Box Castle Late Project Log

[Mattias!]

Progress moves on apace! Plugging away at the Ultimate Wall but in the meantime, here is a big ol photo dump on how I've designed and illustrated the flags that will adorn the finished castle's ramparts.

First step was to sketch out a rough draft in my sketchbook for how I wanted the flags to look. I like to keep these pretty loose and just run with whatever weird ideas pop into my head. After a quick ink, this is what they look like:

I then used my portable light table to transfer the sketches to some nice bristol board, my preferred flag medium

Here's a side by side of the sketch and the transfer:

I then hit them with a wild mess of watercolors and some random spatters of black fountain pen ink before cutting them apart and starting on the linework:

Once I was done with linework in black and white ink, I went back and added some spatters, drips, runs, and fills using a few different shimmering fountain pen inks from my collection of ink samples. Here's the progression for each flag:

Here's my take on the Stark wolf:

I call this one the Underworld King, which in my headcannon is the devourer deity that favors Jon's Abyssal Dwarves. I'm particularly happy with the green/copper ink on the crown and the pink/gold ink in the hypnosis eyes:

Here's a Slaanesh banner as requested by Michael. In the closeup you can see the reticulation effect in action that the Noodler's Eel Black fountain pen ink produces. This effect has rapidly become a central element of my illustration style:

And here's a banner for Karl's Night Herons of the Black Crown. I included the eponymous black crown as well, which in my headcannon is the legendary CROWN OF OBLIVION, the sacred treasure of this chaotic order. You can see here the approach I took (similar to the crown on the Underworld King) of placing drops of different inks on the paper, then using a straw to blow the drops across the paper surface for a chaotic streaking effect:

Those are all flags associated with campaign factions. I made a few more to fill things out. This one is an eldritch god that I created for my DnD campaigns, the Many-Eyed, Mumbling Thing:

And these are just a random goofy idea I had. I felt like they were missing something halfway through, so I went in and added the text and now they might be my favorites of the bunch:

Once all the drawing was done, I washed the back in a grungy ink mix that I found on my desk from who-knows-when:

And then I cut them out:

Finally, I went the extra mile and scanned these in to my image editor, tweaked the saturation and levels, and mirrored them so they can be printed as two-sided banners, in case anyone would like to use them for their armies. Note, these banners are BIG relative to the normal size of army banners, but obviously you can scale them to your preferred dimensions.

Mirrored Flags 1.pdf

(2.62 MiB) Downloaded 607 times

Mirrored Flags 2.pdf

(2.7 MiB) Downloaded 625 times

Slaanesh Flag.pdf

(1.33 MiB) Downloaded 561 times

Enjoy!

[Mattias!]

Documenting the very last loose ends here, first with the illustration of the flag stantions:

And then gluing the loops on the flags so they can fit over the flag poles, but can also be removed for storage or rotated:

Here are the finished flags drying:

Also finished up the upward-facing stair surfaces:

And, last but not least, the ULTIMATE WALL:

And with that, I am content to call this project complete. I may need to add a door or two, and maybe add a bit of varnish to some pieces, but all in all, this is one for the 'finished' column.

[Eilif]

Nice to see the last steps, but seeing it all setup was even better!