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.

Green Stuff skills

Speed painting 1 on 1

Hi!

I have been getting some questions about how I paint my TYW minies, therefore I decide make a tutorial on how I do just that.

For this particular model a metal Battle standard bearer (BSB) from Renegade(I think) I used the following colors.

Skin, Valejo Model color, Dark Flesh, #70927
Hair, Valejo Model color, Yellow Tan, #70912
Jacket, GW Foundation, Macharius Solar Orange
Pants, Valejo Game color, Cold Grey
Mics, Valejo Model color, Black #70950, Gunmetal # 70863, Ivory # 70918, Buff #70976 and Azure #70902

Washing: GW Foundation, Devlan Mud

This mini being a BSB and there for being a bit more in the center then a usual rank and file model, I  neede to add a bit of extra effort. there for the high numbers of colors.

Step 1.
The models was cleaned and washed, if it was a plastic model I wouldn't have bothered with the washing of the models, but now being a metal minies I had to. I then sorted them so that I have basicly the same pose on the models before mounting the on sticks and priming them.

In this case I used the Army Painter Brown Leather spray to prime the models, this to save time painting the model, allso the Army Painter Brown Leather is a perfekt match to the Valejo Model color, English Uniform #70921, this might come in handy if you are a bit sloppy.

Step 2.
Painting Skin, trying to leave the eye and mouth with no paint, and just bloging the hands and any outer skin showing.

Step 3
Painting the Jacket, well how hard can it be, just being sure not to get paint on the belts and stuff, you can also do a bit of outlining here if you please that, I do not, I just cant get it to look good.

Step 4 

Painting the pants, again leaving any belts, buckles and things like that, just keep it clean, if you do get sloppy just correct it. As you can I have painted some details on the model, but that's only because its a BSB and not a regular rank and file model.

Step 4 

Some metal.

Step 5

And now for the magic...

Devlan Mud, I'm planing to fix up my own blend but for now I use GW's smelly stuff, yes it relay smells bad.

Still not dry

Step 6

Some highlighting if desired, I usual highlight the faces, this using the same color as before on the face, on the front rank models but the other ranks I do not bother. Just paint "STZ--", S on the left chin, T on the nose and forhead, Z on the right chin and - - on upper lip and cheek, fast and easy.

Face and hands highlighted 

The big time savers.

I didn't highlight any areas except for the face and hands.

I didn't put any time/effort into painting belts, straps or pouches, this is a big time saver, this works because of the primer being leather brown.

Well the army looks great from a distance of 1 - 1½ meters, with some nice bases and some cool banners the army will be an eye catcher and if you don allow your opponent to get to close you might just get away with it.

Time spent on painting the model without drying time is approx 2½  minutes. And if you do like I do painting the in batches of 6 then you can get don to lets say 2 minutes per model, that's 30 an hour.

Tools of trade.

Good luck with your painting.