The Beer Waaagh: WiP: Glaun, Tarwdraig of Cynfelyn

I finally get to start painting some of the Mierce Miniatures resin models I got from their Kickstarter. I'll be starting off with Glaun, Tarwdraig of Cynfelyn. After the jump, we'll see how I got him to look like this:

Well, with the Army of Darkness done, its time for me to move on to my next project. Ill be starting with Glaun, from Mierce Miniatures' Darklands range. It's the first of the models I've painted from their Kickstarter.

First off, some shots of it assembled but unprimed...

As you can see, there are a few seams that will need to be filled; not unusual on a model this large.

His left wing came slightly bent from the Texas heat. Rather than fix it, I've left it, as I feel it adds a bit more motion to that otherwise static arm.

The arms and legs had a few gaps that had to be filled as well.

I primed him black, and applied the first base coat. I'm using all Vallejo paint on him, and decided to go green with the skin tone in homage to the D&D green dragons. The scales will be a bone white color on all my Brythoniaid, to give them a unifying color theme. The interior of the mouth and exposed musculature will probably be in a purple range.

I left his tongue out because I intend to sculpt a stream of vile, acidic material being projected from his mouth. The color mix on this one is 4 Cayman Green : 1 SS Camo Black Brown : 1/2 Turquoise. I want just a hint of blue blending into the model, and I'm hoping the touch of turquoise will provide that.

The second layer is now done. You can see the details on the model slowly starting to come out.

The second layer is 2 parts Cayman green : 2 parts Goblin green, with the same drop of SS Camo Black Brown and half drop of Turquoise.

To this point, I've been using the Games & Gears size 2 brush. Because these are initial coats, I don't have to be as neat and the splaying problems I've been having aren't as relevant. I'll do one more layer with their brushes, then transition to something better.

At this point, I added a bit of beer, to improve my focus. (Don't you see the name of this blog? You knew this was coming...) Blaecorn Unidragon by Clown Shoes will see me through the next two layers.

Layer 3 is now done, and the details are really starting to come out. This one continues increasing brightness, with 4 Goblin Green added to the SS Camo Black and Turquoise from earlier.

The chest and bottom half of the tail are being left bare, because I've decided I'm going to go in and give the Brythoniaid a bone white-faded-into-skin-color camouflage pattern. It's the same principle the Air Force uses for planes: dark on top to blend into the ground, light on bottom to blend into the sky. Appropriate, I hope, for a race of flying creatures that have evolved to walk the ground.

This was done with the Games & Gears 1. At this point the splaying will surpass my control, so I switch over to Winsor and Newton Series 7s from here.

Fourth layer. We are now using 2 Goblin Green : 2 Scorpion Green : 1 SS Camo Black Brown : 1/2 Turquoise.

Especially on the leg muscles, you can start to see the brighter greens coming through. My paint style is to over highlight, so believe it or not, there are still at least three layers to go!

Again, the legs and ribs really help illustrate the highlighting.

At this point in painting, its 3 AM, my beer has gone empty, and my alarm is set for two and a half hours away. Regretfully, I call it a night and go to bed so I can get to work in the morning.

More to come!

[Edit 1: the next day...]

Someone had asked me for a pic of how the gap filling turned out, so ill start there:

Next layer was 4 Scorpion Green, with 1 SS Camo Black and 1/2 turquoise. Since the green started veering into white, I also added a drop of Lemon Yellow to start getting it to more yellow shade.

The next shade is really starting to get bright. 2 Scorpion Green : 2 Lemon Yellow. This time I only added a half drop of SS Camo Black and a touch of Turquoise. At this point those two have tinted the model as much as they can, and are going to prevent the highlights from getting bright enough if I keep using them.

And finally, a nose-on view.

I think the skin tone is only two shades away from being done. We'll see if I can knock it out tonight.

[Edit 2: the next next day]:

Knocked out the last two skin tone layers last night.

1 Scorpion Green : 3 Lemon Yellow : 1 Skull White, with touches of SS Camo Black Brown and Turquoise to slightly tint the green.

I had about half my mixed paint left over from that layer, so I added another drop of Lemon Yellow and two more of white to do the final highlight.

One of my last steps is to kill my paint light and see how models look just with ambient room lighting. This gives me an idea of how they will display in a venue that has sub-ideal lighting.