Dragons. They are the archetype of fantasy monster, and I love 'em. Perhaps it's their similarity to dinosaurs that draws people in, perhaps the mixture of nobility and cruelty that they are often characterised with... they're right there in the name of the game, Dungeons & Dragons, so they've got to be special. Of course, Smaug from The Hobbit is a classic (I used part of one of his speeches for the title of this post), but I've also been listening to R. A. Salvatore's Drizzt Do'Urden series of books recently and the title character had this to say on the subject of dragons:
- Drizzt Do'Urden
Surely most fantasy miniature painters have painted, or intend to paint, at least one dragon in their time. My intention is to end up with a collection of dragons covering all the primary Chromatic colours (Red, Black, Blue, Green and White), with at least one little one to represent Wyrmlings and Young, and a big one to be an Adult or Ancient dragon. I also want to paint up a Bronze dragon, as Heather's character Kisandra has a kinship with them given her Draconic Sorceress background. I'm sure there could be a use for a large, inherently good, dragon at some point in their adventures, rather than just a long line of drakes that need slaying.
Currently, I have three Great Drakes painted - a red, blue and green. I also have a Young Blue Dragon included for good measure! There are several more in various stages of being built and painted, so hopefully I'll have another post soon with another set of additions for the family... These three dragons are shown below for a size comparison with one another, and I've focused on each one individually for some individual photos (the lightbox isn't big enough to get them spread out decently when they're all in there!). I also did some individual size comparisons, using my D&D character, Gnashrakk, and Minsc from Baldur's Gate as the brave scale markers.
It's been particularly interesting seeing how my painting has developed over time (particularly with the wyverns, which will be a separate post), so I've put them in order of when I painted them. Hope you enjoy looking at them.
Nar'lyxthis Encarmine
Red Dragon
This is the lovely Carmine Dragon from Forgeworld, which I don't think is available any more. It's a fantastic model, full of character. I hadn't decided what colour to paint it, so I asked Josh what colour he wanted (he was running our D&D campaign at the time and told me there was a dragon encounter coming up). He said blue. And I wanted to do as he asked, but when it came to it I just couldn't sully this model by painting it anything other than a deep crimson. As soon as she was assembled, I just knew I had to do this colour scheme.
Of course, this led to Josh rejecting the idea of using a Red Dragon in his encounter (he wouldn't even do it using the Blue Dragon stats!!), so I ended up having to get the next dragon in this list and paint him blue instead... not too much of a hardship I suppose!
I really like the pose of this model, protecting her egg under the tree stump. I was pleased with the deep red colouring and lightening up some of the scales. I also wanted to do something a bit different, so I painted the bony nodules green and the spikes a dark grey, rather than just doing them all in bone colour. I like the colour choice, and the purple tongue is striking! The only issue I had was that the GW matt varnish I used caused some white discolouration on the wings. I was gutted and didn't know what to do about it (didn't feel that I had the skills to fix it at the time, without repainting the whole thing). I'm debating whether to go and fix it now... I think it would probably be worth doing, and I think I'd be able to do it quite nicely now.
Saphyromir, the Raging Stormcloud
Blue Dragon
This is the 'newer' (as far as I'm concerned!) Dark Elf Black Dragon from Games Workshop, which was supplied with either a sorceress or elf lord rider. There was no problem leaving the rider off, no built-in saddles or anything (fortunately), which was good. I got this one to paint blue so that we could fight it in D&D - though, to be perfectly honest, I was looking for an excuse to buy one for a while (this gave me a good reason, and as the wife was playing too she couldn't argue!).
I put a lot of thought into the base, thinking that this represented some of the haul of treasures taken from other, less-proficient adventuring parties than our own (assuming we were able to defeat it, which of course we were!).
Stormfang
Young Blue Dragon
This is one of the D&D models from Nolzur's Marvellous Miniatures - really good, affordable minis. Some of the flexibility of the plastic annoys me (seems to be happening with more ranges these days), but the details are generally good and they have a lot of character. Plus, cheap!
I think this one was 'supposed' to be a White Dragon, but I fancied painting a Young Blue to accompany Saphyromir. And this model fitted what I thought a Blue might look like - wasn't suitable for any other colour other than white, and I wasn't in the mood for a White Dragon yet.
I used this model as a stand-in for a Young Green Dragon, called Venomfang, that the party were supposed to encounter during their adventure. So I called him Stormfang instead!
Venomthrax, the Scourge of the Verdant Plains
Green Dragon
A great miniature from Zealot Miniatures, gifted to me by the adventuring party for running a campaign over the last year during restrictions and things. I documented the process of assembling and painting this beauty in some detail here.
I really like this miniature, not as tall as the other two dragons, but that's just due to the posing - she has a much wider wingspan. I wanted to make the base interesting but not too distracting, and after canvassing opinion from the D&D party I decided to put a couple of dead bodies there - this dragon isn't waiting in a lair, she's gone out hunting! I'm really pleased with the painting here. There's more I could have done, but certainly some improvement over the previous ones (not that I'm unhappy with them, other than the white caused by the varnish on Nar'lyxthis...).
More on Dragons...
I've got more dragons to get painted up, but I also have quite a few Wyverns - the smaller, less-noble and more belligerent cousins of the true dragons that are favoured by orcs as mounts. One of the wyverns was the first large model I ever painted up (some twenty years ago...) so I'm quite proud of it! I'm going to put those in a separate post, this is enough photos for now!
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