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I've been working on the Brass Bull from Reaper's Bones II Kickstarter for the last few days (it's basically been produced as a D&D "Gorgon", but I'm taking the Ancient Greek Khalkotauroi angle myself). And while this is much more of a fantasy/mythical creature, I thought I'd share something I did today that will be part of the base deco, as it's potentially of interest to some people in this section of the forum

The Bull itself and his slate base got completed today, and so while they're both outside drying from my spray varnish, I'm painting up a couple of the base deco elements. The Kopis will be simple and relatively unexciting, but today I decided to try my hand at freehanding a Greek Hoplon shield with a little more challenge than the others I've done recently - being core and rim with simple colours, finished with a transfer.

I decided to try a Greek "key" design, as well as a freehand device of a bird. Shield is a standard-sized 28mm Hoplon/Aspis from Wargames Factory. This is the WIP and result:

That's really lovely work

Yes, it is nice to see people keeping up the old ways. You don't want to go buggering about with the old ways.

Transfer shield designs are all very well but they do tend to give a mass production look to an army.

You can be truly proud of doing your shields and flags by hand.

Thanks guys, though a lot of the R&F of the Greek army will have transfers. There's a level of detail on those that I can't compete with using a brush, but I've proved to myself that I can do a decent key (it's much neater looking in real life, the photo brings out all of the imperfections). I'll practice the Greek-style shield edging and combine with transfers, and also do the odd design as well by hand.

With less intricate figures (and banners) I prefer to go freehand with far fewer exceptions. Certain heraldic devices for example on things like Knights might have transfers, though for simpler things I'll freehand.

This worked well as a "proof of concept" kind of thing for me, though, and so I'll be much more willing to go the extra mile now on Greeks, so I'm quite happy about that.

Very nice work!

Freehand details just add a level of personality that decals cannot.

A trick for doing greek shields (If it works on Xyston 15mm Greeks and Macedonians, then it should work on 25mm+ sized figures).

First, Excellent shield.

Something to make the geometric pattern around the edges easier:

Post-it Notes.

You get the sticky side of a Post-it Note, and trace the inner curve of the outer rim (obviously only about ¼ of it, but we can use this same Post-it for all four quadrants).

Then cut that curve out, so that you have a Post-it that you can 'stick' down to the rim.

Then trace the pattern on the post-it note, measured so that you are sure it will fit continuously around the shield.

Make sure to use rulers, guide-curves, etc. to get your pattern drawn straight.

Then, cut out the pattern.

Then, with the pattern cut out , stick the Post-it on the rim, and with a very light dry-brush, stipple a pattern onto the rim; rotate and repeat on all four corners.

Now you should have nearly perfect guide-curves lightly noticeable on the rim, and simply paint over them.

You can duplicate the pattern to use on as many rims as possible, if doing units.

I used this on my Spartans, and Phyrric Successors, and people were Amazed at how symmetrical and identical all of the shield patterns and lambdas on the shields were.

MB

Aha. Creating a kind of custom stencil of sorts. That sounds like it probably wouldn't work for "keys" (due to cutting out the pattern on paper), but on the other hand that it would work really well for some of the geometric patterns common to Greek, etc shields. Do you have any pics? I think I have the idea, but images are always useful for clarification. It might even be worth putting together a guide, as it seems a technique worth sharing widely.

Beautiful freehand there Azazelx, cannot wait to see more.