Firestorm Armada: Rense System Navy WIP3 - Pens for friends

It’s been a rather busy time for me recently, so not much chance to paint. Even less when I’m away for the weekend – however – I had taken my RSN with me, and my POSCA and other markers.

The portability and quick-drying results made these the ideal choice for fitting some painting in on a busy schedule.

Work in progress on the Bulwarks.
Fin insgnia just started

And the other three

I’ve been concentrating mainly on the Bulwarks. The interference purple is complemented by the basil green on the underside and highlighted to white with a white stripe down the side. I’ve marked some black detail on the line and picked out the undersides and the natural lines on the purple.

Fin markings complete. I used POSCA 0.7mm extra fine markers.

Each frigate has a fin marking unique to that ship. These guys are the elite – they’re proud of their ships. I’ll be continuing this practice throughout the fleet.

Siren Escorts

The Siren escorts have had some minor work done on them, as have the other ships.

The lovely Macross-inspired Banshee Dreadnought, like the other ships, has acquired a metallic violet stripe, and now has its lovely pale green underside too.

Fingers crossed I’ll get more time to work on these this week.

Orange will be highlighted with fluoro orange for energy

Phoenix destroyers in various stages of progress

The banshee and other ships of the fleet

Pale violet stripe

Overhead view of the Banshee

Firestorm Armada: Rense System Navy WIP 2

Onward, ever onward. The base coats are up in this installment. I've chosen a nice dark indigo with interference violet for the upper hulls and basil green for the undersides. Engines and the like will be a bluish metal. I'll be using both black and white for detail and some fluoro orange to represent energy tubes.

Liquitex interference violet

Folk-Art Basil Green

Winsor & Newton Slate Blue

The interference violet was the first thing to be applied to the upper surfaces. As I've mentioned before, this paint is unusual in that it shows only at certain angles when viewing. The paint itself doesn't show very well on an undercoated miniature - it needs to be 'activated' by painting over it with a wash or inks. I've chosen a Winsor and Newton brilliant watercolour 'Slate Blue' for this. I'm fairly sure these aren't made any more, but it's basically an indigo colour.

On the underside I've used folk-art 'basil green' which is a pale shade. I'll probably highlight almost to white with that.

More on this project soon.

A siren class gets its basic coat

six of each of the escorts and frigates

The sleek Phoenix class destroyers

First coat on the banshee

Overhead view

Comparison of a RSN Destroyer and a Tarakian Cruiser

Overhead of a destroyer, sans green

Escort and frigate comparison

Firestorm Armada: Rense System Navy WIP 1

I thought I had collected all of the RSN ships until this week's announcement of new ships by Spartan.

No matter, their time will come - on with the task in hand.

Nothing too exciting on this post, assembly and undercoating.

Side view of the Phoenix class destroyer

Bulwark class frigate

The Banshee class dreadnought. I put the conning tower on the wrong way round at first too.

Banshee Front/top

Here you can see how I start my models. Grey undercoat (from Halfords), then a white drybrush, which I've half done in this shot to show you the difference it makes.

Siren class escorts plus a destroyer, with white drybrush

Some more of the destroyers

I've started experimenting with two different purples on these frigates - one metallic, one interference paint.

My painting table, with drybrushed fleet

And here's the dreadnought again - I managed to reattach the conning tower correctly.