We covered concept and building, now it's time to tackle painting.
Painting a double sided banner is easy for the first half since you don't have to worry about the opposite side, It's once you have the first side painted and you're working on the flip side that it gets tough.
The biggest hurdle is making sure you don't damage your work on the first side in the process of getting the second side painted.
I suppose there are a few ways to go about it but here's what I do. Remember in the last post where I said not to cut out the complete banner just yet... here's why.
I try and give myself a plce to hold onto the banner with one hand while I'm painting with the other. If I cut it out completely, I'll be handling the actual banner while I'm painting it.
You can see from the pic above that I only cut out three sides of the banner leaving the excess on the "mounting" side to hold onto while I paint.
After I drew out the shape of my banner on my GS and I went ahead and drew in the actual image. If you've drawn it on paper (and maybe even reduced it with a copy machine) all you need to do is take a pencil and scribble on the back so you can trace the front with a ballpoint pen and transfer an outline of your image to your actual banner.
This will give you a faint pencil outline you can go over with a pen instead of trying to draw it freehand.
You'll need two copies of your banner image if you're doing it this way, one for the other side but you'll have to flip the paper so the image is backwards or just duplicate it the same.
And then we get to painting.
I took pictures as I did each step.
And that's just one side. Repeat for the second side and all that's left is left mounting it on the actual model.
If you notice, I didn't paint all the way up to the ends on the edge that I'll be mounting. This allows me to glue it to the model and then go back with some paint and touch it up.
I also go in and add things like scrolls and purity seals (if you look at the top picture) to add some stability and make sure the banner is connected to it's mount properly. A litle bit of paint on those and you're all set.
If you take your time and you plan out what you want to paint, you shouldn't have any problems. Rush and you'll end up destroying your work.
It takes a steady hand to paint one of these, especially the second side since you can't really put it down once you start painting. Another thing to be careful of is paint peeling away from the greenstuff while you're handling it. You'll need to be careful or you'll take the paint right off the edges of your banner with your fingers.
