I managed to complete the painting of my NSL and FSE starter fleets for Full Thrust. Without further ado here are the pics including some step-by-steps.
No casting is ever perfect so I used Green Stuff to fill, modify and bind. I like to fill the engines at the back so it can be painted as a white engine energy bloom
Black undercoat, followed by a mid-gray dry brushing and then a black wash. Then I start to paint areas of colour leaving some black areas for engines, techie bits and windows. Space Wolf Grey for the FSE and Bestial Brown for the NSL.
On the NSL ships I dry brushed the brown and then painted some panels with Bleached Bone. The FSE have two additional highlight colours of Codex Grey and Ultramarine blue. All of the FSE ships have a blue stripe of sorts down the centre line of the ship to distinguish them as ships of that faction.
The NSL ships have red and white areas added to their engine areas to distinguish them as part of the same faction, as well as some crudely painted NSL symbols on the largest panels of each ship. The FSE ships have an additional thin yellow stripe added to the left of the blue centre line area (blue and yellow being the colours of the FSE symbol). Windows are added by painted white squares or dots onto some of the darker panels, especially the ones that are sculpted as little strips. Finally panel lines (greeblies or aztecing for those in the know) are painted onto large areas (relatively anyhow) of flat colour to break those areas up. I haven't painted panel lines onto faction colours, however. Panel lines on Space Wolf Grey are Codex Grey, lines on Bleached Bone are Snakebite Leather and lines on Codex Grey panels are Black.
Matt varnished (Vallejo) and photographed on a printed background for effect.
