Dreadfleet – Painting the Shadewraith

Hi.

I’m Kai (he who owns the blog’s other half :D)- and I’m painting some of the Dreadfleet stuff.    Normally all I am is a writer, so painting and writing up guides is a new one on me, but here goes 😉

The Shadewraith ship seemed to be the easiest of all of them to paint.  Much to my surprise, we undercoated it black, not white, and then I got to work.Shadewraith - basecoat.  My first step was Astronomicon grey – and I didn’t put the pieces together – painting them as separate elements.

(while I was waiting for it all to dry, I also did some of the base work on the Bone ruler)

The Astronomicon grey coat also had some details picked out in brown for the dried seaweed, though I have to admit, this was pretty much one of the easiest parts of the whole thing.

After the astronomincon grey was dry, my next step was a pretty heavy Thraka wash, which took forever to dry.  I was very concerned that I was obliterating the detail at this point, but with the next step I started revealing gorgeous detail.

Shadewraith - central deck - washed with ectoplasm

Drybrushing isn’t the most intuitive thing I’ve ever tried, in fact, I was sure I was doing it wrong, but I loaded the brush up carefully, wiped it, ran it across the back of my hand a couple of times (which really seemed to help), the drybrushed the deck first.  I gave it another wash as suggested with a one and one mix of Thraka Green and Scorpion green, then, instead of edge highlighting, I spent some extra time dry brushing the edges again, giving a worn, textured look and feel to the whole ship.  My finishing touches were adding some colour and detail to the teeny tiny canons then I stuck it all together, taking great care to ensure that the masts weren’t damaged on insertion.  I added some extra texture to the seaweed by washing them carefully in badab black and added some drybrushed detail to the ghosts and wraiths hiding in the seaweed below the ship.

The base was completed as per the other instructions on a previous post, with attention paid to the parts that was ship specific in the same way as it was painted.

Painted so far (side)

By Kai

Kai is a writer, author and avid reader.  A mental health advocate, Ludosport athlete and coder. She's the mother of two young adults, owned by two cats, and lives with her beloved in the Cotswolds.

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