Night Lords Chapter Banner!

Now for something particularly terrible!  The Night Lords chapter banner!

The client wanted a Night Lords banner that inspired terror. He wanted it a little more realistic than the standard banners, with a more horror inspiring skull.  He sent me a picture for reference.  He wanted a "Negative Space" chaos star behind the main image, illuminated by the crashing lightning bolt behind it.

After playing around with a few ways to do this, I decided to use masking tape to make the star, then painted right over it. I put down layers of blue, getting lighter and lighter, to create the glow effect. Then I did the hard edged bolt down the middle of the glow.

In the bottom left he wanted a nod to the 8th legion. So I added a roman numeral 8. He wanted an eclipsed sun in the center. I decided to go with a muted blue for the color of the sun. He wanted a few words on the right, not sure what they mean.  For the numbers, keeping with the dark Night Lords theme, I painted them black with a single grey highlight. The picture is a little dark so they are hard to read, but believe me, they look subtle but striking.

So there you go!  I am particularly pleased with the lightning effect on this one.  I had a lot of fun painting it.

Let me know if you want one for yourself! Next up, a special custom one for a client attending Wargamescon.  More on that soon.

Jawaballs

Big banner order out the door!

I finally finished the banner order for Dropzone Games, a new store opening in Maryland very soon. More details to come on that asap, but for now, here are the banners! I want to say that I am VERY proud of these. I put a lot of heart into making these as perfect as I could.

This was the first of the set that I made. I wanted to keep it simple and efficient. 

That was good, because the next two nearly broke me. :)  This banner was hands down the most difficult one I have done to date.  The boys at Dropzone were very particular about what they wanted, with all rights. They were making a big investment, and of course, the customer is always right.  I struggled for weeks on how I was going to do the cross pattern in the back, until finally I decided to make a stencil. So I got out my xacto and some stiff card stock and went to work with a ruler.

I cut a single row of crosses, and used Liquitex spray acrylic to spray the crosses onto the fabric.  My stencil started breaking down by the end, but it worked. With that done, I was able to do the main image. 

The next challenge was to get the large block of latin copy to fit on the pages of the book and of course paint each of the letters by hand. Normally with this sort of thing I just do gibberish letters. 

The scrolls at the bottom were a little different. They wanted some copy based on Arabic, so I made up some script to fill the pages using a style of lettering that resembled it.

It was the best banner I had done to date, then I did the next one.

Hand painting straight lines is hard. Especially 90 degree angles. These little crosses took me the better part of a week to get right. But also, they had to line up not only with the main image, but the squares in the checker pattern and the images below. My trusty ruler came through, and I managed to get every thing to line up on the first try.  :) Remember, this banner is 3x7 feet. It is not quite that easy to judge if something six feet away is lined up with an image I just drew. 

If you have ever tried to paint something symmetrical, you can feel my pain. The wreath in the main image, and the one at the bottom were their own little challenges. They needed to look the same on both sides, same curve, same end point. 

I particularly like the star field. I stippled lighter and lighter shades of blue to make the "space". The star arrangement took many attempts. They wanted at least four stars, with the biggest one in the lower left. Maybe the guys at Dropzone can pop in and share some insight! They were also particular about three skulls on the scroll.  

I think my favorite part is the skull. I painted with metallics on brown, something I never tried before, and I like how it came out. Looking at the picture, I could probably have given it another highlight with an even lighter gold, but I am still pleased with it.

So there you go! These are on their way out. Next is Night Lords, Death Company, Blood Angels Chapter banner, and a custom IG one.  

Keep em coming!  

Jawaballs