Before painting he whole fleet I decided to paint one model to completion to get the colour scheme right. From the outset I knew I wanted a dirty metallic look to the ships with red details. Once I finished painting all of the ships a metallic colour I decided to use one of the escorts to see how the red looked.
For the red I used a 50/50 mix of Khorne Red and Mournfang Brown highlighted by adding increasing amounts of Evil Suns Scarlet. I also chose to paint on tiny checks to break up some of the metallic areas and to give a sense of scale. The smaller the checks the bigger the ship looks. Overall I am pleased with the results.
One of the inspirations for the fleet was the following piece of artwork which I found online.
I decided to try and copy the glowing green eye on my models. For this I used a mix of Dark Angels Green and Putrid Green (an old Citadel paint) and highlighted this Putrid Green followed by Putrid Green and White Scar. This was then washed with thinned Thrakka Green and a tiny white dot was applied in the centre. I am still not totally sold on the effect but the green does add a nice contrast to the red and provides a strong focal point, drawing the eye to the ‘face’ of the ship. I may refine the green glow effect further as I paint the other ships.
