Maenas
New member
Here we have Bailey explaining a possible method to approach freehand designs. Broke BIG problems into smaller ones!! 
Or "Divide y vencerás" (<-- spanish) theory applied to painting miniatures.
Or "Divide y vencerás" (<-- spanish) theory applied to painting miniatures.
Thanks guys! Well, no painting for the next few days (off to a friend's wedding and then a quick stop back home to see my parents and extended family), so I thought I'd post one more update on the samurai. As I mentioned on the last page, I planned to use this design for his sleeve:
Because of the guys pose and all the folds, it's not all that easy to see what the pattern really is supposed to look like. I spent some time analyzing this image and another one I found of the same guy, and came up with this as the main design.
Now I've just got the not so simple task of transferring it to the figure. By the way, what you see above will be rotated 45 degrees on the figure. So I began with the main diagonal lines above and lightly painted on horizontal lines down the arm. I got a rough idea of the spacing I wanted and created a guide to keep it consistent. I then painted white dots (halfway between the horizontal lines) at where I thought the center of the circles should be. Again, I used the same measuring guide to space them. Because of the folds in the sleeve, I adjusted the spacing as I saw fit. Then I started to paint in the main vertical lines (other half of the diagonals above). These got a bit titled do to the movement and stretching of the cloth. Finally I put in the diagonal lines between the dots (horizontal and vertical in the image above). I still need to add in another two lines between each of the diagonals and fill out the rest of the circles, but this is a good point to stop and evaluate the design and spacing. You can see I've already made some adjustments (notice the double white dots in places). I will continue to turn the figure and view the pattern from different angles to check it and make adjustments where needed. Once I'm happy with it, I'll fill in the remaining lines, draw the circles to scale, and start shading/highlighting all of the design.
That's as far as I was able to get last night. I'm hopeful I'll be able to finish it (or at least get really close) next week. I've got the place to myself for a few days, so I should be able to get a lot of painting done after work.
