WIP: Star Wars Armada Fleet

After the completion of the the Super Star Destroyer commission, the client asked me to paint the rest of his fleet to match. The fleet consists of two Gozanti-class cruisers, one Gladiator-class Star Destroyer, one Interdictor-class Star Destroyer, one Victory-class Star Destroyer, and one Imperial-class Star Destroyer.

Given their smaller size, I decided against using the Tamiya aerosol cans I used in the SSD build and instead went with standard Tamiya paint. Luckily for me, I chose relatively easily matched sprays when painting the SSD; Gunship Grey (TS-48) and Haze Grey (TS-32).

Tamiya Dark Grey (XF-24) is a pretty close match to the Gunship Grey so I decided to use that as the color for the dark panels on the ships. I applied it over a black primer coat on the models, leaving some of the black showing through in recesses for shading.

After the Dark Grey dried, I spent a fair amount of time applying tiny pieces of Tamiya masking tape randomly across the surface to give the ship an Aztecing effect. Of course, this isn't true Aztecing, which is a repeatable pattern, but the effect is similar; making the surface appear to be made of of lots of individual panels.

After the grueling task of applying the tape was done, I gave the model a coat of haze grey made by mixing Tamiya RAF Ocean Gray 2 (XF-82) and Mr Color Flat White (62) mixed at a 1:1 ratio. I removed the tape and then gave the model another couple of coats with the haze grey heavily thinned to tone down the dark panels and make everything blend in a little better.

After I do this on the other ships, I'll move on to painting some of the raised details in a lighter grey and applying various washes to bring out some depth in the model.