My final Dragon in the big 6 i was sent by my client Dom is a large and boney Gemstone dragon. He is painted and pictured in the art reference in purple. I left this guy till last for one simple reason. Purple hates me. I have bought P3, vallejo, games workshop etc and i have always found purple to be a color that just doesn't seem to want to be painted in small scale. Am i missing something? Yes, likely i am. I will do my reserach for this model, but starting out i gave it a grey undercoat with a light to blue grey gradient on the wings which will give me a great base to work from. 

If this dragon doesn't remind you of Clover, then either you haven't seen the movie or you forgot to put your eyes in today. 

Recently i finished these "wild wargs" for my client. Mildly disapointed by games workshops re release of warg models that are designed for miniatures to go on their backs (therefore having literall flat backs with no fur) i sculpted som extra fur on and then gave them a lick of paint. Not to linger on the point but come one games workshop (or as i call them the "evil empire") you literally could sculpt a bit of fur on them and THEN re release them. Such money hungry, money grabbing desperation and it deeply saddens me. The capitolistic nature of our industry is saddening. 

Although my client was appreciative of the little effort and paint job he did say that the skin was "to clean" and i agreed immediately. I think that's a second danger of these basically detailed models, they will always have a danger of seeming to clean. As a fix i decided to mix a flesh wash/home made black wash and added that onto the models skin today and it has worked a treat. I imagine i may go back and give them a little beige drybrush later today when they're dry. 

Dragons are always interesting. Dragons by their very nature ae large and for the most part observe naturalistic patterns. The images given to me for this dragons showed many blatant red and pink hues. I had many ideas as to how to get that "red lizard" kind of look while maintaining the obvious ruby association of the gems. I decided in the end to go with a brown undercoat and then work in basecoat, ink heavilly down to a dark brown/black and then slowly mottle and overbrush my way all the way past the original brown tone into a dim red. This i think has achieved the interlacing affect of natural skin, brown scales and the general red tone of the skin without inking it heavilly in red (creating lots of gawdy red pools in recesses) or working up from red, which might have made the model brighter than we wanted. I think the final result is great and i am really proud of how that red mottling worked out in the end for sure. 

Most of the work on my romans order is hands on basing and stuff for a few days, removing tabs and sculpting bases so i shall post pictures once i get to that stage but for now i decided to jump back to a special order by a newer and exciting client Dom.

Dom once sent me a parcel (with a LOT of mini's in it) that got lost by royal mail. It was a horrific moment and luckilly Dom is a super nice guy and understood the issue.

Years later we began discussing more work and i was super eager to get back on it for him. I have a big mixed order of models (all for DnD) which is so exciting for me as i tend to paint lots of uniform models, so this order allows me to really flex some working muscles as well as genuinely learn new stuff. The latest model i've finished for this order is this giant ancient saphire dragon. It is an astounding model but i've lost the box with the manafacturer on it. I shall ask my client and maybe he can comment here with the producer. 

This model is so large i went hunting around the house for a bigger photo booth or similar and literally found an actual large photo booth so i set up my lights and my tripod and grabbed some great pics for you. I decided to collage them together so you can see all the elements of the job in one picture. ​

Here is the collage picture i've built, i really hope you like it. Painting this model was a challenge in patience more than anything, all those gems and going back over bits in black then sometimes blue and vice versa. It was Nice to get to the end and then as usual it just kind of came together in the last few moments. Very satisfying. I think i got the contrast down, i hope my client likes the blue i've gone with. 

How about a size comparison...

What a behemoth! I am excited to get on with the next one now (there is two more dragons before i get on with the rest of the infantry). 

I shall post tomorrow about some of the other finished pieces of this very fun order. I hope you enjoyed this update. I surely did.