarloc Green and (because I like the colour) Hormagaunt Purple. Gold effects were base coated using a 1:1 ratio of Scorched Brown and Shining Gold. I then washed down the wrecks with Devlan Mud.

Whilst waiting for the wash to dry, I decided to apply my bone effect method to the ribs sticking out of the rock and the spars out of the front of the fortress. I then went back and finished the base, picking out the ship wrecks in Scorched Brown and the ripped sails in Mechrite Red and Bleached Bone.

After all that, I went back over the wrecks with Scab Red, Mordian Blue and Gnarloc green to strengthen up the colours and re-applied Shining Gold to the fittings. I then painted the spars of wood, the decking and the dirt path with Calthan Brown and washed it with Devlan Mud. I the dry brushed the dirt path with Snakebite Brown for some added texture.  With the sea monster on the prow I did it in gold, filled the eye socket with Goblin Green and added a small dot of Scorpion Green. When all of that was completed, I followed White Dwarf 382’s guide on painting the fortress, roofs and towers.

 

At this stage I was two-thirds complete, I just needed to finish the sails and put it all together. To do this I started by painting the sails with Liche Purple, the drybrushed them with Warlock Purple.

I then went over the iconography with Bleached Bone followed by a light wash of Gryphonne Sepia followed again by a light coat of Bleached Bone. I then took a fineline pen and put the ship’s name on the sail name plate before applying another Gryphonne Sepia wash over the lettering. The pennants were done with a blending of Mechrite Red through to Blazing Orange at the tips.