The Dread Eye's Phantom Conversion WIP part 4

Well until I get supplies for casting the modified ladder rungs and the cannons I will just have to go back to painting. After thinking about how to best paint the the ship without painting the blue rubber gun ports. I decided that I would stick with the duck tape, but instead of cutting the tape to the exact shape of the gun port I would cut the pieces a little bigger and tuck them under the broken looking pieces of the hull. Like so:

It worked so much better! I didn't have them falling off as I was applying each successive gun port or when painting.

Now that I am past that little hick-up, onto the painting of the decks. I started with the top deck of the stern. Primed and cut out the hexes on its matching template. Templates found in WIP part 1.

Once it drys place the template on the deck and trace the hexes with a pencil.

This will give you a very subtle hex outline if you want to be able to use this ship for other miniature games besides Heroscape...since I think that is blasphemy I will be painting mine so they stand out a little more.
 

In case you wanted to know what paints I am using, they are Rust-oleum - Rusty Metal Primer (as the primer and the base coat) and Krylon - Satin Brown Boots. Here is a picture of them too.
 

Once it drys it is time for a test fit to see what it looks like.

I like the results so, I repeated this for the other 2 decks that I made. Now time for the lower stern deck...the one that has the bone pit/hole. Do the same as above, prime and cut out the hexes from the template. Now because of the bone pit/hole that template doesn't lie down flat. To solve this you will need to tape it down. I did it using masking tape, like so:
 

 Once you have taped down the template you can paint on the hexes. If you are just tracing the hexes with a pencil then you don't need to tape it down.

Now the ships castle, not sure if that is what it is called, has a small piece that is apart of this deck so it also needs a little paint. So put the template down where it would lie and put some making tape on the stairs. Then because I am lazy I just used my hand to cover up the rest of the stairs to prevent them from getting painted.

Well that is all for now. Once this all dries I can start painting the bone pieces and other details.