The Great Company Banner!

It's been a while. I've been thinking of stuff to write about, but recently things have been.. stale. I blame the new release of Warhammer Fantasy 8th Edition. All I hear is "Dude! Run your High Elves in blocks of 50!" or "Magic is so OP!". I don't really care! Gah! Fantasy is kind of neat, but I already sold my Skaven, since I prefer the more futuristic grimdark universe.
We are still trying to come up with a really cool-looking paint sceheme for our Space Wolves. If any of you thinks that your is the best you should totally recommend us something!

Yesterday I decided that I really needed to paint something. I was sick of building miniatures and kind of didn't want to just hang out around the paint bar in our local GW, so I decided to... pain the Great Company! My Wolf Lord's name is.. well.. Skarvald the Troll-faced and he's a renowned hunter and slayers of beasts (thus the saga of the beastslayer). The Company Banner is going to be attacked to his back and on top of it I will attach the decapitated head of a river troll. ; )

Our Adepticon Space Wolf armies are themed after Harald Deathwolf's Great Company. His sigil is the Ravening Jaw - a wolf devouring a white star. Harald's Company is known for its Thunderwolves and that matches the main focus of our four 1000 pts. lists for the Team Tournament. After all, there's a total of 4 units of them - fully kitted out. ;-3

The banner was not that hard to do. Primed black, base coated with Mechrite Red mixed with a liiiitle bit of Blood Red. As always, add water to your paints, especially if it is a foundation paint. 1:1 ratio works best. After that, I tried outlining the wolf with a pencil but gave up on the idea and realized that there was no way that I could fit both the "Harald" AND "Deathwolf" scrolls on it.
Not even the white star that the black wolf was supposed to be devouring. Oh well.
I started outlining the wolf with a fine detail brush, using Chaos Black and with Mechrite Red I was going over any spots that I messed up (wrong proportions, bad details, etc. etc.). This happened A LOT.

Free Hand Drawing is all about going back and fixing stuff you fucked up. It's not about precision, accuracy and a steady hand (although that helps a ton!) - it's about persistence and patience.


After I was happy with the general shape I filled the wolf with Chaos Black and then played around blending various greys, whites.. On top I did the scroll and quickly wrote deathwolf on it with a micron pen. They help sooo much. Can't stress this enough. You need it. Not only was it priceless for outlining and defining the wolf, but it also gives it that "finished" look to boot! It is yet another way to fix whatever you fucked up. ; )

Obviously this is not finished yet. The backside needs to be painted as well with red and I need to add some touch ups to the scroll, paint the cloth part of the banner and finished the little purity seals and little banners beneath the wolf. And I need to paint that troll head.

But that's another story.

P.S: Excuse my camera phone and poor lightning. It was too late for me to rummage for my good cameras, plus the banner does not deserve a proper photo before it is 100% complete.