Red Dragon

Here is Red Dragon from the Pathfinder series of Reaper Miniatures. Yes, I know, I know. The name is Red Dragon. However, I wanted a blue dragon!

This miniature is much bigger than the others I've been painting. It's about 4 inches tall and even longer than that from wing tip to wing tip. Although it took a great deal of paint and layering, this was one of my favorite pieces to paint so far! The fact that dragons are by far my most favorite mythical creature could play a part in that...

This miniature came disassembled, so I painted the individual pieces before using epoxy to glue them together. First I painted the entire dragon body and the wings Sky Blue. I then used the water-fill technique to take care of the lowlights (all techniques mentioned can be found in my first blog, Khamsin). I used Ultramarine Blue. This was a really big time-saver, considering how big this miniature was! I had originally tried using the dry-brushing technique for the highlights on the scales. I wanted the scales to really pop out and look, well, scaley. This technique wasn't giving me the vibrant, light blue I wanted for the highlights, so I decided on accent-painting. This took a lot of time. I mixed Sky Blue and White 50/50. I dabbed the color on almost every scale and blended it in.













After I finished the main body on the dragon, I glued the pieces together. I noticed that one of the arms didn't quite fit onto the body as I had hoped. I fixed this by adding more epoxy to the open space between the arm and the body. I waited for it to dry, then painted over the epoxy using the same steps as I did when I first started painting. Even though the scales weren't actually molded out here, I was able to achieve the same 3-D look with my painting techniques. There, see. You can hardly tell that part is flat.

For the skull-like ruined statue that the dragon is standing on, I first painted it all Muddy Brown (the color for my lowlights). Then dry-brushed Tanned Leather over it. I finally added a third layer of Aged Bone as my highlights and dry-brushed that over it as well.

For the skin on the wings I used the same colors as above, only added a little yellow. I used wet blending to create the gradient from dark to light at the tips and the folds in the skin.