Tutorial for painting Freehands on Shields

Today something more technically. I made a lot of thoughts how to paint reproducibly symbols on my Dark Elves Shields. As I am not a great fan of Water Transfer Decals there was need paint my desired symbols with freehands. But, the main problem with everything handmade is that it is sensitive for faults and errors. Typically, the symbols can vary in position and size or worser in the design itself. The Dark Elves Army contains a lot of units carrying shields like e.g. Swordmen, Spearmen and the Cold One Knights. This makes it necessary to use a method, which allows you to paint the desired symbole with high reproducibility on your shields. Therefore, sheets with masks can be used. Here I show you how this will work:

1.) You need some masking tape as it is used for painting works. Put at least 3 layers or more of this tape on top of each other. Try to put them as accurate as possible on each other. Then use the tape to stick your desired symbol on top of it. There is need that the shape of your shield is contained in your design, either by the design itseld or painted around your symbol by yourself.

2.) Use some needles and mark the edges of your shield shape. The resulting holes serve later as position markers. Use a sharp knife and cut out the symbol.

3.) There is need that you also have markers in the design itself. Therefore I cut out the eye and nose holes as well. Try to work as accurat as possible, especially in the corners. Sometimes it is needed to cut by stinging. Try to hold your knife vertical to avoid to cut over a corner!

4.) Time to remove your template. You can see here the cut out I produced and used later. Carefully remove your tape layer. Avoid to pull on the tape because the tape can stretch and then distort your design. Use a spatula or something else to carefully remove your mask in one piece without damage. In a second step, remove the cut out the same way. You will need that too.

5.) Use some Patafix or Blu Tack to fix your prepared and coated shield on your working place. Then use the position holes as a guiding to fix your mask on your shield. Have in mind that in this case shown here the shield is slightly bigger, as my image didn´t take the round shape of it into account. Therefore, I had to middle it as best as I could, but the holes helped a lot. Work as accurat as possible here because the later centering depends on this step. Sometimes you have to try many time to get a perfect result. Then use your basic colours to paint the inlay. You can do this by brush or using an Airbrush. Both works fine but the latter works better as it doesn´t produce paint accumulations on the edges.

6.) Now use the inlay template to correct the position and add the details of your symbol. Therefore, put the inlay template centered on your painted symbol. Use the background colour to paint the rest of the shield. Then use the right colour to paint the details, here the eye and nose holes.

7. Here you can see the preliminary result after the transfer of your symbol on the shield. Now you have correctly positioned outlines and details which help you to create a proper freehand.

8.) In the next steps you need to sharpen and detail your symbol. Use the background and foreground colours to sharpen the edges of the symbol. Then add additional details which help you to proportion the different areas inside of the symbol. Here I added additional lines between the skull and horns, between the teeth and around the eye sockets. Additionally, I corrected the eye and nose holes. 

9.) Finally, you have to do the whole detail work. There is need to shade and highlight each area. I also highlighted the shield area in general. Because the basic shape of the shield is cylindric, the light distribution is a vertical light reflection in the middle. For additional detail work I added a gold edge around the shield and some scratches on the shield surface.







I hope this Tutorial helps you to create your own freehand shield designs. I did not go into detail in case of the detail work as the amount of detailing depends individually on the effort each one wants to put into his result. In my case I used a lot of blending techniques to achive the final result. As my Blending technique can not be discussed shortly this topic will be perhaps part of further Tutorials in the future. I hope you like this Tutorial. If you have questions, do not hesitate to ask me in the comments.
Kind Regards,
GeOrc

Executioners - Part II

Initial thoughts
After I had finished the preperations on my executioners unit I can´t resist to paint the first miniature of this unit. Therefore, today I want to write down my experiences with these miniatures. In preperation for the paint job I made a lot of thoughts which colour scheme I should use. I liked the original colour scheme from GW very much, showing them in purple. But this was different to my initial idea for this army, seperating it in a basic part coloured in purple and a Temple of Khaine addicted part coloured in red. Consequently, I thought about red coloured hoddies and cloths fitting to the colour scheme of the witch elves. I stumbled on the beautifully executioner unit from Iain Aitken, who painted an awesome 4th Edition Dark Elves Army. Please check Iains Facebook site and take a look on Iains Miniature Art.

Executioner Unit by Iain Aitken

 Iain painted the hoddies red, exactly as I had it planned. His result is stunning, but resulted in a much lighter colour as I had it in my mind. I wanted somethind dark and sinister in its appearance. However, I wanted to avoid black hoddies, as I wanted the hair and the axe shafts in black, ending in a to dark area on the upper side of the miniature. I already made this fault, when painting the first executioners 18 years ago. Finially, the GW colour sheme wasn´t that bad and I gave it a go. Beside the purple for all cloth parts I really liked the golden bracers in this colour scheme.    


The Way of Painting
As always I started with the skin colour based on Bleached Bone with some glazes of warlock purple to add some warmth. Then I started my work on the purple clothes. For my basic colour I used Liche Purple. For the highlights I mixed Liche Purple and Bleached Bone in different variations. For shading I used a mix of Abbadon Black with a bit of Incubi Darkness. I painted the light distribution strict by zenital light rules which resulted in very nice coloured purple hoddy. Finally I added some glazes with Warlock Purple to add some more saturation to the purple. In a next step I painted the black parts consisting of hair, axe shaft, shoes and some smaller parts of his loin decoration. Then I added the gold and the red gems. I used some brownish silver NMM for the chainmail and headdress and a bluish silver NMM for his axe. The last step included the leather, based on Tallarn Flesh, shaded with Scorched Brown and black and Highlighted with Bleached Bone. The Leather was washed with Liche Purple to merge it into the purple colour scheme and some scratched were added for a used look. The base was painted similiar to the others reflecting some High Elves ruins.

I was very pleased how the Executioner turned out. The purple hoddie added some colour and therefore much more character as a black one could add. In contrast to red clothes the purple helped to get the miniature a darker and sinister look. He fits very good between the other miniatures of his gang. He is not that light compared to the with Elves and in my opinion slightly darker than the Champion. The latters appears more shiny as he carries a lot more bling bling with him as reasonable when calling yourself a champion.

Dark Elves Warband

How you think about the colour scheme and how it works compared to the rest of my current Dark Elves warband. Let me know in the comments.
Kind Regards,
GeOrc