Can I Have A Free Hand?

With added free hand company shoulder pad.

Welcome back to the Folly of War, this week I want to talk about free hand painting on models. There was once a time when I used to love transfers. Back when I was a lad (before I had even glued my first space marine), I used to make airfix models. I can remember the constant battle with my parents to find somewhere to paint as airfix used oil based paints and God help me if I got any on the carpet. Once the plane was assembled and painted, I would go through the process of cutting the tiny transfers from the sheet and placing them in a bowl of water. Then repeating this step again and again because the transfer would split, folded or more commonly stick to (my mum often wondered why I was suddenly tattooed with RAF and German Iron Cross symbols). As soon as I hit making Space Marines my use of transfers stopped dead. I will always remember the frustration of trying to apply the Blood Angels symbol to a curved shoulder pad, followed by the inevitable teenage tantrum and finally ritual using of the transfer sheet as a paint pallet just so I felt better. Now what has this got to do with free hand painting I hear your cry....

Well let me tell you. I have always loved the iconography of 40k and squad markations of battle groups in WW2 so leaving models without squad numbers and symbols is just a no go for me. It wasn't until, I started working with Animatronica that I became interested at adding free hand detailed on my miniatures. He had painted a fantastic Baneblade Tank to go with his Chaos Alpha Legion just around the time when the Apocalypse rules came out. He named the Tank The Tower of Snakes (if you wish to see some of his work click on the blog of the same name) and had painted an amazing hydra down the side of the of the armoured tracks. It was stunning and I asked him how he achieved such an amazing results. He explained that you must always draw out your design, this gives you a base to work from and then build up the colours as you would for normal highlighting.

Devastator Sgt with Tycho's personal banner.

So starting small I started on some campaign badges for my Black Templars. This was easy enough, a simple shield shape with a red stripe. From then on nothing could stop me I moved on to chapter badges and then finally banners. I can have the most fun with the banners because you record your own victories and also historical battles. One of my Marshals has a banner of Helsreach Spire. Free hand painting takes time but with practise the results can be superb. I began to develop my own styles and techniques which suited my designs. One such technique I use now is to block out the design in silhouette with black and then build up block colours. I have had a lot of fun with painting my Blood Angels and I have increased the amount of free hand work on the marines. I hope that some where out there in Internet land you have a go too. Before I go I will leave you with some more Blood Angels goodness. Captain Tycho is almost finished with non traditional colour scheme. I'm leaving the gold armour behind for red. Personally I feel that the gold armour is far to garish and I want to tone him down.  Next week I plan to cover the 6th edition release so stay tuned.

Devastators with added light effect on the plasma cannons.

Captain Erasmus Tycho of the 3rd Company (work in progress).