Sacred Inscriptions

After the recent articles on the process of reworking the movement trays for the Empire of Dust, there were a number of questions on how the inscriptions were done.

These were created years ago when I first made the army.  I had to back track a bit, but could not find any step by step posts on the blog.  Since I had to repaint those new and adjusted trays, I thought I would take some images along the way!

Here's what I ended up with after chopping up the old trays.

Since I didn't have the original piece of paper that had the inscriptions (scaled to fit, of course), I would have to use my other trays as a reference.  You can see the cartouche of Pseusennes there on the left.

First, I needed to get the sculpey pieces along the edges painted.  Just three colors... a tan, a purple, and an off white.

The purple and tan were mixed together, creating a few different shades on the palette so that I could reach for them quickly.

I set down the lighter and darker shades first, so that I could blend them together.

I started doing that by carrying some of the 'middle' shades into both the dark and light areas.  Since I was working so quickly with a larger brush, the paint did not dry before this was accomplished.

All the tans are in place.  You can see the variations in light and dark.  I also touched up any of the black lining at this point.

As I mentioned before, I didn't have the original piece of paper.  Still, I had my original trays, which carried the warning "All those who enter the Tomb Cities of Pseusennes shall suffer a fate worse than death".

Having the two side by side made it a lot easier to transfer the design down to the new tray.  The paint is Reaper Brown Liner, which is a very nice, thinner paint that has incredible pigmentation.  This is ideal for such freehand.

The dark colors are in place, but you can see there is a difference between the original sections and the newer lines.  I need to pick out a few highlights along the edges, which will give it the appearance of being carved.

Fortunately I thought of this before I carved each and every movement tray when I first made the army!  That would have been many hours of torture.  This was mere minutes of painting.

I made sure to follow a single direction with these highlights.  The finished bits on the left definitely have more shape than the area without those highlights.

The completed tray!!!  Now I would need to do this to the other trays, and then work on the various unit fillers that I had created.  Those are future posts, so stay tuned!