Freehanding a Feathered Cloak / Hordebloods Update

---

 I may not be posting much these days, but I'm hoping that should change soon... really it's just been a motivation thing. When last seen, this model was just primed black in my Hordebloods Progress Report. I have been getting work done though, pictured left, and wanted to share with you how I painted his cloak.

It is a little bit of a tricky process, but like many things, not quite as complicated as it might appear at first. This will take a fine brush and a steady hand though.

Freehanding the feathered cloak

I was apprehentious about this at first then, supportive as always, TheWife pointed out I have a little experience painting diamonds.

The first step is to paint the base for the actual surface of the cloak.

Do all the shading, highlighting, etc. If you plan on doing a final wash over top  you may want to hold off on doing that at this stage. It depends on the colour you're washing with, but doing it at the end can help blend in the final highlight as well.

Next, you need to create a diamond pattern on the cloak, and all that is, is a collection of diagonal lines. What can help at this stage is to first paint dots at all the cross sections. Once your cloak is dotted, draw lines between them all.


Feel free to practice on a piece of paper first - you'll notice that the closer the dots are side-by-side, the taller the diamonds are.

Between the second and third photos I've cleaned the lines up. They're now a little darker and straighter, making everything a little more clean and uniform. But that's not all.

The third photo may look similar to the second, but it's not, so look closer. In thickening up the black lines, I've done so with lots of little dashes and smudges. This begins to give it the rough feathered look that we're going for.

Finally, I use my highlight colour to paint the bottom of all the diamonds. Once again, pay attention to how I haven't just drawn clean "V"s. I've made lots of little upward motions with my brush so it has the rough feathering.

And there you have it!

On a personal note, I don't mind how his beard turned out... might work on it some more though. But I'm not thrilled about his face. Unfortunately, while I usually love the Privateer Press sculpts when they're not hanging half way off their bases, this head didn't leave much to work with.

---

Take a look at my Step by Step page for the entire Hordebloods project. Here you will find each model broken down into links showing each step: Concept, Works in Progress, (for both modelling and painting) and Final Shots