Painted Shields or Decals?

[The Gray Ghost]

I am interested in people views as to painting shields or using decals on them.

[Mitch K]

Both or either. I keep trying to get round to making my own decals. I did the artwork but processing it into a suitable electronic form without it going all "mushy" (for want of a better word) has been a challenge. If I see a graphics tablet dirt cheap I might yet weaken and abandon Rotring pens! And, compared to my youth and fighting with MicroScale decals on aircraft, the stuff for use on miniatures is so easy!

Oh and I just have to say that Little Big Men Studios make using decals a totally painless experience. Both applying them and buying them (apart from parting with the money ).

[janner]

I've done both.

+1 on LBM studios, they make life very easy.

[OSHIROmodels]

Depends on the design of the shield in question, anything more than simple shapes then it's LBM 

Although I did paint a Norman dragon once that I was very chuffed with 

cheers

James

[Blackwolf]

Prefer to paint my own,though sometimes it is expedient to use decals.

[janner]

Depends on the design of the shield in question, anything more than simple shapes then it's LBM 

Although I did paint a Norman dragon once that I was very chuffed with 

cheers

James

The blasted Normans had dragons, no wonder they beat King Harold. Funny they left that off the Bayeux Tapestry, lying, thieving swine 

[OSHIROmodels]

This fella, got the inspiration from someone else's figure 



cheers

James

[Paul]

Both, more handpainting than decals, but I´m looking at getting one of the testors decal kits and giving that a go.

Lovely paint work 

[Sterling Moose]

I think it depends on your skills as an artist.  I have done very simple designs on my dark age shields but compared with tranfers I've seen mine are amateur daubings.  I have bought a bunch of transfers, never used them but esthetically I like the transfers better.

[valleyboy]

I'm another that holds up his hands for LBMS decals
Life is to short to handpaint large numbers of shields or even a few flags and even if I attempt it I notice that the dragon, boar, raven etc that I produced still look  identical to each other - ie just a blob

I'm not aware of any Arthurian era armies that adorned their shields with blobs

A cross is maneagable for me as are shields with 2 quartered or 1/2 colours but anything intricate is just wasted effort on my part and frustrates me enormously.

Best I've managed for standards is to google images of what I'm looking for, copy it to a word document and try and paint over it

[janner]

This fella, got the inspiration from someone else's figure 



cheers

James

Not exactly Smaug though is it 

[OSHIROmodels]

Not exactly Smaug though is it 

Not on that sized shield, no 

cheers

James

[Mjolnir]

I paint my 15mm shields, no decals

[Dr. The Viking]

Not on that sized shield, no  

cheers

James

It's a pterodactyl, right?

[Captain Blood]

Very nice Mjolnir.

Paint.

Decals are for girls.