Step-by-Step: Building and Painting the Galleon

Well, you can't play a Bart/Galleon list without a Galleon...so here's the guy I built to Batten Down the Hatches!

This is a step-by-step post, so let's start with the model. All right...I have to admit, I don't like the look of the damn thing. I find it kind of silly-looking; particularly with the overly-large trident. But it ain't gunna build itself.

So, as we've come to expect from Privateer's big resin models, the mould lines and flow gates are ridiculous. I spent a long time cleaning the parts. And in this kit, there are a lot of parts. I'm glad they included an exploded diagram for the thing, because, honestly, I would not have figured out how to put the Galleon together on my own.

Thinking about how I was going to paint this colossal, I figured that the best strategy for building it was to assemble four large chunks...the hips, upper torso, left arm and right arm.

I started by priming black.

I wanted to distress the green paint scheme to reveal rusty metal underneath. So, I sprayed all the assemblies with a combination of hull red, brown and rust colors. After that dried, I sealed all the brown areas with multiple coats of Testors Dullcoat.

I'll use the cargo claw as an example of how I got to the end finish on the rest of the model. First, I taped off areas to avoid overspray. In the case of the claw, it got a spray of yellow (I used two different shades here).

Removed the tape, and moved on to spraying other areas with green (two tones again...a dark then a light).

And this is how it looked after the top coat was distressed.

To distress the top coat of paint, I applied rubbing alcohol to the surface of the model. I then used a brush with very stiff bristles, and rubbed away the top coat. The alcohol loosens up the top coat to make it easy to remove, and then evaporates quickly, so the new distressed paint scheme stabilizes in about a minute.

As you can see here, I also painted in the metallic areas as well. I used two metallic progressions for this model...a light bronze from Foundry, and the silver metal metallics from GW.

Once I had the hip assembly complete and painted, I glued it to the base, applied glue and sand and painted the "soil" brown. Once that was dry, I attached some of the other scenic base elements. These included a section of fence from GW...

...and a few larger slate stone pieces. These were blended into the ground cover with more glue and sand.

Skipping ahead a little, I then applied a fair bit of static grass, tufts, scale flowers and a few extra odds and ends. You can see a sword and shield leaning up against the fence here.

Anyway, after all the painting was done on the major assemblies, they were all attached with CA glue, and the model was largely done by this point.

I applied some silver paint chips, and then added some rusty washes to the finished model.

Like the highlight of the yellow claw o the left hand, I made the shoulder pad on the right side red to add another accent to the model.

The bronze was washed with sepia, and then green and blue inks to weather it. The silver metal areas, on the other hand, were washed with umber and rust colors. Both got a final highlight drybrush.

Well, that's the whole thing. Another colossal in the bag. I still think the model is pretty goofy, but I'm happy with the finished result.

"Til next time.