Baby Dragons

These were fun to paint… I loved the design of  these figures when I saw them on Etsy.

These dragons are for a game called Flamecraft. It appears to be for kids… so I don’t have the game, but I figured in theory they could be used for Everdell. Introducing baby dragons to Everdell might be fun. Mostly I just wanted to paint them.

The black one is so dark that I decided to go with grays so that the beautiful detail in the sculpt would be more apparent.

They painted much quicker than one might expect. I primed them with a brush-on acrylic primer, then painted each in their basic color. While still wet I worked in a little highlight and shadow tones. Once dry, I painted in any details or clarified any light and dark bits that might have been lost in the wet blend.

The bases all went a tan tone to give a sense of unity. I then gave a dark brown wash, being careful to not muddy up the highlight tones. (just adding a bit of water to those bits before the wash sets works fine). The wash settles into all the nooks and crannies and punches up all the details. At the end I use a brush-on satin acrylic clear coat to even out all the sheens. I’m not much of one to use spray paint when I can avoid it. I don’t like breathing the stuff. I live in an apartment and have no convenient place to spray. And… with all the nooks and crannies it is easy to get too much paint in one spot and not enough in others… it is just simpler to brush on my paint and finishes. Life doesn’t need to always be in such a rush.

Last I added adhesive backed tan felt to their undersides. It just seems to finish off game pieces a bit more gracefully. A little more weight to the base doesn’t hurt either. The thin adhesive backed felt works better than the thicker stuff which might leave peaces a bit more wobbly.

Dragons are always fun to paint. I did a set of Dragons among my chess sets as well. I bought it on Etsy. I’d give a link, but it’s no longer for sale on the site. It was a Dragons vs Dwarves set.

Initially I was going to keep the dragon chess pieces a pretty tight color palette, like I did with the Goblins, Dwarves, & Humans, but I quickly realized that though the design of the dragon chess pieces are beautiful, the rooks, bishops, knights, & pawns all looked similar enough to be confusing*, and perhaps give an advantage to the player using the dragons. So I decided to instead go quite colorful with the dragons and use their gold bases as their unifying factor. They also got the tan felt under their bases. The process of painting these was pretty similar to what I described above. Primer, wet blend base, then I worked in additional tones and details. Dark wash. Satin clear coat. Felt.

* Red is the King, the Pink is the Queen, the Blue is the Bishop, the Fuchsia is the Knight, the Orange is the Rook, and the Green are Pawns.

Have fun creating… listen to your muse and explore what is possible. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Art is about enjoying the journey and seeing what is discovered along the way.

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