"Tutorial for painting linen banners" Topic

This year, I started painting linen banners for my SAGA warbands. Linen can be a trial to paint but worth it, I think. I posted a tutorial on my blog here. I'd love any tips, tricks or feedback as I've just scratched the surface.

Sweet!

Awesome work.

Xin

Tried this once for my Saxons. Looks OK, but I think the threads on my linen were a bit too coarse for 28mm figures. I see that someone on your blog suggested bandage gauze, which will have much finer threads, so I may try that. Yours look great.

Those are little works of art. I wonder if the coarseness of the linen could be muted with a thin wash of white glue before priming and painting. Gesso may work if not too thick, but enough to fill in the weave somewhat and give a nice surface to paint on.

If you don't mind going high tech instead of high touch you can get a printable fabric sheet. link
But I think I like yours better for premodern periods.

Very interesting and useful tutorial – many thanks for doing it. I love your description of it as "seat of the pants painting". Sometime I think all my painting is like that!

Thanks guys for the feedback! Condotta, good suggestion…I mixed a small amount of white glue into my base coat color today. We'll see how it goes. I don't want to lose the translucent quality of linen so I have to go light.

Dave, I agree linen is a compromise. You get texture but you lose the ability to paint fine detail. That's why I've been going more stylistic. I used dot painting for the Christ banner because it just didn't look right otherwise.

Frothers, I often wish I had an arts background. It would make much of this easier. Without it, I'm reduced to trial and error, and error, and error. ;-)

I really like the look. I am going to give this a try for my medievals. Thanks for sharing!

Amazing work! I wish I could draw free hand as well as you do.