Steve, Legend, Ethan
Many thanks for the kind comments.
In this case the design on the shield was done free-handedlly. I used Danilo Cartacci's method which he describes in his excellent book
Painting Miniatures. I could scan in the pages of the chapter but for copyright reasons I doubt if it would be allowed to show them here.
Basicaly you start with the complete background of the shield. Then you start outlining the design with a lighter shade of the background colour, building it up step by step. By chosing a lighter colour it's so much easier to rectify any fault. Danilo used acrylics for this, but I used well diluted Humbrol enamel because if needed enamels can be wiped away very easily with a clean brush slightly moistened with white spirit. However, make sure that the background colour has dried sufficiently in order to avoid damaging the prior work.
When you are satisfied with the dimensions of the design, you just start filling up the outlined design with the undercoat colour, here I used Humbrol's desert yellow. Then I applied the oil base colour and started highlighting and shading, as usual all done wet on wet.
When dry the internal design was drawn with the oil colours used for the shield background. Again these were well diluted. If you chose oil colours with strong pigments (in this case Venetian red and yellow ochre) the dilution rate can be quite high without affecting its covering power. And again any excess colour was wiped away with the clean brush moistened with white spirit.
Then the final highlighting and shading of the design was done with multiple layers of glazes.
To end I applied a glaze on the complete shield tying all colours together. In this final still wet glaze you still can do some extra highlighting or shading if needed.
So far the technique I used for this design. However, in most instances and for more complex designs I use my own technique to draw the outlines of designs on shields and fabrics:
Step 1
Search the internet or books to find a suitable design.
Step 2
Safe the design on the PC.
Step 3
Add the design to a Word file and adapt its dimensions to suit the figure.
Step 4
Print the design and cut it out very carefully with a very sharp X-Acto scalpel.
Step 5 a
If the background for the design is flat (i.e. a shield) position the cut out design on it and simply go around it with a sharp and hard pencil making sure the design is being kept on the same spot during the operation.
Step 5 b
If the background for the design is irregular (i.e. folding of fabric) take yet another step and copy the cut out paper design first on a piece of soft paper
Tesa masking tape. Then the design is cut out again and put on the figure. Because the tape sticks you can push the design in the folding so that it follows the exact lines, just like the real thing actually.
Step 6 and following
Fill in the outlines with paint and do the highlighting and shading as explained above.
I hope all this makes any sense. If not just ask.
Cheers
J
han
