Re: Paint Schemes for Full Thrust

On Mon, 7 Apr 1997, Nezach wrote:

>	What are your painting phlosophies for your ships?

Building 2-10 ship squadrons in similar paintschemes helps identifying 
your forces. Also, if you have several pieces of the same mini, I find
it 
more fun to paint slight variations of the paintscheme rather than just 
putting ID numbers on the bases. Like, black wings and white wingtips on

one, reverse colors on another.
 
>	Do you do the matte grey "Star Wars" thing, or do you go for the

> Narn "Zebra on drugs" paint scheme or a variation on both?  

Gray can be good, and it's probably the most "realistic" choice (or flat

black). Base gray can be embellished with stripes, spots etc.

I like colorful paintschemes, but I'm not artist enough to paint neat
patterns on flat surfaces. I use decals (see below) to liven those up. 

Except when I can't resist doing tiger stripes.

> Do you even 
> bother painting the minis you play with (eather too eager to play or 
> *gasp* don't like to paint)  

What?!? Sacrilige! I would rather play MtG than field unpainted minis.

If you're looking for a real fast, non-skilled paintjob, do this:
Inkwash
bare metal. That's it. Get some ink, add some clear varnish (optional)
and
dab it all over the mini. Just try to avoid major puddles.  Repeat after
drying if it doesn't look deep enough. 

Anyone can do it and it adds depth to the mini. Black, dark blue, brown 
and green inks are good traditional choices, but I've gotten some very 
interesting effects with orange, yellow and red.

Ofcourse, this won't help with plastic minis...

> Are elaborate CNS fleet markings complete 
> with ship numbers your thing 

Try stealing decals from plastic model kits. They're also sold 
separately, but those are for accuracy freaks. It's probably cheaper to 
buy some of the cheapest mass production kits you can find. Go for 1/72 
or smaller. Sometimes you can use the tiny text on the sheet that wasn't

really intended as a decal.

Cut up the decals to hide where you got them. Plain numbers are great, 
roundels and stars are pretty common throughout recent history, many
flags 
can be cut up as colored stripes...

Ofcourse, you need to have relatively flat surfaces on your mini. Some 
minis are just not suited to decals.

Oh, and clear label stickers *are* a lot thicker than decals. Use at
your
risk. 

> go?  Do you think ships would even be painted or that it would make a 
> difference what the color of a cruser is when you are firing on it
from 
> half a light minute away?  

Nah... I like getting away with bright and attractive paintjobs I can't 
do in historicals (except with WWI biplanes).

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