Tinctures and Metals, Charges and Blazons...

Or, in other words, the stuff of heraldry!

If you're painting knights you can't get around it. To make my life easier when designing heraldry for my knights, I made a little colouring-book style sheet to work out how designs for heraldry would work. Not only on the shield, but also on the horse's caparison or in the livery of a knight's retinue. I didn't want to discover halfway through painting that a certain combo or design didn't work out after all. I'd rather waste 10 minutes and some paper, than spend hours on a miniature and having to strip it...

I mentioned this sheet on the LAF and offered to scan it.

So I thought I might as well put it up here.

Here is the design sheet I use:

(Sadly, scanning it has washed out the lower right area a fair bit.)

This is the one that I used in deciding on a colour scheme for my recently painted knight and retinue:

Like I said, colouring-book style...

If you need a primer on how to design heraldry, this one seems pretty complete and thorough: www.internationalheraldry.com