Knight of the Holy Sepulchre part VIII

After wrapping up the banner, I glued it into place in the knight's hand.  I've painted the spear point but the pole is just base coated.  I'd held off on doing anything to the base.  In part because I don't really like dealing with bases, but also because I was handling it a lot while painting the rest of the figure and didn't want to cause any damage to it.  It's not super fragile, but constant handling will start to rub detail off.

The figure came with a small piece of groundwork for the base (see previous photos) but I wanted to extend it out to cover the entire wood surface.  I used some painters tape to help  keep the edges around the wood base clean.  I then used a modeling plaster to create the basic shape of the ground.  I intentionally gave it an uneven texture as I applied it and overlapped the existing base slightly to help blend them together.  After drying I used an old brush to paint on some white glue and then sprinkled sand over the base to create some additional rocky texture.  I took a first pass at painting the base using Basic Dirt, 50/50 Basic Dirt and Khaki Shadow, then started to mix in Terran Khaki and then a bit of Khaki Highlight.  I then added some dropped equipment from my box of bits and the next step will be to paint those.  Then I'll use some pigments on the base when I weather the rest of the figure.  I also want to add some sparse vegetation to the base, though that should probably be before I add the pigments.

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.

Knight of the Holy Sepulchre part VI

The knight's clothing is pretty plain (a lot of white) so I wanted to add a simple design along the border of the cape to add a bit more interest.  From the standpoint of historical accuracy, it's certainly possible that he could have something like this.  I started the design along the bottom a while back but still needed to continue it up the side and a bit on the front.  So I thought I'd take this opportunity to show how I approach something like this.  The first step is to figure out what sort of design you want to do.  I'm continuing what I already had, so no need to worry about that.  With a repetitive design you want it to look as even and consistent as possible.  This is always tricky when doing it by hand (without a template of some sort).  To help I placed a mark where each wave gets closest to the edge using a rule to keep the mark spacing consistent.

Next I start to fill in the lines.  Break down the pattern to simpler parts.  In this case I began with the portion crossing over the other line.  Note that if the line cross through the right dot, it will be slightly offset from the left dot.

Next I put in the other side of the line, following the original one and trying to keep the distance between lines consistent.

Now it was a simple matter of connecting the lines going under to fill in the rest of the pattern.  Where necessary I adjusted the original marks so that they looked like they meet.  It's a bit rough here and that's okay.

So with the design sketched on, now it was time to go in and clean it up.  Taking the background color I carefully went along the sides of the design lines.  You don't need to go everywhere, just where the lines are too thick or not smooth enough.  I also did some glazes of the cape colors to blend it all together and add a bit more shading/highlighting.

And here's the whole scene

Knight of the Holy Sepulchre part V

I haven't had much painting time recently, but still managed to make some progress.  With the horse mostly finished I was able to finally glue on the rider.  I attached the front of the saddle at the same time, it's a tight fit so I had to attach it along with the rider.  I also placed his stirrups.  Before adding the shield I painted the back of it with a wood pattern.  It was a lot of work for something you won't really see... but it's still possible to see some from the right angle so it had to be done.  The front of the shield has a slight gradient to the white, but it's not showing up well in the photos.  I plan to go back in and increase the contrast.  The shield will also get a good deal of weathering before I'm done.