Back to the naval side of things this week, with more ships being ready for the table. I do like how these come out even with my wargames table level of painting. I am sure (and in fact have seen) the results of expert painters out there with these models. However, in my opinion the true reflection of great models is that they can be painted up by non experts and made to look decent. Some GW and other models fail in that as a great painter can make any model look good but some models do not help the rest of us do a decent job.
I paint to that level because of my skills but also that takes into account that I do not have days of time to spend painting miniatures as well. Even the sterns below to me look nice without having to go into massive amount of detail on them.
I will say contrast paints have helped with these a lot – as you can see from the shot below where the contrast paint worked perfectly for the decking etc. They save a lot of time on these models.
The ships are all 3rd and 4th raters so likely the largest the privateers will use. They are common for the real navies though which are the mainstay of the Oak and Iron game.
You can see the ‘quarter gallery’s’ of these ships clearly below. Theses are the ‘stick out’ bits of the side of the stern. They are to me the only slightly ugly bits of the ships of this period – and by the Napoleonic period they had mostly been dropped/removed from ship design. Of they were not as obvious anyway. They they were not the easiest things to build/keep on the real ships and in some ways created a weakness in the designs. I don’t know if that caused them to be dropped though.
So there we are. Another set of ships ready for the table.
Adventures in painting miniatures 
Nice work – I’m always envious of your consistent output.
Thanks – painting is my ‘zen time’. I am not great at it but it allows me to relax and do something different. That really helps me and provides a good amount of content for me to post. I do also try to pace posts so i can keep a consistent rate of them as well.
They look really good! 🙂 I agree with you on the points about painting – I think the fact that I know I need models for wargames makes me adjust the painting style to get something that looks effective in the minimum time! I was quite surprised when I painted some 1:600 WW2 ships last year with a simple method that I found I really liked!
And now I am sorely tempted to watch “Master and Commander” and start putting some ships together.
These (as with the others) look great. I like the idea that so few ships are need for a small squadron a side, but I fear my painting ability would not look good at even arms length…mmm…off to do some more research.
Fantastic work.
Thanks and the oak and iron ships are fairly easy to paint I have found.