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Well. Recently I decided I'd try and up my game on my painting by adding some freehand painting to my minis and tanks.
I started small with a chaos star on a banner, I was fairly pleased with the results. Buoyed by this minor success I decided my new vindicator should have the iron warriors icon on one of its doors. Yes I am aware this is a fairly simple design, but it is by far the most complicated piece of work I've ever done, and I'm not really happy with how it's turned out. Before I simply paint it over and just use hazard stripes, does anyone have any tips on how to improve it.

Personally I think that looks great as is!

Cheers dude, I'd prefer it to look less cartoony though.

I also think it looks neat. If you're concerned about cartooniness then maybe try and get the eye and nose holes a bit further apart? Its a bit of a carachature just noe. Some more realistic proportions would help. Another thing you could try is to convert tge triangular grin into a more jaggedy upper jaw look with just some teeth hanging down?

Yeah i get your point, i basically just copied the gw decal though, just scaled up a bit. ie 10x. lol

yea the eyes and the nose definitely make it have that 'cartoony' look you are worried about, but as a bit for first time freehand, theres nothing wrong with it, id be happy with that if it were me. Maybe a quick spray over and start again? maybe try it out on paper first until you're happy with the result?

I think its great, and same criticism as the others (the eyes are the only problem and look like they could easily be fixed). Do you have pictures of the banner? I have such a hard time freehanding, all my hazard stripes are done by my girlfriend as I do not have steady enough hands.

You could always cheat using the following steps:

1. Draw out your design in miniature (IMO, I find it's easier to get the proportions right on a smaller scale)
2. Scan design onto your computer, and then enlarge it to the proportions you want.
3. Print out and shade the rear of the image with pencil.
4. Position over desired area
5. Gently (very gently so as not to gouge the paintwork) trace over the image lines.
6. Peel away and voila! - your image, correctly proportioned, ready to be painted over, highlighted and coloured.

I personally however, just think of the image I'd like then just go for it straight off, but I wouldn't recommend that approach if you aren't sure of free-handing. Probably the best advice I could give in your particular case is to doodle several designs and apply the simplest one. You can then get the hang of things and move on to more complex designs later, without jumping the gun and fething it up.

All that said, it's a very good effort for a first go, I would be reasonably happy with that had it been my first go! Good luck!

This is a great resource site I have found:

http://fromthewarp.blogspot.com/p/archives-and-tutorials.html

 Skoda wrote:
I think its great, and same criticism as the others (the eyes are the only problem and look like they could easily be fixed). Do you have pictures of the banner? I have such a hard time freehanding, all my hazard stripes are done by my girlfriend as I do not have steady enough hands.

Yeah, the standard bearer is in my gallery.