Hand Painting Shield Designs

This post is a companion to this main post on Antiochus IV's Romanised infantry which was inspired by Angus McBride's plate in Monvet's Seleucid Army book which was also faithfully reproduced by Angel García Pinto for Ancient Warfare magazine. The distinctive shield device was the main feature I wanted to replicate and this post is to expand on how I did this.  

The process to achieve the design was quite experimental not having much experience with free hand designs. Starting with the red basecoat (step 1) was the diamond shape (step 2) after haphazardly painting wobbly diamonds I broke the process down to slightly more consistent manner;

A) Along both sides of the the spine of the shield paint the height of the shape.

B) From the centre of the shield boss paint a line for the width of the shape.

C) Connect the top and bottom of the shape to the width lines.

D) Fill in the centre.  

The "diamond" shape break down

Quite hard to see the detail on the picture:

Step 1) Red basecoat.

Step 2) Turquoise diamond background.

Step 3) Edges and spine painted in bronze and also within the diamond rough wing shapes.

Step 4) The centre of the boss in dark grey for the face.
Step 5) In the dark grey area a rough face shape; a line in the middle for the nose, dots either side of that cheeks, horizontal lines below for the mouth and most of the area above the nose for the forehead. 

Step 6) Highlight step 5 with white   

Step 7) Highlight around the face and the wings with old gold (spine optional).

Step 8) Highlight the diamond with blue green to give wreath\leafy effect.

Step by step

Finished examples with the red highlighted