Hey all,

welcome to the eighth entry to my project diary. If you're wondering what this is, please check the announcement post, in which I explain the motivation and general goals of the diary. At the bottom of that post, you will find a link to all parts of this series (constantly updated as soon as new articles are published).

Today I will talk briefly on painting the fancy headdress. Believe it or not, this thing actually is some kind of Bronze Age helmet. It supposedly was made of feathers or reeds, most likely painted or dyed, which maybe were attached to some kind of skull-cap of some organic material. In any case, the reeds were fixed to a bronze band, which gave the helmet its name: "tiara". On the following image, you can see a contemporary depiction of some Sherden warriors, who made up one part of the sea peoples mentioned by the Egyptian sources, wearing the fancy helmets.

Since it's such a small part of the mini, the painting of the helmet was a relatively quick affair. The archeological remains of one helmet show that the reeds were likely dyed in a light blue tone. But, since I wanted the warrior to be really colorful, I went for a slightly more saturated tone and picked VMC Emerald, which is a nice, intensive greenish-turquoise, as the base color of the "feathers". This I first gave an overall light and shadow sketch, mixing a bit of VMC Hull Red and Black into the Emerald for the shades, while Ivory and a very light blue tone was used as highlight colors. Then, I gave a "pin-wash" (that is, a targeted wash) with Scale 75 black ink, slightly thinned down with some water, to define the individual strands of the "feather-bush". Then I went back-and-forth again with the base-tone, highlights and shadows to give the whole thing a bit more depth, and used the black ink for a first darklining.

Some turquoise for the reeds...

... slightly shaded and highlighted.

Then, I tackeld the bronze band. First, I restored the base tone, using VMC Japanese Uniform (a slightly desaturated ochre-yellow with a very light greenish tint), and corrected a few slight mistakes, where the darklining color had crossed over to the base tone. Then I sketched the light-and-shadow play on the polished bronze metal, using VMC Tan Yellow and Ivory for the lights and a mix of the base color and Hull Red for the shadows. I paid particular attention to adding a strong highlight along the edge. Once the bronze band was done, I worked a bit more on the feather-bush (just highlighting a few individual strands), and did a final round of darklining to clean up the paint-job and separate clearly the individual parts of the headdress and between the headdress and the skin of the raider's face.

And the headband of bronze...

... a shiny tiara for our sea raider.

And at that I left the helmet for now and set my eyes on the big bronze elephant on the beach: the warrior's bronze equipment needed some NMM love!

Follow me next time when I tackle the shield and sword. And, as always, if you like what you read or have questions, why not drop me a line in the comments? Talk to you soon!

Best, D.