I've had a go at freehand designs a couple of times, always come out better than I anticipated, Red Orcs in my Gallery being easiest examples to find. Just dive in and start painting. My preference would be to use foil for the banner cloth (like from a tomato puree tube. Cut open when pristine, stick tomato into a bowl in fridge, neatly cut out banner). Paint it flat then flex into shape when mounting to the pole. If overflexed and paint has split, minor touchups once it's all in place.
Break the design down so that it is easy to replicate. Some ideas that may help you to approach this:
Get a sheet of tracing paper/baking parchment. Trace the image with a fine black marker. Helps to establish the key outlines. Familiarity with the image from doing this helps to copy design onto banner. Could always use traced image to run over foil, impress outline in. Or use soft pencil then reverse and transfer graphite to basecoated foil.
Put a square grid over image. Copy each square onto banner, makes copying easier, particularly curves.
Paint approach. I'd suggest a flat red base. Pen or brush in outlines. Fill outlines with white/yellow where required. Glaze/blend to increase definition, perhaps some fine pen crosshatching if you like the effect. I find it easier to get the black outlines in if I thin them using the colours to either side rather than trying to paint a fine line in later.
Don't rely on hugely magnified photos to tell you whether it's good enough. For us mere mortals it's never going to look like a Leonardo
But if it looks good ranked up with your troops in the unit, you've won
Good luck, B.
PS I wouldn't expect an exact replica either! None of the images I've done looked like what I'd first imagined, these things develop as you paint and a misjiudged brushstroke is sometimes esaier to run with than starting again!
