AXOLOTL OR DRAGON

 Another of my children's distractions has been completed, this is from a set of Axolotl in Dungeons and Dragons form, but as this is a Dragon I thought it deserved it's own post, and I'll post up the characters when finished. When my son brought them round we looked at different colours first of Axolotl, for the characters, and for the dragon, I asked if there was a bird he liked as it had feathered wings, I instantly regretted this as he said a Peacock ! LOL so I loosely used it as a basis for the colours on the dragon. He also wasn't impressed with the pyramid used as the base, this was a easy fix, I sculpted it to look like a rock.

Below is pictures of the outer and inner wings, and below that is the reference picture I used.

The wings and body were both given a coat of gemstone paint by GW, to help give a metallic sheen, but as I used proper colours underneath it's not as pronounced as if I'd done a basecoat of silver, but lessons learned and I'm still happy with the result. Hopefully this will also count for Keith's year of the Dragon challenge. Until next time, stay safe, and have fun !

Cheers Dave

DRAGON

 For my last entry for Monster May(hem) I decided to paint a Dragon I've had for almost 20 years now, it is made from a form of wood pulp that has been set in shape, on top of a real log, my oldest children got it for me as a Christmas present, and the dragon came prepainted, but was a very basic black with a wet brush dark grey over the top, and attracted a lot of dust, so a repaint was long overdue.

I now like the colour scheme a lot more, I used purple as the base, and orange in the highlight colour, to give some strong contrast. This also counts for Keith's other challenge Year of the Dragon, as some will ask it stands 13 inches tall, and the dragon itself is 10 inches long.

Next time I feel an itch to do some more Star Wars, so until next time stay safe, and have fun !

Cheers Dave

YEAR OF THE DRAGON

 I thought I'd do a Roger and get two challenges done from one model (a very canny man ! LOL) this year Keith at angrypiper has set a challenge and you've got all year to complete it, and it's simple paint a Dragon, to coincide with the Chinese year of the Dragon, all Dragons count, so I was a little gutted as I'd recently painted two Coatyl's which are South American Dragons, so I was surprised last week when searching for a bit in the bit's box and found a third Coatyl body, I've no idea where this one came from, unless it was from a friend who gave me a bag of lizardmen bits and it was in there. I had a pair of resin wings that had lost a couple of feathers, which I thought would represent battle damage, and greenstuffed them into the body, I made up another tree to tie into the previous two pinning all the sections together to make it stronger to take the weight as I did on the previous ones.

And here it is with the other two.

I've also got a second Dragon done, one of my Zodiac Dragons. Haven't I already painted one of these, the answer is yes, but that one had a sad end at a show, when a young child decided to see if it could fly ! As I am no longer going to shows I thought I'd push the painting further so I shaded the blue with red, and highlighted with yellow. I've included a shot of the original painting below for reference.

While I'm showing some Fantasy bits I thought I'd show the latest bits I've done for my client. First is two more pits

Next are two columns I've done one fallen down with a crushed adventurer underneath.

That's all for todays post, so until next time stay safe and have fun !

Cheers Dave

HERE BE DRAGONS

 Let the May(hem) commence, this is my first entry for Monster May(hem) and I'm starting out with my dragonkin, the colours I've gone for tie into my Fire Breathing Dragon so that can be a Old One as part of the faction. I've also tried a few new things on this one, Dragon Glass blade, and a different way of doing blue gold.

Below is the reference picture I used for the blue gold.

I've also painted up a baby dragon for my eldest son, who got this 3D print with another piece that I will hopefully get done for MM as well.

Tried using gem paints for a different effect on the egg, which I really like and so does my son. That's all for this post, so until next time stay safe and have fun !

Cheers Dave

DRAGONKIN

 Last post I showed how far I had got on the Dragonkin model, I have now finished the green of this model. My idea behind these is that Dragons evolving, if you think of a traditional Dragon would be a Great One, this type of Dragonkin would be a Trueborn the first evolution and the most powerful and in charge, and then another subset that no longer fly, smaller almost human sized that are the foot troops to a army. I may do some more to this army, as I've enjoyed doing this one. The armour I took inspiration from Egyptian armour, but I've added in some feathers with the helm, still undecided on what colours to paint it yet, as I want to do some blue gold armour, but I have the rest of the month to decided.

I will be moulding this at the same time as the Ogre, so it should be available soon, as will the Ogre for anyone doing the challenge. That's all for this post so until next time stay safe and have fun !

Cheers Dave

THE MONSTERS ARE COMING

 As May is rapidly approaching, and I want to take part in Monster May(hem) again over on Keith's site angrypiper I thought it would be a good idea to have some monsters prepared so I can spend the time painting rather than building. I thought I would show you how I approach building one. First you need a frame, now there are many materials you can use, so what I use is a guideline, and not the only way. I've recently started using foam on bigger models to cut down costs and time to get the bulk of the shape, and for the limbs I've used paperclips, as they are easy to get hold of, cheap, and easy to bend.

After this stage if you are doing fur of scales instead of skin, I build the basic muscle shapes, to give a surface to work against when I come to texture the model. If I was doing bare skin, I would sculpt it straight to the paperclip like I did with the Ogre. An idea on how muscle groups are placed on the anatomy and how they function is very useful for this stage.

Once the above stage is dry you can then add the texture, by laying a layer of green over the top of the muscle structure, and then working the texture in, as this one is covered in fur, I started at the end of a limb and using small strokes added the layers of the fur in, if you want longer fur, you use longer strokes, and if you want a rough fur look, use sweeping strokes in multiple directions, always working down but either left or right, to give the rough look.

Once the fur was dry, I then added all the spikes, the rough fur helped, with the green sticking to it because of the texture. Once painted this will give me the second Clawed Fiend I need for my Wych Cult army.

I've started another fantasy monster, as my choice for Rogers challenge would have been a Dragonkin, I didn't voice my choice on Roger's site as I wanted to see what everyone else wanted, knowing I could build my choice anyrate, and this is how far I've got so far, I'm making it castable, so it will be available on my site, it will have armour added. That's all for this post so until next time stay safe and have fun !

Cheers Dave

DRAGON EVOLOUTION

 With MONSTER MAY(HEM) only 3 days away, I've been thinking about Dragons. Over the years I've built a few which I will show in the order they were created, with a question at the end.

First up is the South American Coatyl, this was the first dragon I ever sculpted, and was an exercise in showing what I could do while building up the business, it also happens to be my favourite Dragon.

This traditional style Dragon on ruined keep was a commissioned sculpt for Model Display Products, the balance on the model is such that he is only resting on the keep, no glue holding him on.

This was also a commissioned sculpt for Model Display Products, and depicts a Chinese Dragon, the gate has a dip in the roof as was normal in China, the straight topped ones were found in Japan.

The next Dragon is a Sea Dragon, really wanted to look at how a creature would adapt in certain surroundings, so had his wings evolve into a sail on his back, one day I would like to go back and add resin water effect over the base.

Next I tried pushing the boundaries on how few balance points I could get a model on, with the Fire Breathing Dragon. He only has two balance points and the arch holding up all his weight.

This next dragon was a request, the Zombie Dragon, this one was the most intense build, as I had to build it by layers, so all skeleton, then muscle in the places I required, and finally skin and scales to finish off.

I then decided to build an Oriental Dragon for myself, but wanted to break from the norm of lots of coiling. So I had him leaping from a summoning stone, with some undulation along the spine.

The last one I built for myself was the Wyvern, which I wanted in full flight, so the ruin wall has a brass bar running through it, to help support the weight, it had to be very well balanced to secure it from this one point.

I then built two dragon's for Heroes of the Dark Ages, now it is effectively the same dragon but with options, you can have it single headed or twin headed, walking or in flight, this involved a lot of making connection points standard between the two.

Now the question, I'm feeling the itch to build another dragon, but not sure what to do, have had a request for a Hydra, or could do a mutating dragon where the head is becoming two heads, really not sure so would love your input.

That's all for this post and we will now return to our normal broadcast, so until next time stay safe and have fun !

Cheers Dave