Today I have another quick entry for both Swordmaster’s Monster March and Ann’s “Neglected But Not Forgotten” painting challenges – it’s “Shimmergloom, Shadow Dragon” which appears to be a named individual dragon from the Drizzt series of fantasy novels. To my eye, Shimmergloom seems very small for a dragon, but perhaps this is its younger form. I don’t know.
What I do know is that the model’s base came badly warped, and severla attempts to reset it via hot water over the years have been unsuccessful in the long term, as every time, the PVC just re-warps after seemingly resetting to a nice flat outcome. This was a pretty consistent problem for the models in the first few of those D&D Adventure Boardgames, and in some cases, I’ve cut them off their bases and glued them down to new ones, the fact that Shimmergloom itself has warped legs and the relatively small contact points prevented me from doing so. This is also the reason I’ve not sculpted on simple flagstones to the base, as I tend to do with the larger models, and have instead just painted them on as I do with the smaller ones.
The reason Shimmergloom even got painted was through me needing something to hand to demonstrate to Marouda how I blend different shades of contrast paint via the use of the medium. That pretty much did most fo the model, though I did go back and add a thinned coat of metallic medium to the entire model, and then go over it again with another run of the two contrast paints. I get it that “Shadow Dragon” in D&D terms probably means a very specific shade of black or whatever, and that they seem to be very strict in what kinds of horns this dragon or that has, and so my purples are probably accurate to some other sub-form of dragon, but if you’ve been following this blog for any amount of time, you’ll also know that I don’t really care that much about such things as long as my board game models look decent on the tabletop.
There is a nice, subtle shimmer/irridescence in hand that gives me a little bit of a feel of translucence in a completely opaque model. Sadly, it doesn’t really come across in photos, but it’s a nice effect that makes me glad I did this model, as I learned something useful for the future. So once again I have to thank both challenges for making me finish this model, rarhter than just have it sit around primed for 8 months, or using it to demo a technique and then forgetting about it on the table for a year afterwards. Now it’s ready for some gaming!
Not so big for a fantasy dragon, though it’d be plenty big enough if it were real!
Azazel's Bitz Box. 
Great colour choices on the dragon, really gives it a other worldly feel.
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Thanks Dave – more interesting than black and grey, that’s for sure!
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That dragon is very pretty. 🙂
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Thank you, C&M! Glad you like it! 🙂
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Beautiful painting! I love all the purples. It may indeed be a small dragon, but it is a very pretty one. 😉
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Thanks! After painting this one I’m very tempted to try out the same scheme/effects on a larger dragon and see if it comes out as well. 🙂
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Wow, I love the colours on that dragon. It’s a simple colour scheme but really effective.
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Yeah, I’m surprised at how well it turned out, especially as parts 2 and 3 were just experimenting with some new effects. 🙂
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Nice little Dragon. The colour is very striking.
Cheers,
Pete.
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Thanks Pete! It was a quick and easy one that came out better than it has any right to! 🙂
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He’s lovely mate – lovely blending & beautiful work on the metallic sheen!
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Cheers, Alex – credit to the fine folks at Vallejo for that Metallic Medium, but I’ll be using the technique again for sure!
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Who doesn’t love a properly-color-blended-purple dragon? Nicely done!
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Thanks Mark! Glad you like it! 🙂
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Great work on the purple mate it’s one of the colours I do have trouble with!
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Thanks Pat. I’m lucky, I guess – I find it one of the easier colours to play with for some reason, along with red. Blue on the other hand is a right basatrd!
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Great job powering through on this one! I can see the warping you’re talking about and in my limited experience with board game minis, there is nothing more demotivating than a major flaw with a sculpt. Good on you for getting it done and the purples look great even if the dragon looks undersized as you pointed out 🙂
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Thanks Kuribo. It wasn’t too bad as I was using it as a tutorial-demo model to show how to use Contrast and the mediums. If not, it’d probably still be sitting around unpainted! 😀
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Lovely work. 😀
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Thanks Ben – simple but effective, I guess.
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Azazel, love the finish of Shimmergloom, looks awesome! I have the same issue as you with trying to fix warped miniatures. With this Dragon how did you get the wings to stay like that. I used Hot water, got them in place but eventually they went back to its original warped shape (where they were both pretty much togethor) Any tips here? Dont want to paint and have this happen to them ! Lol
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Thank you for the kind words! I used the same technique of Hot Water, and followed (after “setting” with cold water) I left it in the Freezer for a couple of hours. Even so, with these things they still tend to revert back to their original warped state. At least the paints I used (Citadel, Vallejo) have enough flex in them that they don’t crack and instead flex with these PVC models. 🙂
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