Blaun, Tawrdraig of the Brythoniaid

Ryan hasn't painted anything in a while! Well, he has, but hasn't had time to post it. Here's his second attempt at Glaun, Tawrdraig of the Brythoniaid. Except he's blue, not green, this time around.

We'll go from primed to 90% painted, after the jump...

 

Well, you might be thinking to yourself, Ryan's been awfully quiet lately! I hope he hasn't fallen into a pit, or accidentally hospitalized himself, or anything like that!

Well, nothing of that sort has happened. After the chaos of the Darklands: First Edition Kickstarter, I took a week off of painting to recover. Following that, the Alamo GT came up rather quickly and I was swamped with reviewing lists, scenarios, and packet info, as well as starting the planning for next year's. The weekend after that was my daughter's second birthday, which you can imagine required my full, undivided attention. In the interim, I worked on my Teulu 'Tasche.

It's rare that I come back to a model that I've already painted, unless I have an opportunity to do something new to do it. With the Cawrdraig it was some intensive conversion work. With Glaun, I knew I wanted a pair to run in a Warriors of Chaos list (likely as Chariots - more on that in A Tale Of Two Games post). However, Glaun's sculpt is rather static, and has a lot of large joins that are not easily converted. What was I to do?

Well, the first step was to add some point to that blunt nose of his. When I first got the model I feared it had sheared off in packaging, but I've seen enough now to know that it's an intentional design choice. So, I sculpted a new snout onto the top of him.

Next, I flipped the big horns around and went more Longhorn than Bull Dragon.

Finally, I did a bit of repositioning on the tail, which required some gap filling. Nothing major, just a slight tweak.

The snout, in profile.

I also had a concept for doing one in a light blue color. Then Breffini released pictures of his amazing light blue job, and I knew anything I was going to do would be derivative of that. As a result, I decided to go with a turquoise, and over-highlight it as only I could.

The base coat is 4 drops of Stormy Blue to one drop of Turquoise.

For the second layer, I went with 1 part Stormy Blue to 2 parts Turquoise. You can already see the blue-green shades I was hoping for.

The third layer was all Turquoise, and I began to fear I'd made a terrible, blurry, sea-foam-green mistake...

The fourth layer went with 2 Turquoise to 1 Sky Blue.

The Fifth layer was 2:2 Turquoise to Sky Blue, with an extra drop of white.


For the next step, I went even more extreme with 1:1 Turquoise to Sky Blue, then added 2 parts white.

For the last layer of the blue, I added four drops of white to what was left over from the previous layer, and went EXTREMELY light on the model. This last layer, I think you'll agree, is what makes it pop out at you.

For the claws, teeth, horns, and scales, I wanted something that would mix with what I did for Glaun, but not look the same. I started with a layer of 4 parts Basalt Grey to 1 part Turquoise, to keep my shade semi-consistent.

The second layer is equal parts Basalt Grey and Medium Grey, which you may remember as my go-to color for browns and/or greys.




For the next layer I went with 3 parts Medium Grey to 1 part Wolf Grey. I started with a layer of pure medium, but it was more brown than I wanted it to be.


For the fourth layer, I went with 1 part Medium Grey : 3 parts Wolf Grey.

For the fifth layer, I went with 2 parts Wolf Grey to 2 Parts White.

Finally, I added a bit more white to the mixture and went over the tips one more time.

All that's left for tonight is the red mouth and eyes!

The mouth and eyes were shockingly fast, and I only bothered with a last photo of them. I started with Vallejo Rojo, moved up to Vallejo Carmine Red, then shifted to Hot Orange and finally Moon Yellow.