Painting Tutorial: Tomb Kings Banners

Here's a step-by-step guide to how I painted the gold icons onto my banners.

 

In my Tomb Kings army, rather than using just the plastic totems included in the kits, I've modeled the banners with with proper flags onto which I could paint unique iconography. The first step, of course is coming up with a design. I sketched out some ideas– For Selketta's archery units, I wanted to incorporate a scorpion motif and an arrow, and settled on something similar to the Eye of Horus, with the end curling up like a scorpion tail, and a sort of "teardrop" arrow. When drawing the icon, I made sure it would fit on the banner at actual size.

 

 

I painted the entire model, including the red banner, and sealed the model with a matte spray of Tamiya TS-80 Flat Clear. The spray makes it easier to draw on the surface, and adds a barrier to protect the under painting in case I need to use alcohol to clean up any serious mistakes.

With a mechanical pencil, I lightly drew the design onto the flag. Getting the design laid out correctly was the most important step; this was the guide I would follow with my brush, and it would be much easier to erase and fix the pencil than it would be to remove the paint.

 

 

I only used one brush to paint the icon: A size #1 Windsor and Newton Series 7 brush. Having a brush with a sharp tip and keeping the paint thin is key to getting precise lines. 

 

 

Starting with XV-88 brown, I traced the pencil lines and drew in the basic shape. (I actually needed to fix the painted line at this step, and used a small drybrush with some isopropyl alcohol to gently scrub the paint. As expected, the brown line came off and the matte spray protected the red color underneath.) 

 

 

Once the brown outline was dry, I used a clean pencil eraser to erase any pencil lines visible around the edge, leaving just the brown outline.

 

 

Next, I mixed some Zamesi Desert and XV-88 to get a more golden brown, and went over the linework, brightening it.

 

 

My goal was to create a sort of "non metallic metal" appearance to the image, so I used some brown ink and XV-88 to shade the edges and carefully outline everything.

 

 

From there, I used straight Zamesi to recapture the golden color, while keeping the edges dark and maintaining the shaded areas.

 

 

I brightened the highlights with with Moldy Ochre. At this stage, I used a combination of the Ochre, Zamesi, and XV-88 to adjust the highlights and shadows anywhere it was necessary.

 

 

The final step was to use Moldy Ochre and Screaming Skull to brighten the edge highlights, and then added a few "bright point" highlight spots with straight Screaming Skull.

 

 

With the icon finished, I masked off the rest of the model and sprayed the banner with Tamiya TS-80 to give everything a flat, even tone. The final step was to touch up the gold and silver on the banner top since they had been dulled by the spray.

 

 

I used the same process on my skeleton regiment's banner, but used a more intricate design to fill out the larger flag. I tried to keep the brightest highlights where the raised folds of the banner were, to follow the highlights of the cloth.

 

 

And that's it– The standard bearers are ready to join their regiments!

 

 

'Til next time!