Showcase: Dreadfleet Skabrus & Black Kraken

Covering both of 'the Ickies' today - the Skaven Skabrus and the Chaos Dwarf inspired Black Kraken.

I love painting the Skabrus model. Mostly because it's such a welcome change from all the other ships in the Dreadfleet box. These miniatures being very small scale it's all abot making things look neat and sharp. You need to have all the details in place, with sharp, clear contrasts and edges. This is quite different to say 28mm size painting.

The Skabrus also requires you to paint the details properly, but you can also go crazy on this gigantic dead fish (which if we're honest probably didn't win beauty any prizes when it was alive either). Various stages of decay are to be found on the model, and you can really make use of all kinds of shades of green, yellow, red, purple, blue and brown. I used them all on this model.

And once that's done you get to paint its guts. On these I would clearly focus on the entrails hanging out underneath the tail rather than the (beautifully sculpted) organs within, as those are pretty much invisible once everything's glued together. But on the base you can really have some fun and get the idea across, that one would really, really, really not want to take a swim behind this abomination.

Speaking of which, here's a giant robotic squid:

Surely one of the most immediately striking ships out of the whole box. Really good stuff. :-)