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I'm practicing freehands and banners for a competition entry, this is a practice so time limited, the blends would be smoother and freehand neater, but I'd appreciate any advice on getting this up to competition standard. So far I think there's a bit much space, perhaps the freehand should be larger, maybe also more contrast on the gems but still not sure how to make them look really raised from the cloth. Also an additional pattern or something or would that be overkill?

Thanks for any feedback.

The cloth looks great to me and so does the freehand. I think less space between the emblem parts would look better. Tighten it up and then make it slightly larger.

I agree about the segments being closer together. If i were to make the shapes a litte more rounded, and shade the green around the shapes would the gems look more 3D? Also what about glazing lighter the entire rim of the gem lightly?

That cloth looks fantastic. How did you do it?

Also, agreed on the emblem spacing needing to be closer. Aside from that though, it's a awesome banner.

Thanks
As to how I did it, it's a bit complicated to put as a list of stages, but watch James Wappel's video on colour theory with greens on YouTube and that explains far better than I could how I for the look I was going for.
I used death worldly forest, ice blue, moot green, bleached bone, iyaanden darksun, mcragge blue, evil sunz scarlet, scorched brown, knarlok green, gauss blaster green, astronomican grey, drakenhoff nightshade, white and black, All in various mixes, to alter the temperature and brightness of the green across the banner.

Did I need so many colours? Probably not since I could mix most from the other colours anyway but I was experimenting so I put on the pallete and used quite a few.

Thanks, I'll look him up.

On that first test banner I've tried nmm gold on the bit holding the banner, still trying to be able to do gold so let me know if anything about it doesn't look right.

Also the next banner I re-did the freehand but have yet to do the white because I'm still thinking how to do that realistically and weather or not I want to holds varnish since it looked a bit tacky in person after the varnish on the practice banner.