The Nuns Of Navarone Part 2

In my last blog update I talked about the new OUTLANDS campaign that's happening at my local gaming club and that I wanted to start a new warband. I picked the Nuns With Guns by EMP Games as the new recruits to Paradise. I signed off the blog post with good intentions about actually painting the miniatures (unheard of in my gaming group). Well, I did it!!!!

Me and painting miniatures. A love/hate relationship. Sometimes I really enjoy it....most times I hate it. I'm not a good miniature painter...I was Ok(ish) once but I find the time and commitment to painting a good looking miniature is too much investment in of my time. Time is my biggest enemy...with my full-time job and working on new OUTLANDS material, my hobby time is usually a couple of hours on a Friday night....and then I might hit the pub instead. Anyways....

Two of the biggest things I hate about painting miniatures is 1) Painting Black 2) Painting White. So painting a group of battle ready Nuns already had problems. I'll explain how I overcame my hatred of painting black later...but for the mean time.

I started with 2 light coats of grey primer. I use grey primer as I can work darker colours down and lighter colours up.

Next I gave each miniature a light dry brushing of white. I'm not going to list the exact names of the paint...but they came from the worlds leading fantasy/sci-fi tabletop game manufacturer. When I was dry brushing, I tried to pick out the upper areas of the miniature rather than the lower one.

So, painting black!!!!!! I don't like painting black for a number of different reason....but mostly for picking out highlights later in the process. I don't like it and rarely have time to fineline. My preferred method is to apply a Black Wash. It can take a number of coats (help from a hair dryer)...but that way I can slowly build up to a darker colour while...thanks to the white dry brush still have some type of highlight.

1st coat.

2nd coat. I wasn't sure If I was happy with the results so far....so a 3rd coat was applied.

The 3rd coat was borderline 'too much'. The photo doesn't show it but the white highlights are just visible.

I picked out the flesh parts of the miniature next. Normally I would work from the inside out, starting with the inner garments and face to the outer garments. Because 'underpainting' can be a little unforgiving...it was a matter of working in reverse.

Next it was laying down the base for the white. I chose a boney type colour. Unlike 'underpainting' the black wash....you can't underpaint a 'white' wash.

Moving into the final sketch. Flesh wash was applied to the face and hands. After the wash was dry I quickly picked out a few highlight in the original flesh colour.

The last and most hatred part. painting white to the inner garment.

The following photos are just random pictures. You can see that I gave the weapons a bit of colour just to break up the dominate black/white colour scheme.

All six models took about 3 hours and I'm happy with the results. Just need to paint a couple of varnish coats (underpainting can rub/chip very easily) and the Nuns Of Navarone will get weapons and equipment....and possible some names.

Until next Outlanders.

JM