Chainmail

I'm currently super busy with books and calendars, so progress on Matias' costume is going rather slow. I wanted his resin gloves and vambraces to be 'steel' instead of bronze, so sprayed them silver, then 'aged' them with some dark brown paint. Then they matched the stainless steel chainmail I was going to use....

The next step was to cut chainmail 'sleeves' for his tunic. In the past my knights only needed chainmail from just above the elbow, and down to the wrist, so it was cut as a rectangle.  But Matias needed entire sleeves right up to the shoulders, so his chainmail needed to be cut in a proper sleeve shape. With chainmail being so 'slinky' it proved very challenging, but I eventually got them cut, one tiny ring at a time.  Then the tops of the chainmail sleeves were sewn onto his tunic, and the laborious task began of linking the two sides together with tiny jump rings.

There was no way I could finagle the tiny jump rings into the same pattern as the rings in the chainmail, so I just linked the two sides of the sleeve together. Even so, it still took a few days.

To reduce bulk, I was only planning on suggesting that he was wearing an entire suit of chainmail under his surcoat, and only having it sewn on where it would show - on the sleeves, and along the bottom showing under his surcoat.  But I didn't have enough of the stainless steel chainmail to make an entire 'skirt' without piecing lots of parts together, plus it would be ridiculously heavy, so I opted to use aluminum chainmail for the bottom instead. It's a lot lighter, and easier to work with, plus if I used it with the wrong side out, it would look reasonably similar.

The aluminum chainmail was from fancy clutch purses I'd collected from Value Village over the years. I've found it in several different colours and sizes.  But the 'silver' aluminum was too 'silver' compared to the stainless steel chainmail, so I decided to stain it some with diluted brown paint.

Then the colour matched much better...

I wet his surcoat and crunched up the lower part so it would dry crinkled, looking more like it was draping in proper scale. While I was at it, I also roughed up and stained the bottom edges with 'dirt-coloured' paint. After all I needed him to look like he'd been wearing his surcoat for a while out in the field, and not like he'd just gotten it brand new from the castle tailor.

With his chainmail and surcoat finished, the next thing he needs is his armour. I drew up some paper patterns....

And the next step is to sculpt them out of Aves Apoxie.