Dragon of the East

Hi all

He tried to tempt me at Salute 2017, he did it again at PAW 2018. Finally at Salute 2018, I succumbed...

I literally could not deny the desire to own at least one of Dave Stone's magnificent dragon models! Honestly I have tried and tried and tried not to buy one as they are an investment of funds, time and effort but hell, I'm only human - I ended up mostly trying to stop buying more than one!!

To be honest it was a straight toss up between his brand new Wyvern which had just been freshly painted and this bad boy....

pic taken from Dave's website here

In the end I had to go with the Oriental Dragon, I'd wanted him for so long and even the gorgeous Wyvern model couldn't compete, so I dutifully dug out the £50 from my sorely pressed wallet and handed it to Dave's grinning daughter, who knew she had me beat....

fast forward to this month and in an effort to boost my flagging mojo I decided to build and paint this beauty, knowing that it would make me very happy indeed....and it has.

This beaut of a model is made of hard resin and is massive (I haven't measured it, but have placed it next to some 32mm samurai later).  Really neat casting and only need some minor filling around the joints, which I did with a little bit of Das.  My only complaint, and it is my only complaint is that the brittle nature of the resin meant that I snapped one of the critters moustaches within the first 5 mins.  That was the only mishap and took a few tries at supergluing it back on to finally sort...

I used a grey primer to spray on as a base. I like using this primer as A) it's really cheap, B) it sticks fantastically to any surface son no need to pop your expensive mini into a bubble bath and C) the grey is a really neutral colour so I can go light or dark on it (plus I find coloured primers too confusing...).

After much research (ten minutes on Google) regarding colour schemes, I decided to do a bit of a mishmash of the boxed art colours i.e. I did what Dave did... and a flaming mane of hair, using my fire technique - more on that in a couple of weeks.

I mostly used Vallejo paints and GW washes to paint the beastie.  Below at all the base colours - Joe, take note of the sandstone rocks - no grey for me!!

The highly detailed scaling and features gave me the opportunity to really build up the paint layers, due to the size of the "mini" (ha!) I did this with successive dry brushes and then a final detailed highlight.

I even took the time to practice with some OSL, a technique I'm yet to truly get to grips with...

I love the pose of the model which goes against the traditional coiled viper look of eastern dragon artwork and instead concentrates on the "launching into flight" look - neck stretched and powerful legs pushing off from the earth.

The detail is fabulous, each scale sculpted rather than textured on...

I tried to take some pics with the flash on to show you the layers...

and finally some scaling - yup those are 32mm Bushido minis...

What a BEAST!!

I really enjoyed painting this but now I'm going to have to avoid Dave's stands at the next few shows, else I'll get that bloody Wyvern and then the sea dragon, then the fire breathing beastie...

hope you enjoy

dGG