Painted Dreadnought-class Heavy Cruisers for Star Wars Armada

As part of the Nebulon Cruiser commission, I also had two freshly 3D printed Dreadnought-class heavy cruisers to paint.

They were both to be painted in a similar Panzer grey as the first ship in this commission project – the Providence-class cruiser that I painted previously, plus to have a little battle damage and some coloured markings.

Painting The Hull

I used the same painting technique that I’ve been used recently for painting hulls – stippling the base colour up from a darker to lighter tone, and then do lots of dry-brushing,  primarily from the front to back, to bring out the details.

Markings

We decided on having one ship with dirty-yellow markings, and another with purple.

As it turned out, I didn’t like the purple as much as it was a bit muted in appearance against the grey hull, but the yellow markings on the other ship looked great!

Weathering and Battle Damage

I was super pleased with how all the weathering turned out on these two. 

My previous ships didn’t really have enough random hull discolouration on them before I started adding paint chips and battle damage.  Here, I spent more time adding stains and extra shading beforehand so the more detailed weathering effects looked a bit more “at home” on a less homogenously coloured hull.

Final Thoughts

The engines look great. I do like painting engine glow, but it seems to take me an age to get it to look right! In this case, the engines have plenty of texture to show-off the low lights and highlights.

I think the only thing that is really missing on these ships is object source lighting around the crew lights.