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Although I've been painting for nearly 20years I've still not managed to nail free hand squad markings could any of you ladies or gents give me any hints.

Cheers people.

I've had the most success with ultrafine point markers personally. Far more than with brushes. Even if I just draw the outline & then fill it in with the appropriate paint color.

I havent done this myself but you could mask with tamiya tape or some sort of stencil (one made out of GS for example?).

I am trying to work out a method for free hand squad/chapter markings myself atm.

Cheers for the hints guys, I'm just starting a space wolf army after nearly 20 years of green skins so having to paint freehand and neatly is a scary idea lol.

Hey try this for decals

http://fromthewarp.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/adding-freehand-and-decals.html

Ron has loads of tutorials over at from the warp

Thin paints, patience and practice are the main things I think. also don't be afraid to correct edges with the base colour if your freehand lines are a bit messy. Thin layers help this because it means you don't end up building up really thick patches of paint around the freehand aras.

Masking with tape is as much of a pain as getting the freehand right first time.

Steadiness of both the target model and your painting hand are important. Rest your wrist on something.

From the warp is an awesome!!!! How the hell have I not seen it before?!?

I'm thinking of designing my own chapter markings but I am throwing a blank with what to do lol

what kind of squad markings are you looking for?
for the space wolfs they only use like triangles or something right?

I use a pencil, drawn very lightly on the surface I want to paint. Once I've done that I'll give it a basic outline, see if it looks okay, then resume painting. Fix any errors or anything I don't like once I'm done, but this also depends on what you are doing. Most C:SM just use roman numerals, so that should be pretty easy. You could always pick up a transfer sheet from FW. I have the UM one and its pretty nice, comes with lots of cool stuff on it.

Hate to say it, but as other posters have said - it's mainly just a good deal of patience and a steady hand. Having said that, it isn't as daunting as it may seem. As a novice painter myself (and I'm sure your 20 years of experience will put my 2 years to shame when you get free-handing), I found that just getting together the right paints and jumping straight in was the best way to learn - and I get some pretty good results now. I think as long as you have a definitive image in your mind of what you want you'll be fine. I usually do a rough sketch on paper to get the general image of what I want, then just go for it. Of course, you could just do a mock-up model in SW colours, then just free-hand all over it to get an eye for it... Best of luck.

 Warpig1815 wrote:
Hate to say it, but as other posters have said - it's mainly just a good deal of patience and a steady hand. Having said that, it isn't as daunting as it may seem. As a novice painter myself (and I'm sure your 20 years of experience will put my 2 years to shame when you get free-handing), I found that just getting together the right paints and jumping straight in was the best way to learn - and I get some pretty good results now. I think as long as you have a definitive image in your mind of what you want you'll be fine. I usually do a rough sketch on paper to get the general image of what I want, then just go for it. Of course, you could just do a mock-up model in SW colours, then just free-hand all over it to get an eye for it... Best of luck.

I wish I could say the extra 18 years gave me the upper hand but the way I shake I can honestly say it doesn't lol. As I said earlier I'm an ex green skin painter so nowt really has to be perfect. So my shakey hands kind of made that an easy job lol

Like Firehead said. Although I'd add to this by saying use a mechanical pencil as you will get sharper lines.

If you want to do an elaborate marking the best thing would be to design it on computer and print it on to transfer paper.