Painting advice sought

[Clear Dragon]

Well, I have finally finished assembling the Gauth dragon mini by Reaper that i got for Christmas(procrastination + quantum mechanics courses can do that to ya). I am a bit unsure about what color to use. I am thinking of making it a red or a green. I would apreciate any advice from people who have painted any of the big dragon figs before. I am a somewhat decent painter but usually let things just flow, but with this guy I am unsure about how I want to go about it. Having seen many awesome versions of this fig, I want to do it justice. Likewise I haven't started on my LOTR GW figs I received as a present for fear of screwing them up.

ps: no just "clear" coat jokes either, I am way ahead of ya.....

 

[RogueJK]

If this is your first dragon, I would definitely stick with red.

With a red dragon, you can find lots of pictures online for color reference. Around 75% of all dragon pictures depict a red dragon. Red is also quite easy to coordinate with other colors, since there are plenty of colors that go well with red. You'll end up with a fairly traditional dragon with a paint scheme that isn't too challenging to get right.

Green, though, is probably easier if you aren't comfortable mixing your own shades of paint. You should have plenty of different greens in you paint supply, so it's just a matter of placing the proper shades in the proper areas. You could probably manage to do the entire dragon using only different shades of green, while a red dragon will have some gold, orange, or yellow areas.

 

[Gospog]

If you are going to dry-brush your dragon (and I reccomend this, because dragons have scales that just cry out to be dry-brushed), then I would go with green.

Green is much easier to shade and highlight than red.

As for your LoTR figures, go for it! If you mess up bad enough, nail polish remover will take the paint off a metal mini, and you can always try again later!

Good luck and have fun!

 

[Desdichado]

Why is green easier to drybush than red? I'd probably do both with a yellow drybrush anyway!

I'd do green just because I have a lot of greens. I don't know if I have the right greens for dragons, though: I painted a lot of Blood Bowl orcs and used a real olivey/natural pallette.

 

[Storminator]

I just painted my dragon green (the wyvern one from reaper, not huge, but my largest mini to date). I chose green because I had 6 shades, and after arranging them in order, I mixed consecutive shades, giving me 11 colors of green to work with. Came out pretty nice.

But shouldn't this be in the minis forum?

PS

 

[Gospog]

Josh D,

My usual process for drybrushing involves mixing the base coat with white, and then dry-brushing. This can done a few times, to really lighten those raised areas.

Mix green with white,and you get a lighter green, suitable for drybrushing.

Mix red with white, and you get pink, suitable for valentines.

One can highlight red all the way up to white, and then apply several thinned down red ink washes, but this extremely time-consumung.

I try to avoid using red as the primary color for any miniature, for these reasons.

Highlighting with yellow is an interesting idea. I've never seen it used. Do you have any pictures of your results?

 

[Desdichado]

Not on that scale (pun only slightly intended) and my scanned pics don't look very good compared to the actual models (plus I've only scanned my darker models so far, and my scanner is on the fritz right now.) Red lightened with white would look absolutely stupid, I agree. Who wants a pink dragon? If you use a deep enough red, though, you can drybrush with an orangish/yellowish without making the dragon itself look orange. If you read any model/miniature painting guides, they will probably tell you that's the only way to highlight/drybrush red anyway (certainly GW's book my Mike McVey says that.) For green, a yellowish highlight looks good too, but at least a whitish highlight doesn't look pink, so it works.

Note: for pictures, you should be able to find hundreds on the GW webshot of using hightlights of all different types.

 

[alsih2o]

get bronze paint or bronzing paint from your local arts and crafts store.

when you have a decent coat on, aply a commercial patina, or use diluted vinegar in a drybrush manner...and wait.

copper bronze and green dragons will all have a special depth that would be of great difficulty to achieve normally.

 

[S'mon]

I just painted my dragon green (the wyvern one from reaper, not huge, but my largest mini to date). I chose green because I had 6 shades, and after arranging them in order, I mixed consecutive shades, giving me 11 colors of green to work with. Came out pretty nice.

But shouldn't this be in the minis forum?

PS

HA HA HA HA HA HA....

THERE *IS* NO MINIS FORUM!!!

Simon wanders off, laughing hysterically to himself.

(see thread Minis Forum? Please Vote! for why I'm laughing hysterically.)