#mini paint

Scary evil lich man or something. I don't even remember the warhammer box i got him out of but I'm pretty proud of the paint job i did :3

And Im reasonably proud of said thing! So Im going to share the process with you all! 

Ive gotten more and more into painting minis for the D&D campaign I play in. I started with the standard size folks (an inch or so tall) and some smaller ones to kinda practice the fiddly stuff. But Ive been wanting to get bigger. So! I picked up the Reaper Mini Pathfinder Red Dragon. I had seen it painted on Geek & Sundry’s Painters Guild and it looked like a good place to start up-scaling my stuff (please forgive the dragon pun). 

Lets dive in, shall we? 

The dragon came in several pieces. I considered painting them individually and gluing them after they were done but thought the better of it. The top of the head and arm are really small and it would have been awkward finding a place to hold it while I painted. 

When I ordered the figure, I only had a rough idea as to the scale, so if anyone is reading this, this is a standard Hero Forge mini for a size reference. 

After I trimmed off most the mold-lines (I noticed some others after this picture was taken), I used superglue to get it all together. The right wing was giving me some trouble (insert political joke here), so I had to hold it in place as the glue dried. 

Now, this is a Bones mini, and as such this next step I took wast strictly “necessary” but I hit the whole thing with a gray primer. I had decided to go with a cooler color palette and I thought priming it gray would kind of add to that look and feel. 

“Red Dragon” is more of a guideline, right?

For the base coat, I used Vallejo Model Color Dark Blue for the scales,and Vallejo’s Grey Black for the horns and claws. The membranes were painted with The Aarmy Painter’s Skeleton Bone.

So, at this point, I had added some washes and drybrushes to the mix and I was honestly a little unhappy with how light it had gotten. I had hit the scales with Citadel Nulin Oil shade, and the membranes with Seraphim Sepia. After that, I dry-brushed the scales with Army Painter Electric Blue. The stomach I had painted with  Vallejo’s Ivory (as well as the teeth) and then coated with Citadel Drakenhof Nightshade. The base was done with a coat of Vallejo Iraqi Sand. The tongue was Citadel Mephiston Red.

I sent this to an artist friend of mine who has experience with fixing flubs like the one I thought I had made with the “too light” issue. She suggested using a transparent paint to darken it up without loosing all of the shading I had done.