Knight of the Holy Sepulchre part VII

I'm getting closer and closer to finishing the knight.  Since the last update I've attached and painted the horse's reins.  If you've never done a mounted figure (aside from the gaming ones), these kits usually come with only the section attached to the horses mouth and the buckle end of the rein.  For the rest you take foil and carefully cut it to the length and width you need.  It's fragile but, since this is a display figure and not a gaming piece, that shouldn't be a problem.  I also attached the flowing cloth on the back of the knights head.  Although it's also white, I wanted to distinguish it (and the cloth around his head/neck) from the rest of his clothing.  So instead of using Bone Shadow and Weathered Stone, I used Dusky Skin and Dusky Skin Highlight.  For both Leather White was mixed in to create the highlights.

I still need to do the horses tail and hooves (and a few tweaks here and there), but the main figure is just about finished.  In the meantime I've switched back to the knight's banner.  I'd previously finished one side but not the other.  As with the shield, it's a 5 cross pattern on a white background.  With so much space I decided to create a subtle background pattern to make it a little more interesting.  Here's how the finished side looks.

 

The reverse side just had the shadows and highlights sketched on.  You can see the three colors I'm using for most of the white on the knight (bone shadow, weathered stone, and leather white).  To complete this side the first step was to blend in the shadows and highlights for the background as if there was no pattern.  Since I would be adding a white on white pattern, I kept the highlights a bit subdued and did not go all the way to pure leather white.  I then painted on the cross pattern, attempting to match the location from the other side, so slightly hidden under the fold.  Now comes the tough part, the subtle pattern.  As with the cape, I begin by measuring out the distance between lines.  I place a mark spaced out four lines apart along the top and bottom (a pure leather white dot).  I can then place a mark by eye right inbetween two marks, and then divide those again to get the location where every line hits the top and bottom.  Then I carefully paint in the diagonal lines.  Once I have a large section finished I'll go back in and add the little dashes on the sides of each diamond.

I'm still working on the bottom section, the spacing is a bit off so I'm going to paint over it and redo a bit before going on to the rest.  When all that's finished I'll do some glazing to create some shadows for the pattern.