I am intimidated about painting heraldry; especially if I have gone through the time and effort to paint, highlight, and shadow the tunic and then making a mistake on the design. How do I erase? I use oils so they tend to be transparent and thus difficult to hide a design painted in acrylic. Do people paint the design by hand using paint or pencil then paint in details?

Hi Bruno,

I'll explain the way I paint heraldry.

1) Finish your background (i.e. a surcoat) completely in oils.

2) After the oil paint has sufficiently dried, give it a few protective layers of heavely diluted Humbrol flat varnish.

3) Outline the heraldry with diluted Humbrol paint of the appropriate colour. Using Humbrol for this gives you the possibility to brush away any mistake with a clean brush wetted with some white spirit. The protective layers of varnish avoid that the oil paint will be damaged.

4) Fill in the outline with the base colour for the heraldry.

5) Finish the heraldry with oil paint(s).

This works for me, may be you can give it a try also.

Have fun with it!

Johan

Hello Bruno maybe this can help you

http://www.armorama.com/modules.php?op=mod...id=52192&page=1

I think this is one that you're just going to have to bite the bullet and go for it. I'd practice on a piece of styrene or card stock first, but with practice comes success. I understand the hesitancy and anxiety over the possibility of "ruining" a figure, but until you do it, worrying about it is as far as you'll get. Figure you'll mess one or two up before you really feel comfortable (hence the reason for practicing on scrap) and just set yourself to the task at hand. Learn from your failures and don't be too critical or harsh on your successes.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Just go for it.
You have to remember most heraldry was not like you see on those Russian figures at all the shows and in the magazines. These were simple designs used for recognition.

There's a new article about painting heraldry that was put up on EPH today:
http://forums.delphiforums.com/eph2/messages/?msg=182.1

I know Augie was visiting here occasionally, but I don't know how often he gets to PF and other site.

And if you need ideas, there are a series of threads on accurate coats of arms of crusaders being posted over there too.

Cheers
Andy

thanks for all the replies the article on El Passo was great.

I'm no master at it. But have tried it a painting heraldry a few times. Last time I outlined the heraldry with watercolor, not acrylic, but watercolor, so if I made a mistake, I could erase it with water. It kind of worked for me, but everyone is different.

Brad Spelts