Star Wars Legion: Tantive IV Base Painting Guide

When I showed off my Rebel Fleet Trooper I uploaded the painting guide for them on my Patreon; What I omitted at the time was how I painted the Tantive IV base. At the time I had no good photo angle for it and I also experienced some issues while painting it. Because of those reasons it was left out of the painting guide. I still wanted to put together a painting guide though, since some of you requested it. It took me a bit, but today is the day you get your wish:

Let us start with the painting card; I make and use these as a quick reference when painting by recipe. They are easy to have a quick idea what paints you need, but do not tell you much about the finer details. 

If you want to have an overview over all the cards available, you can join my Discord Server where I upload those that are publicly available. For those not publicly available you can get them either by subscribing to my Patreon or Ko-Fi or buy them for a one time payment. All of the money raised this way goes towards my Hobby and development of my game. 

Now with all that preamble out of the way, let us begin; You will need four paints and a light primer; The paints you need can be seen as above and are as follows:

• Army Painter Speedpaint Ashen Stone(or any light bluish white grey speedpaint equivalent; You could also use a bone colored one for a different look)
• Speedpaint Medium(or whichever medium is appropriate for the above used paint)
• Vallejo Sky Grey(or any light grey paint)
• White

You will also need a base, obviously. I bought up two blisters of the old Star Wars Legion moulded bases, but I am sure there are plenty of equivalent STLs that work too. You just need a vaguely Sci Fi corridor looking floor. 

Step 1

The initial prime can be any light colour. I used Wraithbone, because it is the least volatile of my light spray paints. You want a smooth finish, so your prime should not cover entirely and only give your paint a surface to stick to. I made that mistake the first time where I ended up having a slightly coarse texture, which affected later stages of the paint scheme. The next step is to basecoat the entire base with the Sky Grey, I forgot to take a picture of that, but just make sure it covers evenly. Be sure to use multiple thin coats and watch out for build up in the recesses, we do not want those. 

Step 3

The first pass of Ashen Stone is a mix of 7 parts Speedpaint Medium and 4 parts Ashen Stone; This mix ensures a thinner coverage and decent viscosity. Apply this broadly over the base; You might notice the paint curling in some areas, just quickly pass over it with the brush and it should cover decently again. Now once everything is covered you are not done yet. Take a thin brush with a decent belly and run it through the recesses to soak up excess paint. If you do not do this and let it dry, it will clog up the recesses. The end result should show most of the Speedpaint pooling towards the centre of deck plates. Give this stage a solid 20 minutes to dry at minimum. 

Step 4

The next step will require a round Drybrush or a make up brush. Before you put paint on it, dip it in some water and rub it vigorously into a paper towel to remove any paint still stuck in there. You would be surprised how much a little paint can tint bright white paints like Sky Grey. Once you ensured a clean and dry brush you want to softly drybrush the base with Sky Grey to strengthen the paint near the edges of deck plates. We achieve this by doing circular motions always going from an edge towards the inner area. Take your time with this until you have brightened up the edges a bit more.

Step 5

After the Drybrush you might notice a slightly chalky finish, to combat this, we are going to do another pass of Ashen Stone. This time the mix is a ratio of 1 part of Ashen Stone and 3 parts of Speedpaint Medium. Apply this only to the deck plates; Leave out the recesses unless you see any drybrush dust had collected in it after the previous step.

Step 6

This step requires quite a bit of brush control as we are going to glaze up some highlights. If you do not know what glazing is, I would point you to the myriad of Youtube tutorials on this technique as I do not think I can adequately explain it over text. That being said, you can also leave out this step and do a thick edge highlight with Sky Grey instead. If you feel up to the task, you are going to take Sky Grey and edge highlight the entire base; Once you are done you are going to glaze Sky Grey towards the edges. Do this as many times until you have a decent colour transition towards the end of each deck plate. 

Final Step

The final step is an edge highlight of White to finish off the base. Optionally you can apply weathering with white too such as scratches or dings. This leaves the top of the base done; I am not going to go over how to paint the base rim, as the colour used will depend on your army, project or preference. What I will tell you is to get a long brush with a decent belly and apply the paint in 3-4 thin layers across the rim, work methodically to not spill any on the top. For my Fleet Trooper I used Ionic Smart Colors Neutral Grey.

This wraps up my painting guide on Tantive IV style bases, I hope you enjoyed it and found it useful for your own projects. If you did, please let me know by leaving a comment. If you have any requests for a painting guide, you can do so via the comments as well and I will see what I can do. Lastly a reminder you can support me by joining either my Patreon or Ko-Fi or if you cannot afford to support me monetarily I always love seeing new faces on my Discord. Cheers!