A commissioner requested to put some lettering on his inquisitorial land raider, you know basic litanies to the emperor, some chapter name and such. Being given little specifics , or rather free rein I figured I will try it all in what people know as "Gothic". To make life a bit simpler I went for the simplest version of "black letters". Here is the result.
Text is rather crude translation into Latin, I am sure people who know the language will be terrified, my only hope that not very many do :)
Well, in the end it was (actually still is) a pretty interesting learning experience. First of all I never tried to paint any complex lettering, second, I never tried to paint more then a single word. The difference is actually quite profound (as I learned the hard way) - it is very difficult to measure distances between letter to make sure that everything fits. I deliberately refused to use decals just to see whether I can do this without help of a crutch :). After all medieval monks had been doing it for centuries without decals, so something tells me that it is possible.
So, besides spacing another problem is maintaining sharp corners. Monks didn't have this problem - they were using pens, not brushes. This could be solved in part by overpainting corners with the background color and in part by using very fine brushes (most of this stuff was done with 00 W&N. The second problem is stroke consistency. THis, I am afraid could be solved only with practice. I actually got better after three pannels.
