How to Paint Spaceship Deck Plate Bases

Welcome to my Step-by-Step guide on How to Paint Spaceship Deck Plate Bases. I found these super awesome Premium Troop Bases for Star Wars Legion Miniatures, which you can use these space ship deck plate themed bases for any of your sci-fi miniature projects.

When I saw these Premium Trooper Bases my thoughts immediately went to my next project – Emperor Palpatine and his retinue of Imperial Royal Guard. Perfect!

We’ll touch on everything you need to base your miniatures with a space ship deck plate theme using the base-shade-layer-highlight method.

Color Scheme for Spaceship Deck Plate Bases

It certainly helps that these bases are pre-made, and the design of them is centered around the Star Wars Universe. But, they could be used for any kind of mechanical setting, and the potential for creativity is limited only by your imagination.

Different color schemes and additional materials could lead to a lot of interesting and creative ideas.

However, I have a specific purpose in mind for these bases with a Royal Imperial retinue, which is most commonly seen on the Death Star. Naturally, my color scheme is going to fall into some grays, starting with Mechanicus Standard Gray and building in brightness for layers and highlights.

Building and Priming

These bases came pre-made, which makes things a little easier.

Normally, I would just glue the figure down to the base and paint the whole thing together, but with these detailed bases I want to paint the base and figures separate.

This step is completely optional.

I’ve attached tiny bits of poster tack to the feet of my figures. I’m using the tack to gauge where the miniature will be glued down so that I don’t paint the base in those spots.

Plastic glue works better when you’re not trying to glue through paint. Otherwise, super glue works well after painting, but it may not be as permanent or clean.

And after placing the figure where I want him to be fixed to the base, I carefully transferred the poster tack from the feet to the base using Citadel’s Texture tool.

These little bits will remain for the duration of painting the bases.

It does seem like a lot of trouble, but it will be a more permanent bond using plastic glue, and it will be less messy than supergluing to paint.

Also, gluing the figure down now might mean difficult touch ups later whether we paint the figure first or base first.

I’ve glued down the figure to a plain, temporary base. I’ve used just a tiny dot of superglue on both feet to do this. It makes it easy to break off the base later.

This makes painting the complete base easier (without a figure standing atop), and it makes for painting the figure easier because it doesn’t matter it you get paint on the plain base..

Also, I can attach the figure to my painting handle if I would like.

I’ve numbered the bottoms of my bases, so I won’t have to try to match feet up later on.

Of course, this is only necessary if you’re painting a squad of figures and not just a single model.

Attach the bases to your prime stick. While there are some cool priming tools on the market by our favorite hobby brands, I simply use a paint stirring stick from the hardware store.

The one I have is designed for stirring the big 5-gallon buckets, so it’s quite durable.

I use a big gob of poster-tack to adhere the bases to the prime stick. The poster-tack usually doesn’t get full of paint which makes it a reusable material.

And finally, here are the primed bases. I’ve used Citadel Chaos Black to prime these. It requires such a miniscule amount of paint. Shaking the can, I actually thought it might be empty, but there was more than enough for this job!

As you can see, the poster tack footprints are still adhered to the bases, and they will remain until the painting process is completely finished.

Painting a Basecoat

1. Basecoating the surfaces of the bases in Mechanicus Standard Grey. I do try to avoid the base rims, but mistakes happen and these can easily be fixed.
   
   Because I thinned the paint with water, the first basecoat is very thin, and you can see the black primer in patches. This is perfectly normal – let this dry completely and add another thin coat of Mechanicus Standard Grey.
   
   
2. My second coat develops the color further and could be used, but I’m going to paint one more thin coat just to get the color nice and prominent before shading.
   
   
3. And the third layer looks perfect. A nice smooth, solid color, ready for shading.
   

Shading Your Spaceship Deck Plate Bases

A friend of mine recommended using Contrast Paint as a method of shading. I did try this method, but I wasn’t thrilled with the results.

I think I needed to thin the contrast down with contrast medium for it to work like a shade. What I found was the contrast paint didn’t behave as I intended. I had to use two coats of the contrast paint to darken the recesses, and then it required a couple of layers to restore the original basecoat where I didn’t want shading.

All in all, interesting theory. I may play with it some more in different situations. But, in for this method the shade yielded the results I was seeking.

1. A nice, fairly heavy coat of Nuln Oil does the trick for these bases. Go ahead and slather on, but any place it seems too messy go ahead and soak up the excess with a clean brush. I’m using a favorite Citadel Medium Shade Brush for this.
   
   Give this a good 30-60 minutes to dry.

Layering Up Your Basecoat Colors

1. Layering our Mechanicus Standard Grey back up from the Shading process. I painted all of the flat panels, grates, pipes, and the hatch to give contrast between the basecoat and the shaded recesses.
   
   
2. Just a different angle of the same bases. Layering the color back up from the shade only required one coat of Mechanicus Standard Grey.

Edge Highlighting Your Spaceship Deck Plate Bases

1. I used the color, Dawnstone, to paint features such as the pipes, the lower tier of the hatch, and basecoated the grid pattern on the grate. This will add a level of depth to the details giving the illusion of light landing on the more prominent features of the bases.
   
   The brighter color I used is Administratum Grey. It makes for a perfect highlight color around the floor panels and pronounced features on the bases. Mainly, the top small round bit on the hatch, the handle on the hatch, and the main cross-frame of the grate.
   
   As an option, I went over the pipes with just a single thin layer of Administratum Grey just to give them a little bit of dimension. But, they are recessed, so I didn’t want to turn the brightness up on them too much.
   
   
2. Here, I have cleaned up the lines a little bit by going over the shaky-hand mistakes with some Mechanicus Standard Grey.
   
   
3. Here is the same picture with different lighting and angle. The next step is just to clean up those base rims with some Abaddon Black.

Final Steps – Finishing the Spaceship Deck Plate Bases

And here are my finished Space Ship Deck Plate Bases ready for my Imperial Royal Guards when I am finished painting them.

Of course, our high resolution cameras pick up every little mistake and brush stroke, but to the naked eye these are absolutely stunning. It’s hard as an artist to not want to go back and fix every little mistake, but do not despair, especially if it looks great!

Recap – How to Base Miniatures – Space Ship Deck Plate

That concludes my guide on how to paint Space Ship Deck Plate Bases using Premium Trooper Bases for Star Wars Legion.

We followed a simple base-shade-layer approach to painting these bases, and we added a simple edge highlight at the end to brighten the color scheme a little and make the paint job pop.

We also used a pre-sculpted base, which took a lot of material hunting and guess-work out of the equation and made our project simpler, yet still awesome.

What I learned.

1. First of all, I’m not happy with my photography. To the naked eye, my figures and bases look fantastic, yet in photos my lines are all crooked and janky and the paint can often look gloppy and chalky. I do notice this phenomenon on even the most professional of photos on social media. It’s reassuring that it’s not just me. I don’t know if this is a camera thing or my painting is just bad.
   
   I do think the photography has something to do with lighting. Using natural light from a window (not direct sunlight, mind you) tends to soften the image compared to using a lightbox with powerful LED lamps.
   
   I’ll keep practicing.
   
   
2. I’ve also been working on paint consistency and which brushes are appropriate for different painting tasks.
   
   Things seem easy if you’re using something like a simple Citadel brush system, but even then there are knowledge and skill gaps using those rigid brushes that could be detrimental to one’s painting development.
   
   Different brushes paint differently. Seems like an obvious concept, but learning how to handle new and different brushes is a real challenge. For example, I hated my Raphael S 1 brush at first. But I learned how it held more paint, the softer bristles made for a smoother finish, and I had to use finesse instead of being ham fisted when applying paint to the miniature.
   
   Think of it as small children graduating from fat crayons to normal crayons when they start school. It’s that much of a difference in rigidity. I hope I’m making sense to some of you!
   
   
3. Let the colors stand for themselves.
   
   The last miniature I painted I tried to layer up several mixed and complicated colors. I’ve been doing this a lot lately, and I think it’s just not where I am as a painter right now. With these bases (and quite frankly the Imperial Royal Guard), I’m having to make conscious decisions to NOT paint something.
   
   It’s good to experiment, but a lot of my attempts aren’t working for me. I keep reminding myself to get back to basics rather than habitualizing methods where I am not happy with the end results.

Happy Painting and Thank You for Reading!

I use these bases for both Emperor Palpatine and his retinue of Imperial Royal Guard, so be sure to check out my guides to see these awesome bases in action!

How to Paint Emperor Palpatine

How to Paint the Imperial Royal Guard

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