Outside My Comfort Zone - Part II

The middle of March is nearly here and I've made a little progress (perhaps not as much as I wanted) on my dragon model. After filling in gaps of the parts I glued in last time, I primed the entire model with Army Painter brush on primer. I really like the stuff - it goes on very thinly (and its easy to apply). It dries relatively quickly and paint adheres well and with good color and coverage. It is a bit of a hassle for a model this large, but I normally do small models, so the little extra time that took was no big deal.

Getting started

Underside of wings started

I've still been trying to figure out the colors I want to use for the wings and the ridgeback. Not having a good idea of what I want to do, I started with P3's Sickly Skin to base them both white. I started painting the spines on the back using Citadel Incubus Darkness, but I didn't like the color - It felt too dark and if I based the dragon with that, it wasn't go to match what I had in my head. I switched to Citadel's The Fang and base painted the body and non-membrane wing parts. The color was much much better.

Washed with Sapphire

Its always something...

After pouring over a number of pictures of dragons and birds, I finally decided how I wanted to do the underside of the wings. I first washed them with Secret Weapon Wash Golden Brown and used SWW's Sapphire on the body. I prefer Citadel's shade line for washes, but Sapphire is much brighter blue than Citadel's blue shade. Though you can't tell easily from the picture, the Golden Brown wash has small flecks of shiny gold - enough to give what you use it on a little "glitter" but not enough that it makes whatever you cover look metallic. The next step of the wings was to use a combination of washes on the membranes. I used some Agrax Earthshade on the upper edge and a thinned down P3 Bogrin Brown on the lower edge of each section, blending them as best I could. After, I used a mix of Golden Brown and Sepia mixed together to go over the whole area, further blending the colors together. The Bogrin felt like it got a little lost, so after the wings dried, I went back and added a bit more of the thinned Bogrin to bring out a little orange. Unfortunately, I screwed up one section and it was far too dark from the Agrax and I had to start over - I re-painted the base paint and repeated the process on the one area.

Corrected wing + scale detail

Scale detail in the first section

As the wings dried, I started working on the scale detail. One painting video I watched recently had suggested that painting large figures is easier if you do it in sections rather than trying to do too much at once. I elected to do the scales from the head down to the hip on one side of the body. The scales are a series of layers:

• Base: Citadel The Fang + Secret Weapon Wash Sapphire
• Layer one: The Fang (yes, I highlighted with the original base color)
• Layer two: P3 Gravedigger Denim
• Layer three: Citadel Thunderhawk Blue
• Layer four: Citadel Fenrisian Grey

Each layer was done as a series of thinner and thinner brush strokes to enhance the look of each scale and give it a more textured look. The model's scales have a little bit of texture, but I wanted them all to really show it and dry brushing wasn't going to bring that out. I also repeated the scale process for one side of one of the wings (the wing that attaches in the area I just completed). I still need to figure out how I want to do the spines and the top portion of the wings so that I can finish and attach them. And then of course, I'll have to fill and texture the gap and paint everything to match. Still a lot of work to be done and not so much of the month left! I can see a few long nights ahead. 

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