The SAGA Continues, Banners a tutorial.

Stick to what you know, right! That often gives the best results.
So to day I did:
If you follow my blog you know that I took some heat for my poor performance on the Kite Shields on my Norman Spearmen LINK, so I repainted the shields and this was the result, LINK. Quite an improvement.

I was relay satisfied  with the weaved shield design, it had it all, depth, good matching colors, I was proud of it, can I be?
So to day the turn has come to banners. I use linen sheets that I have acquired from the Swedish military, the sheet I use is probably  made some where in between 1915 and 1920, this I can tell because of the stamps made on them. Cant find the pics of the stamps at the moment but I will look later and post them for you if you are interested. Well these sheets have been i the service for almost a decade and where now being thrown away so I saved a few of them. Now how can we better honor these sheets that have been bedding and nursing Swedish military service men and women, then make them in to banners of war, leading brave men on to the battlefield.

WIP:
How its done:

This show all the steps taken in the making.
Yes the picture sucks.

First I glued the Linen piece on to a wires spear from Perry I think, it's actually a "Yari" but hey, I don tell If you don't. This was a bit tricky I have previously used SuperGlue but the result has been some what bad. So this time I tried PVA, it works. but not to my full satisfaction- Got a hint on Contact glue, this will be tested.
Enough of the glue stuff.

Painting:
I started out with just painting the whole banner with a base of Flat Brown from Vallejo, mixed in much water in the paint and painted the both sides at once.
Then I let the paint dry fully.

I took a pencil and just made a square pattern with 5 mm with in between, diagonally on both sides, thes lines I used as a guideline when painting the basic design in black.
Lessons learned here: If you don't have base coated the banner properly you will get bleeding of color to the other side of the banner and the capillary force will kick in and the design intended will be a Mandelbrot,  Not what I had in mind Go back to step one redo the base coat.

Redone the design, onward...
I then used Vallejos Cavalry Brown to paint each square, letting some of the base coat shining through in corners and on the edges, time consuming.
Next step:
Vallejo Beige Brown, here I started to pain the weaved bands, to make the illusion of the bands being weaved on to the fabric. Leaving a small amount of black on edges and ends.  When this was done I started all over again with the bands but this time with Vallejos Yellow Ochre, once agin leaving some of the darker colors from the previous layer in the ends and edges.

Finally some touch ups where I missed and goofed, nothing heavy.

Colors used for this particular banner.
(All Vallejo)
Base coat - 70984 - Flat Brown
Basic design - 70950 - Black
Squares - 70982 - Cavlary Brown
Bands - 70875 - Beige Brown
Bands highlight - 70913 - Yellow Ochre


The result.