Green Dragon of Melnibone Part 1

Green Dragon of Melnibone - Painting Green Scales

I’ve had this dragon model for years. It was originally a blue dragon, then I decided to fit it in with an Elric of Melnibone theme for Hordes of the Things (HOTT), so I plonked an elf rider on its back. Unsurprisingly, I was never really happy with the result. So with the advent of De Bellis Fantaisae (DBF), I decided on a complete upgrade.

The model is meant to represent Elric’s cousin, Dyvim Slorm, so obviously he needed to be sitting on something more to his station! So, step one was to create a saddle for the rider out of Green Stuff. The photo shows some basic painting of the saddle and saddle cloth. I’ll return to this later.

The saddle has been added

The Elric stories mentions green skinned dragons so that had to be the next upgrade. The photo above is at the same stage as the last. I’ve repainted the original blue scales black then applied a base coat of GW Caliban Green. I gave this a wash of GW Nuln Oil and then overpainted the scales with Caliban Green, leaving some areas of each scale the darker shade.

The dark green layers done

From there, I built up the layers of green of ever lightening shades, painting a slightly smaller area each time to give a graduated appearance. Here are the colours I used:

All highlighted

Mid green (Matisse Alpine Green) 

Light green (Matisse Permanent Green Light) - quite a transparent colour, so I did a couple of layers of this one 

A bright yellow (GW Flash Gitz Yellow) - This one was to highlight only edges and raised areas of the scales 

Ready for the belly scales

I finished off the green scales by toning back the yellow highlights with a slightly diluted coat of Tamiya X-25 Clear Green and think it did the job I wanted well. 

So, The green scales are completed. On to the belly scales, the post for which is here:

Coming Soon! 

Let me know what you think. 

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