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The latest addition to Mini-spawns family of blue dragons. "Papa" Inspiration for the scales came from a trip to the zoo. looking closely at lizards I noticed that non had uniform scales, allhad strangely light, dark or off-colors scattered across the hide. The rocky base is removable, with the original sturdy bones base left unmodified so that it can stand up to a 3 year old. It also has many layers of dull-coat. WIP

Okay so my attempt at coming back a little while ago kind of fell flat on its face, and my attempts to return to painting have gone terribly. However, I visited Drifter the other day and we stopped off in London on the way to his, and we dropped into a shop which carried Reaper Bones I was so pleased I bought a new dragon and a unicorn. Hadn't been intending to buy minis at all, just to browse, but nevermind. I decided to paint the dragon today, and he's the Fire Dragon... However, I decided to try and paint him up as a white dragon, coz he's little, and for some reason I just didn't fancy painting him as a red. I'll do a red another time =P However, in painting my whites, I ended up going more frosty, and he's got notes of silver and all sorts in him. Wow my photo game is off at the moment :S but yeah, there he be. You can see in the last photo the shimmer on his wings Paints used: Citadel -Fenrisian Grey -Ulthuan Grey -White Scar -Runefang Steel -Guilliman Blue -Screaming Skull -Drakenhof Nightshade -Gehenna's Gold -Dawnstone -Mechanicus Standard Grey -Steel Legion Drab -Agrax Earthshade Primed with black Army Painter Spray. He's been popped on a 7.5cm MDF oval and based with sand, tea, and Army Painter tufts. Narthrax is sitting on the bookshelf next to me being annoyed that I started a new dragon in the middle of painting him. Nethyrmaul is staring resentfully up from the bottom shelf, loathing me for my terrible efforts at finishing his goopiness.

So I am embarrassed to say that my daughter has painted more minis than I have but the work she does has been pretty awesome and I hope she continues to enjoy this hobby. She turned 5 at the end of last month. Showing in the order she completed them. Vanja, Fire Giant Queen - This one I got for her around July when we took a trip to Reaper and I had her pick a mini out. She finally got to paint it around November. I helped only with the skin. She was tired of painting by the time she got to only the skin and so I slapped the color she wanted on there. Fire Dragon - This mini was bought during the Reaper Artist Con I think. She painted it the weekend of her birthday. I talked her into letting me show her what a quick wash of black would do to it. Great Worm - This is one of the minis she got from my mom for her birthday. It was the easier of the two for us to set up so she could paint right away. She picked the colors and just went crazy with it. I even let her use my detail Reaper brush for the teeth. She has already been picking out things in my Bones II stash she wants to paint but we may tackle her other birthday gift from my mom first, Nethyrmaul the Undying. One day I will find the Pathfinder Red Dragon in stock and she can paint it. Edit: Forgot to add tags

A Fire Dragon, painted up in fiery colors, with tan wings and underbelly. A truly classic color scheme. This also represents my first attempt at basing. It's pebbles, beach sand, and a bit of static grass pulled from a pot topper I purchased at a craft store, all held down with matte medium and a bit of earth color.

I went on a dragon painting binge a couple of months ago. This is Sandra Garrity's Dragon of the Fire (or rather, its more casual cousin the Bones Fire Dragon). I started with some thought of it being a desert dweller and it developed from there. WIP thread here, including a few false starts.

So. I tried painting some minis without WIPs and found myself having a hard time keeping track of what and how much I had done. So I'm back, although these may be sporadic and really slow to update. We'll see. Anyhow, after painting a lot of tiny figures for the January Bones Beauty Pageant, I decided to move in the opposite direction and tackle some of the big figures from Bones I to clear out room for Bones II. So I am painting dragons. Five of them, if you count the Frost Wyrm. Each one gets its own thread, though, since I don't know how I'm going to progress through them. I didn't know the names of the dragons when I decided what colors to make them. Since I'm painting five, to keep up interest I'm using a slightly different approach to each one. This one, at least for the moment, I am imagining as something warm and desert-like, gold with red undertones. When I looked at it I thought of brass or gold dragons, although I don't know if I'm going to actually attempt metallics on it. As you might have gathered, I improvise a lot when I am painting. If I were a writer I would be what they call a pantser. Anyhow, to make sure I didn't get all those unglued wings mixed up, the first painting session I made sure to put a wash on each dragon and its wings of a major color element I had planned for it. So after I primed everything with Reaper's Brown Liner, this one got a terracotta red wash of pure thinned-down Iron Oxide Red. The other dragons I'm painting concurrently are Deathsleet, Ebonwrath, the Shadow Dragon, and the Frost Wyrm.

And to catch me completely up, my first painted dragon. A Secret-Sophie gift (thanks, LittleBluberry!). Sandra Garrity's Fire Dragon, Bones version. I had a blast with her. Kept it simple as I could with the dragon itself. Had all the real fun with the base. Mashed it out of Super Sculpey and then of course cooked it. Cooked another small piece to set her on better, honestly couldn't believe it worked. Decided to leave her detachable in the end so I could transport et al. Painted brown base coat, then went with gray for rocks. Greens and blues for the stream bed. Added some gravel and sand. And some Army Painter tufts, just a few. The water started out as Mod Podge--was working well but got my hands on some Realistic Water so switched to that to finish. Started with Water Effects but then pulled back. Lot of pictures trying to get decent ones; sorry. Moved the best one, pretty much, up front. Thanks for looking. Comments and suggestions and so on welcome.

I decided to paint the Fire Dragon as a green dragon for a friend for a birthday present. I wanted to prove I could use red and green brightly and not make it look too much like christmas! Hah! Take that, color theory! I had some extra putty left over from the basing so I used it to make the little snake in the last pic. The base is mostly cork sheets courtesy of Talespinner with some gravel and rocks. The tree is a twig with birch seed leaves. The fern in the front is etched brass from Hasselfree- that stuff is fantastic and so realistic! Highly recommended! The other plants are real moss and reindeer moss from a decorative mix I picked up from Home Goods, I think- something like that. The colors are forest green, viper green, sun yellow for the green elements. The base I primed in black craft paint and then used spattered crimson, saffron sunset and sun yellow, mixing while wet, giving it more of a brown look. For the crest and belly I used spattered crimson, saffron sunset, sun yellow, leather white and blood red (just on the crest and claws.) I'd played with shading with the red on the green and some walnut brown in the deepest shadows, but I found I got the best result just using the forest green. C&C always welcome! Happy New Year!

This is going to be a really quick WIP, mainly because I'm generally done. I've got another layer of color to put down on the base (the first is drying), and then a wash for the bases, assembly, then clear coat protection. So this entry will probably be wordy. Last Christmas I was visiting my brother, my two nieces and a nephew. One of things I like to do is go to his FLGS (although he doesn't know it), and it's a really really nice store. Anyway, the middle niece picked out a Bone's Fire Dragon. And my brother said NO! I could have killed him! So I decided then to buy one for her and paint it up. She's under 10, so I'm trying to encourage this sort of thing. Then I remembered that she's got a sister and a brother. Showing up with a gift for just one wouldn't be nice, so I've got to figure out two more. Thus, a unicorn for her and a spider centaur warrior for him. He's into Spider-Man, so I bought him a spider man. I'm so cute. However, I knew from the start that I wanted to use the airbrush on the dragon for sure. Probably the unicorn, too. So I might as well do all three, right? I've used my airbrush one time before, painting three model car bodies that the kids and I were doing. So my experience is practically nil. But I've owned a "how to use an airbrush" book for over a decade, so that's almost like staying in a Holiday Inn Express. So this'll be a piece of cake! So, pull the cars out of the garage, unbury the compressor, pull out the folding table to work from as the garage work bench is covered in other things, although I managed to clear it enough to do all my paint mixing here. That becomes important and fortuitous later. Let's start with the dragon. Ignore the white spot for now. That's comes later in the story. Using craft paints, did its underbelly and wing membranes in a light yellowish tan, then the body in red covering up most of the yellow in the process, and then black for the spines, covering up a lot of the red. As an aside, I had the compressor up too high in pressure. Figured that out near the end of this little adventure. All in all, at least a good start. Pretty simple to clean up the over-spray areas. On to the centaur. Black, how can one screw up black? *raises hand* Had the paint too thin to start with, so had to let it dry and what not. But that's no biggie as I've got the dragon spines to paint. I'm telling the individual figures here in a linear sense, but I did use whatever color I had in the brush on every mini that needed it. So I'm glad I found out the paint was too thin on the spider before I destroyed the unicorn or dragon. Solved the thin paint issue, and came back to give it a better coat. Was really having trouble with too much paint (that ol' over pressure issue). So the red spots became more of a red tint. But the spider-side body came out pretty well. Now, I've got the torso. And since I wanted to have Spider-Man's red and blue worked into him, gotta go with a Drow-ish torso. I contemplated trying to airbrush the hair black for about half a quantum of time. So he was just sprayed all in blue. The unicorn was much easier. By now, I've solved the pressure issue, and have had a bit more practice and managed to get the blue really well. Purple hoof area and black mane/tail and horn. I also managed to airbrush his little goatee, but then covered it up in blue. Writing this, it certainly seems like a Quentin Tarantino-esque like story. It's all out of order here. I'm very happy with the unicorn. One of the lovely things about airbrushes is the nice fades and transitions that are possible. For my minor skill, I was happy. Now here's Act Three. I'm cleaning the airbrush inside in the sink, and have it nice and clean. Back outside on the workbench, and I lay it on the side. (For those airbrush lovers, I'll have a little spoiler and tell you to fear not. It's fine.) Cleaning up the other things and I pick up the airbrush again. Inside the cup, the water has extracted more paint. This is frustrating because I've cleaned it several times already and this one color just seems to have found a place to hide. But that's not a big deal. I'll just take it apart and give it a really, really good cleaning. I've never taken it that far. I've taken the nozzle cap off, but never the nozzle much less the needle itself. But I get that off no problem. And then the trigger comes out. Uh oh. I've now got ever single piece of the airbrush separated save for the air hose fittings. But I needed to lubricate things anyway, so this is no big deal and an opportune time to do that. Everything goes well until I try putting the trigger back in. Hinged with a little stem plug that pushes on the air hose fitting valve. I struggle to get that done. I get it it, and reach for the other pieces. The trigger falls out and rolls under the workbench. Gigantic dust bunnies and sawdust cows (I dunno, what would you call them?) mingle with spider webs from creatures deceased for decades. I have to re-clean the trigger. This cycle repeats two more times, so my frustration level is pegging the meter right now. In the middle of this it starts to rain. Pretty hard. It's rather welcome, as things were quite toasty, and so I don't mind. My daughter comes out to relay a question from her mother. Are the windows of the car rolled up? Of course they are, I reply. How stupid do you think I am? This is in the middle of trigger-cleaning-cycle number three. Alone again with my thoughts, I start to have my doubts. Maybe her car windows are a little cracked? I get the airbrush put together, grab the keys and run out into the pouring rain to check. Yup. All up tight. Now I'm soaked, frustrated as I can be, and ready to clean better. But I want to put her car in the garage now. So I grab the corner of the folding table where all the figures have been drying and proceed to move it over to my car's side of the garage. The far leg collapses. I watch in horror as my entire afternoon's work slides down the table and onto the floor with the nice abrasive epoxy coating I myself put down. Sailors blushed. Luckily, the damage was not as much as it could have been. Another Bones benefit, I suppose. You can see the white spot on the dragon's back leg where it scraped off. There was also another point up on his head that doesn't even show in the picture. The wings showed a few dirty streaks where they played in the tire and brake dust. The spider body had zero damage, while the torso remarkable stayed in the clamp and surfed gracefully to a stop, never touching the floor. The unicorn was like-wise safe, other than a few dirty scuffs on the body which were easily covered with a thin layer of paint. All in all, a very adventurous day of painting. Got all the damage repaired and as I mentioned in the first of this entry, nearly done.