Hey there! So, this is my first thread in the showcase, and I wanted to use it for my Armada projects. I’m just starting out and I am not a good painter, but I have fun painting.
The first minis I got for Armada were some Empire of Dust ships. But I haven’t painted them yet, because they have sails, and dang it, sails are hard! Instead, I have some dwarfs to show! No sails at all. Advantage: Dwarfs
Nice work 
I don’t want to come across as a jerk, but the paint looks a bit thick. You don’t have to water down your paints (I rarely do), but I’d recommend just barely dipping your brush into the paint, then brushing that onto the model as thinly as possible. That being said, I like the color scheme you’ve got going on, and it’s always nice to see a new face in the showcase thread
You are definitely not being a jerk! I appreciate the tips, I’ve always had a bit of a problem with making my paints too thick. I’ve never been very good at watering paints down, I always feel like I overwater them, if that’s a thing. I’ll try your method next! Thank you.
I get it, I find watered down paint frustrating to work with
A nice start to your fleet @wilberforce!
Totally agree with @TheIcarusCrisis. Thin paint is great and all, but you can get by using thick paint if you have to. Just don’t put too much on your brush and spread it out. If you do want to give thinning your paint a go, just watch some of the warhammer TV tutorials on YouTube. Investing in a wet pallet can also help.
You are very neat and basically halfway there! As a next step, I’d just throw down some armypainter strong tone and go back over some of the edges with the original paint.
Nice job, I like your colour choices, works really well
I dig it!
Thank you, everyone! I tried painting one of the Empire of Dust ships now, with a different approach to painting. I tried using less paint on my brush as suggested, I still need to work on that way.
They look great Wilberforce. Trying hard to resist Armada but threads like this make that harder and harder.
On a side note years ago I found a wet palette cleared up most of my paint thinning problems. A lot of paint isn’t that thick out of the bottle - nothing more needed than maybe a semi-wet brush from your water pot to thin it down a bit. It’s when it starts drying in pot lids, on tiles, on dry palettes it becomes much thicker quite fast. A wet palette keeps the paint moist for whole painting sessions.
Well, I hit a bit of a brick wall when it came to the empire of dust ships! I’m just not enjoying painting them! The big sails… they pain me.
I did end up getting some of the black sails ships to mess with, I don’t have any bases yet (also I don’t have the kingdoms of men cards) but they have been fun to mess around with.
I know that they come with string for rigging and such. And I know that my fingers can’t handle that.
Nice - with the Black Seas ships I decided that a more stylized look would work better alongside the larger, more ‘heroic’ scale armada ones. Ie I didn’t bother with rigging and swapped paper sails for plasticard ones 
That makes sense! I’m mainly using the sails that came with it because I really don’t enjoy painting sails.
Here is a frigate, which I painted and got based and then I realized parts were missing. Dang it.
Still, progress is progress.
I’m sorry it’s a bit late to the party, but I made a painting tutorial for my basilean ships/sails:
Here’s it: Armada – painting tutorial – Vince on all things Kings of War
Otherwise: great stuff, keep on the good work! Painting is a labour of love and it gets better as you progress!
That’s an excellent tutorial, have my very belated thanks!
I’m still chipping away at my ships, I’ve got two frigates and three brigs done.
I played a (very tiny) game!
There’s a little bit more on my blog, here: The Joy of Painting Badly: Tiny Armada Report
But overall, I just plain had fun.
The most important rule of the game is always make sure you have fun.
Indeed!
I took a little break from Armada but now I’m trying to get back to it, back to the slog of painting my Empire of Dust ships.
I also posted about this on my off site blog but it’s basically the same post as this so it’s ok to not visit. I just like to remind people that it exists, ha.
A few little newer things. I painted a Basilean ship:
And had a fun game, played against my Dad. The winner? Family!
Thanks for looking! More on my offsite blog, as always.
