Painted shields? So last year..

08 July 2017

I used to hand paint my shields back in the day. There were no fancy shield transfers back then, they were all done by my small brushes and my shaky hands. I chose the Spartans as my Greek army of choice, mainly because of the inverted “V” on the shields, no medusa heads for me! 

Anyway we are now in the age of the decal. Shield transfers to fit any shield design. The Roman Scutum, the Greek Hoplon, Celtic Shields or the Macedonian Telamon.  Any shields will have transfers available for them these days. So I have decided to use the decals and spend a bit less time trying to achieve a painted perfection and utilise the transfers for my troops.

The Method                                                                                                                                            

I bought the transfers from Magister Militum a while back and I had left them in the painting case gathering dust. I continued to paint the Seleucids and promptly forgot that the transfers were in there. Anyway it had become so hot weather wise recently that I felt I couldn’t paint, so I decided to have go at applying the transfers to my Roman armies shields.

The first ones took a while as I got used to the timings. Soaking those decals is no easy feat at first, alongside the fiddly application of the decals before they dry out. They are slippery devils, so placement is not simple, however I got it done and here are the results.

Hastati, Princeps and Trairii of the 1st

From the front

From the Right

From the Left

Hastati, Princeps and Trairii of the 2nd 

From the front

From the Right

From the Left