PETER PAINTS: THE RED DRAGON, PART 6

Greetings! I’m Peter Lee, a designer in R&D for Dungeons & Dragons at Wizards of the Coast. For the last few months, I’ve been painting Gale Force Nine’s red dragon miniature. I’m getting close to being done! Last time, I worked on the dragon’s head.  For today’s article, I will continue down the neck and body.

We start with the dragon’s neck. I like to do small sections at a time, as I would lose track of what I’ve done if I tried shading the entire dragon at once.

I painted a dark line along the white belly scales a few weeks ago, so now I need to paint a transition from that dark line to the lighter red. I mix up several shades of black and red start painting shadows.

A difficult part about red miniature paint is that it is typically a bit translucent. White paint is usually opaque, so I mix it with red to paint some brighter highlights. The resulting color is pink, so it doesn’t quite look right. Once the pink dries, I paint over the highlights with red to make them less garish.

I continue down the right shoulder.

I then paint the left shoulder. It was a lot tougher to do this side due to the dragon’s wing being in the way. I applied a thin dark red wash when I was done to darken the recesses of the scales.

I continue down the right side of the body. Here’s where it looked like at first.

After painting and applying a few washes, the figure ended up being pretty glossy due to the clear acrylic I add to my wash. I sprayed the figure with matte sealer to remove some of the reflections.

I then work on the body for the other side. Since I want to give an impression of small scales, I end up painting some highlights by applying a coat of very small dots.

Next, I work on the back right leg. When I glued the dragon to the base a few weeks ago, I had to apply some green putty to hide the join.

The first thing I do is paint over that putty with dark red.

Here’s the right leg when I’m done shading and highlighting it.

The left leg is quite similar. I paint over the putty with dark red, and paint shadows with dark red. I use a wash to make the larger scales stand out.

Here’s a good picture of the left side once I’m done highlighting.

And here’s the other side.

That’s it for this week. I’m in the final stretch: just one or two weeks left! All that remains are the tail, forearms, wings, and some small details throughout the miniature. I post my progress on twitter (@minipete) if you can’t wait until the next set of pictures. Thanks!