LORD OF THE RINGS MODELING ARTICLES.

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Highly detailed hand painted Banners an easy approach.

Introduction…

Would you like custom built standard bearer models in your army units to have highly detailed hand painted banners, but are not able to because :-

1... You do not have the skill to paint the intricate designs.

2... You are not able to paint the designs because the banners are too small.

Why not try a method I have used to great effect to produce highly detailed and intricately detailed banners.  Simple and quick to create, relatively inexpensive, and the results you can achieve can be fantastic. 

The cost of producing the banners shown here in this article came to about £2.50 in total.  However, you may find that the price may vary slightly at different Copy Centres, so you might want to check first before proceeding to have the sheets photocopied. 

Follow these easy steps…

1... You will need a banner design of some sort, either draw one yourself, or find one that you can copy.  The design I used was copied from the GW The Two Towers rule book on page 131.  Games Workshop allow you to photocopy the designs for your own personal use.

2... Either scan the banner into your PC, or get it photocopied, but either way you will need have the design enlarged.  I scanned the image at a resolution of 300 dpi, (the scanned picture was about four times larger than the original artwork), which is a good size to put in plenty of detail, see picture 1, (the 50 Pence piece is to show the size of the actual painted banner.)  Because the banner is now so much larger than the original, you will find the design far easier to paint.

3... Paint your masterpiece.  The one shown in the pictures below is a High Elven banner.

Click to enlarge

4... You will now need to photocopy your finished artwork, any decent Copy Centre should be able to do this for you. I had the master design replicated 3 times, see picture below.  The main reason I had the artwork duplicated was simple, I would have a replacement banner, if the one on my model should be damaged during a game session or in transit.

Click to enlarge

5... The next stage is to get the Copy Centre to do a mirror image of the photocopied banners.  You need to do this so that you end up with a left hand side and a right hand side to your banner.  If you do not have the mirror image copy, you end up having one side of the banner upside down. 

You will need to get the Copy Centre to reduce the image size by about 75%. You can either have this done while they are creating the mirror image, as I did, or keep the sheet with the large banners and keep this as a master sheet, for future reference.  To make sure that the banner is the correct size either take your TTT rule book with you, or make a note of the banners length in the book, so that the Copy Centre can reduce your artwork to the required size.

6... Cut out a left and a right hand side of the banner and then glue them together with PVA adhesive, leaving enough of the paper unglued and free of adhesive at the pole end, so that you are able to stick the banner onto the pole.  Give the whole banner a coat of very slightly thinned PVA glue, and leave this to fully dry.  Now attach the banner to the pole on your model using PVA, and bend into the desired shape.  You will need to trim the excess paper that overlaps on the pole, I find that a sharp craft knife does the job best. You may also find that you need to touch up the part of the banner where the two sides join.

7... The finished banner on the model.

Click to enlarge

If you should ever need to remove or replace the banner from your model, it should be easy enough to remove by soaking it in warm water.