Just over a year since I completed the previous two large models from this boxed set, the Chimera and the Teumessian Fox, I’ve finally force-motivated myself to complete the Basilisk – which in this case has the form of a giant snake as it’s the mythic form and not the D&D form.

I originally hoped to paint in the scale patterns using the sculpted scales on the model, but the original 3d sculpt as shown lost a lot of it’s sharpness and refinement in the transition from render to final product, and so my plans were a little …ambitious. The result was that I ran out  of steam and the model sat on the desk for several months before being “filed” away in a storage tub.

With this year’s “Monster”-themed challenge months, arriving (Monster March and Monster MAYhem) I dug this thing out of the tub where it’d been for at least half a year and then it sat on my painting desk until about a week ago, when I just put the “force it through” mentality into practise and just started dotting in individual scales in one pattern, then the next, then the next – doing as much as I could stomach each session (often while doing something else) over the course of about five days until finally completing it a few hours before I sit (sat) here typing this text.

In the end, I gave up on trying to fill in the scales based on the soft ones on the sculpt and just dropped them in as dots where I wanted them. There are messy areas, areas where the dags and jags are too big, or too small, a couple where due to the curvature of the snake’s coil that a jag or two are even missing altogether. The close-ups really emphasise the messiness of the scales, but in hand at actual size with that satin clearcoat, the model works pretty well.

In the end, the dotted-in scales actually seemed to work to give the snake both a shaded and textured effect, and using a satin varnish on the model helped to accentuate the positive and hide the flaws. And yeah. I’m pretty happy to have finally completed this thing and gotten it out of here and out of the way! Thanks to Angry Piper’s Monster MayHem ’23 painting challenge for the motivation!

As is custom for monster models, Chainsaw Girl Berkeley once again provides us with model scale (and yet another trophy for her wall!) In this instance, a bare-knuckled Conan would also have worked…