I've always been a big fan of dinosaurs. The interest that a lot of kids have in them never really went away for me: it just broadened to include robots, aliens, dragons and other large monsters. Back in the day, when my friends and I were first getting into Warhammer, we visited a non-GW shop in Milton Keynes that sold a wide range of miniatures. (I remember that they had a Cyberpunk 2013 businessman painted grey, in the style of Spitting Image's puppet of John Major, which rather dates things.)
I bought a lead Grenadier Games model called "Blue Dragon", sculpted by Julie Guthrie. It's a weird miniature, as it's obviously a theropod-type dinosaur with wings. The wings kept falling off, and it was something of a figure of fun, even among my Bretonnians.
Recently, I've been looking at a lot of dinosaur models on Instagram. Some of them are terrific, and it's interesting to see a sort of modelmaking that's developed parallel to wargaming. Inspired by this, I got out the Blue Dragon, without wings, and had a go at painting it.
The sculpting is really good. The scales are terrific. I put green stuff over the feeble slots that were supposed hold the wings on, and tried to sculpt some sort of tecture. I actually pressed different grades of sandpaper into the putty. When it came to painting, I used stripes to break up and disguise my iffy work.
I'm used to using quite bright colours, as fits the Oldhammer models and pulp settings that I tend to prefer. This time, I went for khaki, with brown and green washes. I'm actually really pleased with how this guy's skin came out. I did use a bit of red to make stripes around its eyes. It does make this guy look very hung over.
Anyhow, here it is!
Wow, this is kind of a new level, I'm so impressed! Really amazing job. I'm on the same boat than you when it comes to dinosaurs, so you got my attention from the beginning!
ReplyDeleteCheers, thanks! I'm glad and a bit surprised that it came out well. There's almost no highlighting: it's almost all washes. Pleased to see another dinosaur enthusiast here - they're so cool, with or without feathers. I'm tempted to do some more now.
DeleteLove it!
ReplyDeleteif you had made up a pseudo Latin name for it, I would have believed it.
Thanks - I think it's closest to an Allosaurus or Megalosaurus in reality, but not very close!
DeleteNicely done! These patterns are something we could use on our more fantastical miniatures as well – they would work great on any big monsters!
ReplyDeleteThank you - I originally just used them to break up the model a bit, but they do look quite natural. I could see dragons having markings like this.
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