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PostPosted: Thu Jun 20, 2013 2:29 pm 
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Noxius
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Joined: Sat Jun 15, 2013 5:28 pm
Posts: 15
Location: Baltimore, MD, USA
So here's a bit of a variation on Aquila. This is a 54mm figure of a Roman Aquilifer I painted last year, a little larger than the 35mm scale of the AR figures. The skin was painted using the Reaper Master series paints (as shown in the skin tones tutorial), the rest was done with Vallejo Model Color paints.

Image

Here's a quick description of how I did the freehand on the shield. However this is the same approach I use for almost all of my freehand work. With the AR figures you can obviously add designs to the shields, but the same technique could be used to do tattoos or patterns on clothing. Anything to add some extra details and make your ludus stand out.

Whenever I want to do some design I begin by planning it out on paper. I started with two arcs for the path of the wreath and a rectangle for the legion name. I then drew the leaves over the arcs, starting with the central shape and then the two outer shapes for each leaf. I began by just working out what I wanted the design to look like. The next step was to practice drawing the design to scale. For shields it's easy, just trace the shield. I went to my traced shield (with the boss added) to see how the design fit. When drawing or copying the design it can be helpful to break it down into simpler shapes.
Image

Moving to the actual figure, I painted the background red with a slight gradient from top to bottom. Once the background was dry, I took my pencil and lightly drew the image onto the shield. Then with my desired design color, yellow, I began to trace each of the leaves. The consistency of the paint at this point is somewhat up to you. You can thin the paint if you want. This means you'll have to trace over the design multiple times but any mistakes will be quick to correct. If you don't thin or don't thin very much, you won't have to retrace but mistakes will be tougher to erase. I lean towards the latter approach, but go with what works for you. Once I had finished the outlines I began to fill them in. Since the leaves are overlapping I left a small space at their intersections. At this point you'll notice some of the pencil lines are still visible around the yellow. That's to be expected. Once I'd filled in the leaves I took my background color and cleaned up the design, painting over any remaining pencil marks.
Image

I wanted to use multiple shades to give the design a more 3 dimensional look, so I began to carefully add more detail to my pattern. Since the initial shape was already there, painting the next level of detail freehand was easier as I could use that shape as a guide. I began with a dark shade to outline the boundary between the leaves. I then layered several intermediate shades to get the look I wanted. You'll notice that as I added more detail some of my edges and corners lost their sharpness. To correct this I would periodically go back with my background color and clean them up.
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Once I was happy with the leaves I turned to the LEGX label. I added a few more off white background layers to smooth it out. Then I wrote LEGX in dark brown. For this part I skipped penciling it in first. It all depends on how you feel about your brush control. Again I took the off white background color and cleaned up my lettering.
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When doing freehand work, the key things to remember are:
- Plan out the design first
- Draw/practice to scale
- Break down the design into simple shapes
- Don't worry about being perfect, you can always go back over your work and correct it later


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