6 December 2021

Temple Dragon


In case anyone is thinking "wait, this looks familiar", it's because I got 90% of the way through painting this dragon when I realised I was using the same technique and pretty much the same colours as I did for my byakhees back in May. Oops.

This model was going to be one of my entries for Monster May(hem) until I got stuck into the Cthulhu: Death May Die box. I bought this mini about a year ago, and it's my second Temple Dragon; the first (thankfully unpainted) one was chewed up by Erebus. As she'd also previously eaten one of these dragons we probably should have auditioned her for Game of Thrones

Anyway, painting. The model comes in separate pieces — body/pillar, wings, spines and tail — so after gluing it together, filling the more egregious gaps and sticking it to a 25mm base, I sprayed it with black primer. As its whole surface is heavily textured I decided to go with an overbrushing technique with a high-contrast colour. If I'd put some actual thought into it I'd have gone with blues or greens, but no, I went with reds. 

I started with a size 5 flat brush and a pot of Citadel Barak-Nar Burgundy, which I bought a while back because Vallejo doesn't really do a burgundy colour. The whole dragon got an overbrushing with it from front to back on the wings and straight down on the body and tail. I gave the top three coats and the underside one coat to keep it darker.

I cracked out the Red Violet and did the same thing again, only using less paint and trying to build up the highlights in a kind of "layering without actually layering" way. I gave it a decent amount of time to dry, then varnished the dragon to protect the paint. 


For the third highlight I used Sunset Red, a hot pink, and lightly drybrushed over the most prominent areas. It was at this point I started to realise I'd basically done this whole colour scheme before, and a glance at my display case confirmed it. Bugger. It's annoying, but it's not like I'm going to start again. I cracked on with the application of Sunset Red until I reached a point where I was happy, and gave it another coat of varnish.

Then came the internal debate about doing another lighter drybrush, and I decided to go for it using Pink very kind of not very sparingly. After that I painted the teeth and claws with Ivory and Off-White, and the eyes with Scorpy Green.

Now it's time for the pillar. I thought back to painting my Angels of Sorrow and how I wish I'd started the stonework with a lighter grey, so I began with Mechanicus Standard Grey and washed it with Nuln Oil. Then I used Grey Seer and Ghost Grey to highlight it and hopefully make it a bit more stonelike. Once finished the whole model got a coat of matte varnish. 

The only thing I needed to change was the 25mm base because it was too small and as a result I kept knocking the model over. So I glued it to a 45mm one, used modelling paste to cover the gap, painted it Heavy Black Green, covered it in PVA and finally slapped on the flock, tufts and flowers.

Despite the drybrusing being a bit chalky I'm really happy with the job I did on the dragon, and it's a good looking model. Thankfully there were no bent pieces — which is a bit of a shocker for a white plastic Bones figure — and it fitted together well and the gaps were easy to fill. And let's face it, as I'm Welsh it's about time I painted a dragon.

14 comments:

  1. That looks pretty damn awesome to me, Matt. Excellent work, and it definitely doesn't strike me as being a typical Bone model. It simply looks fantastic. :-)

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    1. Thanks, Simon! Despite him looking almost identical to my byakhees I'm very happy with how he came out. Who'd have thought a pink dragon would look so scary?

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  2. That looks really nice, great bit of painting there mate, Ooooo I've got a double sized door on number 24 of mu advent calendar, maybe it's one of them? (probably not though 🙄).

    Cheers Roger.

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    1. Thanks, Roger! You never know, you could be the lucky owner of one of these dragons too LOL!

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  3. That's one impressive critter and with your excellent colour choices is looks very sinister (kinda lawful evil ?). I wouldhave thought a lighter sandstone pillar would have set it off a bit better, but maybe it would also make it less sinister?
    Love the flowers on the base, so much more interesting thn the usual pile of loot.

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    1. I love the idea of a lawful evil dragon, Joe! The flowers were a late addition as I wanted something else on the base that wasn't a tuft. Ive had them for ages and this is the first time I've used them, and they look good.

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  4. Similar scheme or no, it looks smashing Mat! Love the sculpt too. Speaking of which, I haven’t painted a dragon in some years either and I have two large reaper bones models sat waiting…

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    1. Thanks, Dai! I've got two more Bones dragons, one smaller than this and one much larger, that I really need to get done. But they'll probably have to wait till the new year.

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  5. Using a similar colour scheme shouldn't be a problem Matt, especially if it looks great like this one.
    When painting grey rocks, try adding some medium tone brown in patches, on your base layer, then drybrush as normal over the top, it will add variation to the rock.

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    1. You're right about the stone, Dave, but I was having such a time painting it without getting greys on the pink dragon that once the stone looked OK I gratefully left it as is. As for the the same paint scheme, I'm just a bit annoyed that it hit me way too late that it was identical to the Lovecraft monster. But I'm happy with it.

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  6. I think it was a smart move to drybrush the dragon based on the size and way it is sculpted. Its easy to get good results that way. Dave is spot-on about a wash on the stone. It will give it some nice shadows and make it look weathered. I wasn't expecting the variety of flowers on the base but I like them! It gives it a bit more of a fairy tale/high fantasy feel. As always, I love the variety in what you paint, mate! You keep us on our toes :)

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    1. Yeah, on a mini this textured drybrushing is the way to go, and it was easy enough to do and looks really good. You and Dave are right about the pillar, it could do with some brown/sepia to break up all the greys. Glad I can keep you on your toes :-)

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  7. He looks great Matt. I like the touch of making the eyes green, they really draw the attention to the face - love the colours too!

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    1. Cheers! I thought about icy blue eyes at first, but bright green complements the pinky-reds better.

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