Monster March 7 - part 2; Painting Begins.

 

Scalding heat shimmered the air as the caldera of the volcano violently erupted with full force. The blast wave ripping down the mountainside uprooting the last few trees and turning them to cinders blown along.

Lava splashed in waves as the tectonic forces finally found an outlet and the inners of the earth were exposed to the atmosphere. Rivers of molten rock flowed freely as smoke gathered and hung in palls above vents.

No living creature could live here...

With a rippling bow wave, a huge red clawed foot reached up from the pooling lava. Strings of the superheated liquid rock flowed from bone plates and red scales, glowing with heat transfer.

A second hand slammed into the rock splintering the tormented sheet, finding purchase and grinding the surface away. More red scaled appendages slowly emerged from the lake, clawed fingers joined by skin forming two huge glowing wings, raised inch by inch.

Then with a bunching of muscles, the glowing, molten-heated creature tore itself free of the lava.

Landing with a thud which made the earth shake, the dragon stood for a moment taking a deep breath, before shaking herself to clear the last stringy lava rivulets from her body.

Red scaled, covered with boney plates protecting her throat, underbelly and forearms, she stood surveying the ruination of the land around her, a small side effect of travel between the elemental plane of fire and this kingdom.

Blinking reptilian eyes, she once again bunched her muscles and flexed her wings before launching herself into the air. Circling on the thermal vents twice before heading towards the nearby city of Lotharis... 

*****

Welcome to the second post of Monster March, and the first post dealing with painting the dragon.

So in detailing the dragons origins in the last post, she obviously a classic red dragon, but given her provenance as a hard to get out-of-production model now* I decided that I definitely needed a plan to work to. So sat for about ten minutes working out a step by step for each part of her.

The different skintone lists, were to give her a bit of variation, but in practice it was going to be too much red overall, so I decided to just use the skin scheme for her overall.

The blue Face/Feet was from a tutorial I had seen and didn't want her to be full "Fire and Brimstone" so I wanted to try to glaze on some blue for her magical aspect.

So I had primed her grey years ago and left her, so after a dust off, she got the main coat of Khorne Red:

Then a wash with the Earthshade and Medium mixture, I kind of liked this effect, however it had darkened her skin far too much, so I carried on:

Next I started on the stripling, with Mephiston Red:

Next with Evil Sunz Scarlet, and I started to get that lovely red finish like in the artwork.

Finally, a light drybrush of Troll Slayer Orange for the last few highlights for her skin:

At this point, I realised that the Mephiston Red for the spines would have made her too red. After a few suggestions from A Cardboard Fortress we hit upon the idea of changing to purple to match with the blue glazes I had planned.

This is after a basecoat of Genestealer Purple washed with Druchii Violet, and her bone scales and horns basecoated with Mournfang Brown:

After some deliberation I decided to forego the blue glazes, as there was already enough going on with the various horns, scales and fins.

This coming week I plan of working up a little more purple to the fins and getting all the bone details completed at least. Then move onto the big areas of the wings.

Until next time, have nice day...

*So I said that she had become a sort of harder to get hold of "miniature" now, and after sharing the start to this project on the Benji's Hobbies Facebook group.

He went and snatched one up for a very decent price, lucky sod.

I've just got to find the assembly guide I used as she's a bit of a pain to get the wings together and bent to shape.