Due to COVID-19, I’ve been self-isolating since the middle of March. I’m incredibly lucky, I have a job that allows me to teach remotely. I hold office hours over Zoom and literally stay home as much as humanly possible. When I’m not working I have plenty of free time to play video games, stream, and do hobbies like cross stitching and painting miniatures.
In my first year of miniature painting it took 12 months to finish 69 figures. Over the last four months I painted 55 miniatures for my brother’s Night’s Watch army. I’m responsible for him having the Night’s Watch Starter set in the first place, so I wanted to make sure his army looked cool. Sure, there’s a ton of black paint, but I’m a little jealous because his small army looks very cohesive while my Starks are like half red from the Umbers. When I first borrowed his box of minis back in May I had no idea how long it would take me to finish the set. Thankfully with a little planning and a ton of motivation, the task was done in a little over four months.
June
Digging through my Google Photos over the past four months I found it fascinating to revisit my life at home. There are tons of miniature progress pictures buried in between random dog photos and life events spent at home. In the beginning of June I was working on three prototype minis to help figure out the color scheme for the Night’s Watch army, but I also started teaching an online course for the summer session. I finished the Heroes box on my 33rd birthday, which I surprised my brother with a few days later when we met for a safe, outdoors hangout. My brother gave me a collapsible light box for taking photos of my painted miniatures, so the quality really jumped at that point.
July
The 4th of July was spent at home watching Hamilton and no social interaction. Honestly, it was a great night and I still felt fairly patriotic. A week later, the first tray of Sworn Brother’s was finished. We tore down our crappy deck in late July right around the time that I was working on the first four Night’s Watch Veterans. Oh, and I built a new PC since my previous one was truly showing its age after eight years. My wife and I celebrated our four year anniversary at home with delivery supporting a local restaurant, but I didn’t take any progress pictures for about three weeks.
August/September
In August I sat down and developed a game plan to finish the rest of his army by the end of September. To do this, I’d need to finish the tray of Veterans and the four cavalry figures in August, then spend September on the second tray of Sworn Brothers and paint the four Starter heroes along with Ghost the direwolf. The goals seemed like a stretch, but I wanted a concrete task to push me along. Thankfully I was able to pull it all off with a little bit of wiggle room at the end of the month to work on two Stone Throwers.
Painting Highlights and Shadows in Black
I think I was dragging my feet a little at the beginning of the process because I wanted to find a nice color scheme that utilized a ton of black for the Night’s Watch, while still allowing all of the detail on the figures to pop out. Citadel’s Black Templar Contrast paint helped a lot here as I used it for their pants and it comes off as a very faded black. I also had a really good time brushing on some faded snow on the bottom of their cloaks, I love how that came out.
Otherwise, here are the paints I used if you like the color scheme:
- Citadel Black Templar: Black cloaks
- Vallejo Chocolate Brown: Boots, Gloves, Belts
- Army Painter Plate Mail Metal: Blades, Buckles, Studs
- Citadel Mechanicus Standard Grey/Administratum Grey: Highlights on the black
- Citadel Contrast Black Templar: Pants and some tunics
- Citadel Contrast Guilliman Flesh: Faces
- Citadel Contrast Snakebite Leather: Leather straps and sword grips
- Citadel Contrast Gore-Grunta Fur/Apothecary White/Wyldwood/Basilcanum Grey: Fur and Hair
Last weekend I was able to see my brother again at a distance for the first time in over three months, and his army has been returned, fully painted. I’m looking forward to a point in time where it’s safe for us to meet across the table and actually play the game again!
Aaron's Gaming Blog 