[BFG] Zeus Light Cruiser

[Seb]

Definitely liking this direction. seems more unified.

My Bretonnian retinue has a similar scheme of french blue and wheat brown/bone. It works similarly and this would be a darker version in a sense.

Look forward to the next update.

- Seb

[mangozac]

Yeah thanks Seb, feeling a lot better about it now! The colours run similar to most of the rest of my painted fleet:

Actually with that chocolate brown base coat for the red areas I'm very tempted to stipple some brown stripes across the hull, an effect which always looks good. No more experimenting on this model though - maybe next time!

[Vaaish]

You know, your fleet looks pretty awesome compared to most of them I see. congrats!

[mangozac]

Thanks man! Now that I may be having a monthly game or two I'll have to get the rest of it painted up!

[mangozac]

Well it's finally done! I finally finished painting my Zeus CL and what a mission it's been! I think part of the problem was the fact that I haven't been doing any painting in a long time, so it took a while getting back into the mindset and the actual process. Also, I'm still adjusting to my colour palette in the Vallejo paints.

Anyway, I tried photos with both a white and black background - each has its advantages and disadvantages. The colours seem a little more washed out on the dark background.

So what do you think? I had better hit it with some matte varnish before gaming with it, as the paint seems to rub off pretty easily.

[factor40]

It's amazing how the background can make such a difference. From the first pic, I would have thought the orange areas were red. They are orange, right?

Overall it looks really good. I have to agree with Vaaish the other pics of your fleet look well painted. Awesome!

[Vaaish]

This scares me.... I think you would do a bit better on the contrast and color if the red wasn't so blazing or was a bit more limited in application. More of a red brown or heavily washed with delvan mud I think could help a good bit.

[mangozac]

Scary huh?

OK well it seems that the colours are all a bit weird - hence Factor40's confusion as to the actual colour. The red is actually red, not orange as it seemed in the screwed up black background pic.

Vaaish, I think I understand your comment regards to the red toning being too bright, but I'm honestly too scared to do something like a Devlan Mud wash on the reds for fear of ruining the model which I feel is acceptable as is. Playing with Devlan Mud during painting the hull it seemed to me to give very inconsistent results in terms of pooling and coverage.

Also, the red tone I'm using I deliberately tried to match to the red tone on the Daunless I had painted previously. I took a side-by-side pic of them:

(the colouring still isn't perfect in this picture - the reds aren't quite so orange looking in real life)

But I guess you feel that the red tone works better on the Dauntless because it's main hull is a much darker shade...

[Vaaish]

Actually it was that there was so much red and that it was crazy bright so it kind of overpowers the rest of the ship. You have a very nice look going on with the hull and the bright, flat red on both the wings and the inset of the prow kind of hurt that. (I REALLY thing the diagonal stripe of a red this bright would be enough )

[mangozac]

OK I see. That makes sense. I didn't want to have to do the entire wings in red, but seriously the extent of paint bleed on the other wing left me feeling like I had no other option. I might just have to chalk this one up to experience and hope I can get better results on my next ship.

Although it's just dawned on me - the problem I'm going to have is two different hull tonings throughout the fleet. I have no idea what my previous "recipe" was (as seen on the Dauntless) but it involved a few different browns, an ink wash, and a lot of that ochre colour.

It certainly makes it easier to identify ships of the same class on the tabletop though!