3rd Century Shield Painting 2.0 / WIP

[Caius Valens]

hi Caius here That really quite lovely for a sheild, I can see why they began to switch to the more simpler patterns in the 4th century, It must have been quite an indusrty(in the 3rd century) painting all thoses sheilds. A job well done Caius Tarquitius Cheers Caius Valens/thom R

[FAVENTIANVS]

Well, check the Trier 4th century shields! Not simple at all! The Notitia shield designs could have been simplified versions...

[caiusbeerquitius]

Faventianus, the Trier shields are propably 5th-6tg century, according to Goethert.

[caiusbeerquitius]

[caiusbeerquitius]

[Dan Diffendale]

Looking ever better! Amazing.

[caiusbeerquitius]

Next step were the horses. Connolly´s reconstruction of the shield in "Greece and Rome at War" shows the horse in the lower left part as a black one. I later found out in S. James´s Dura report, that it actually is brown/black like the other horses and corrected it.
I´m not continuing to repeat which colours i used, as all are stated in the first post.
After that I painted the figures as silhouttes in their basic colour.
The same colour darkened a bit made the shading for the deeper parts of the silhouettes. Then the basic blue was applied.

[major/flint]

wow' hock: incredible great job .

it' looks like some thing you would see on the side of vase or maybe some type of fresco.

'did you mix the colors that you used or are they store bout :?: .

[Poftim]

I know this is a little off topic, but I am in teh process of making a 4th century shield right now and am wondering if you could please tell me how you made the shield "dished"?

[caiusbeerquitius]

Hi!
You can get some info reading my second post in this thread.
The plywood was brought in shape with a plainer and the shield body was constructed over a solid positive wooden form, weighing around 100 kilos.
White glue holds the planks together.

[caiusbeerquitius]

Shield is almost finished, I only have to add the writing and the shield below the horse on the upper right side.
*edit*
Now the longest part came, which was the highliting of the blue and brown areas with different shades of always lighter colour. After that I painted the black outlines of the figures and their parts. Then the faces came (arrghl!), and details like the bows, swords, baldrics, horsegear etc.



A larger complete pic is here.

[Theodosius the Great]

Wow, feast your eyes on that ! hock:

It's the best paint job I've ever seen. And it's taken almost a year to get this far, apparently.

What a fine technique 8)

~Theo

[Aurelianus]

And these beautyful shilds once had to stop bad arrows, ...... 8)

[GaiusAquiliusBritannicus]

UN-BELIEVE-ABLE. hock:

Very nice! Laudes awarded.

Re: the curve of a shield. When I made my norse shields (both plank and plywood), I found that a 3/8 inch shield will curve naturally once you wet it with hide glue when you glued down the linen facing. I placed my shields over paint cans to dry and when they were dry, they each had a nice bend to them from gravity.

This bend disappeared if you then added a linen facing to the back of the shield and turned it over to dry, though.

However the effect could be retained if you faced the back of the shield first, then the front and then dried at the same time. I'll try and dig up some pics of this.

But again, awesome job Caius!

Cheers!

Britannicus

[Robert Vermaat]

I was wondering what had happened since october...

That is simply STUNNING!