The Artemis Class Frigate The detailing on the Artemis is quite interesting in that it is textured enough to be dry-brushed, but equally flat enough to be block painted. The trouble is, neither on their own really bring out the best in the model. With that in mind, I settled on a kind of 'hybrid' painting approach that combined both techniques. After base-coating both models with a black primer, I began with a dry-brush of Adeptus Battle Grey (GW: Foundation) over which I then added progressive lighter dry-brushes of the following colours; stonewall grey, wolf grey and finally ghost grey. All were from the Vallejo range, however, the GW equivalent will work just as fine. I then gave the entire model a thin black wash to bring back out the fine lines between all the panels and let this dry fully. Once the wash had dried, I randomly picked out a few panels and block painted them in wolf grey to give a little deliberate contrast in the hull plating, as well as neaten up the finish. The edges of the hull were then lightly dry-brushed again, this time with a 50/50 mix of ghost grey and white. With the main hulls completed, I then re-painted the central section, engines and all of the weapons in NATO black (Tamiya) before picking out the details with chainmail silver and finally mithril for the weapon highlights. The banding was neat regal blue to which I added a drop of prussian blue for the highlights (Vallejo) and that was pretty much all they needed before being ready for deployment. The Sagittarius and Olympus
Supporting the Orestes with the frigates is all well and good, however it didn't give me much more in the way of long-ranged firepower. For this task I needed the inclusion of a Sagittarius-class missile cruiser. With an all-round 30" missile barrage, the 'Sag' as it is affectionately known is able to stand-off out of harms way and support the fleet from afar. On the negative though, the Sagittarius doesn't have jump engines which makes it highly reliant on other jump-capable ships in the fleet to open jump points for it, should it need to make a hasty retreat. Similar to the Artemis above, the Sagittarius Class Cruiser was painted with a mix of dry-brushing and more traditional block painting. Starting with the messy part first, I lightly dry brushed the central super-structure and dorsal weapons batteries in adeptus grey, stonewall grey and ghost grey in that order. For the flat areas you see on the rest of the ship, I began by block painting them in an adeptus battle grey (GW: Foundation range). I then started to build up shading and highlights by layering up a thin coat of stonewall grey over this, focusing on the edges and panels. To this I added increasing amounts of ghost grey, then finally white for the finishing highlighting. Similar to the 'Sag', the Olympus-class Corvette alongside it also comes with a 30" forward-firing missile battery. However, not being a dedicated barrage cruiser, the Olympus is also a capable short-ranged 'brawler' with rail guns and medium pulse cannons. Not the most popular of ships in the fleet, being somewhat ungainly, especially when compared to the more favourable Hyperion-class, both of them nevertheless give me a few more 'initiative sinks' being skirmish level ships. Painting the Olympus was rather straight-forward being just a simple dry-brush of adeptus battle grey, stonewall grey and a very light final highlight of ghost grey in the main. To enrich the contrast though, I did add an additional very thin wash of black over the entire model, with a little more attention given to increasing the depth of the shadows. The windows were just pure skull white carefully added at the end and the weapon detailing simply GW Foundation mechrite red with a dot highlight of blazing orange. Note: Neither ship come with fighters, the Starfury wings are from the next ship in the fleet, the Nova-class Dreadnought. I just added them into the photo because I like them! | Next: The Nova-class Dreadnought and supporting Hermes Transports | |
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