Painting Windows on Ships

[ElectricPaladin]

YAY (as in yes I do it), NAY (as in no I don't bother), and if applicable, what's the WAY(as in how is the effect best achieved)?

I'm torn, myself. My ships currently lack windows, and I'm trying to decide whether or not to go back and add them. What are your thoughts?

[afterimagedan]

Honestly, I am in the same position. I have painted windows on my Corsair fleet, but they have little wholes that sort of guide where they go, so I put some scorpion green in there before the final wash. I like how it turned out.  I was wondering how I may do it to Imperial ships, Space Marines also. I would love to hear some advice from others!

[horizon]

IN/chaos/marines I just make rows of tiny yellow dots. Looks good from a distance. I use blue, green or red as well, but more on alien vessels.

[Xisor]

Being a terribad painter, a few of my ships have windows painted on them. The only way I do it is little 'dabs' to look like windows. The ones on my Demiurg ships probably look most natural, given the nice big layered, slab-sides of them.

My Tau, by contrast, have big 'bright blue' panels on them in places. As Horizon says: if they can look the part from a distance, that's good enough!

See some examples here. Not exactly wonderful looking, but they do neatly.

[Seahawk]

YAY!

WAY: Just use the images from the BBB and Armada and elsewhere as guides. Generally, there will not be windows in engine/gun/combat/armored areas, and the command areas (bridge, viewing domes) will have the most windows.

Think of it like painting lots of little eyeballs right in a row, except that it's one color and much easier.

On dark ships, use yellow. On light ships, use black. On alien/warpy/strange ships, neon green. See examples below:

[Comrade-K-Rad]

Yea,

I use a bright yellow or white and a very fine brush to make rows of dots almost anywhere on the ships.  For IN anyway.  The ships are so massive that there could be cabins anywhere.

[BaronIveagh]

I really don't do 'windows' per se (except on the RT cruiser) but I do have large illuminated areas that might be windows.  Remember at the scale of some of these ships, regular sized windows wouldn't even be be visible.  The only place it would be is places where, for some reason, there are very large windows or external running lights.


I tend to think of the lights on the 'bridge' as windows, even though there's no way in gods green earth that would really be where hte bridge is.  It's far, far, too exposed.