free handing is probably the most challenging
thing with mini painting all other painting techniques are working with what is already on
the model but freehanding is adding all new stuff it's challenging but also exciting it's a bit
like kit bashing making your minis truly unique no one else will have that design in that exact
spot an important thing to remember is it's hard to do something right the first time like drawing
if you start by trying to do your final lines it's harder and the end result will be worse but if you
start simply with work lines and simple shapes and then work your way up to the details it can be
a lot easier and give you a better final product the trick to freehanding is to set yourself
up for success i started out by giving myself something to hold on to by sticking the bit
down onto a paint handle with some poster tack it's important to be comfortable because
freehanding is a long slow process i want to paint an iron snake's shoulder pad
so i kept my reference close by and began by giving my shoulder pad a coat of white paints
i could have created some contrast by using an airbrush or glazing with a brush but i will be
making a lot of mistakes so just plain white underneath will help me later then i took
a gray paint black will be too dark and the symbol will be blue so gray is a nice medium
for me to sketch in i sloppily did the best i could painting what i thought it would look like
three big dots with some lines connecting them i pushed and pulled the gray paint around until i
thought i had a pretty good silhouette going then i took blue paint and started my serpent using
the gray as a guide for where my snake should go once the snake was in place i went back and
cleaned things up a little using white to fix the edges and get rid of a lot of the gray i didn't
need and fix mistakes i made with the blue then i used some more blue to smooth the edges of my
snake once i was happy with it i mixed some white into my blue paint and i did a highlight on the
top humps of the snake so it didn't look so flat i decided to add some shadows to my
shoulder pad mixing a little black into my white to create a light gray i spread
this over the lower half of the shoulder pad working around my snake i used a darker gray for
around the edge of the shoulder pad and i glazed gray over to smooth the transitions if your paint
is thin enough there shouldn't be much danger of covering up your free handing i worked carefully
and neatly after about one hour of painting i had one iron snake's shoulder pad ready for battle
free handing is hard and the only way to do it is to go for it it'll take a long time it'll
look terrible all the way up until it doesn't and practice makes perfect but space marines are
a good blank canvas to work with and you know space marines are really just futuristic space
soldiers and you know what else is a futuristic space soldier that's right our merch you can
find this design and one more on our website that you can find in the description below and
another great way to support us is on patreon we have lots of cool perks including original
war gaming terrain stls weekly exclusive eob episodes and friday night discord hangouts you
can find that link in the description as well in the comments please tell me your free handling
successes and struggles and thanks for watching
