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I've recently started getting very heavily into the Darklands line from Mierce Miniatures, and I thought I'd take the time to photo-document the first of their models that I'm in the process of painting. There's a bit more commentary over on my blog, but we all know that the pictures are the best part of a WiP, and they're all here!

First off, some shots of it assembled but unprimed...

His left wing came slightly bent from the Texas heat. Rather than fix it, I've left it, as I feel it adds a bit more motion to that otherwise static arm. As you can see, it went together nicely, but there were a few gaps that had to be filled with greenstuff before painting could begin.

I'm using all Vallejo paint on him, and decided to go green with the skin tone in homage to the D&D green dragons. The scales will be a bone white color on all my Brythoniaid, to give them a unifying color theme. The interior of the mouth and exposed musculature will probably be in a purple range.
Primed black, and first base coat on the skin in place:

I started with 4 Cayman Green : 1 SS Camo Black Brown, with a drop of turquoise to bring the green closer to a blue than a yellow.

Second layer of skintone:

2 Cayman Green : 2 Goblin Green : 1 SS Camo Black Brown, with the same drop of turquoise.

Third layer:

Goblin Green and SS Camo Black Brown, with that same little touch of Turquoise.

Fourth layer:

I've added some Scorpion Green to the Goblin Green, and I'm still cutting it with SS Camo Black Brown and Turquoise.

Fifth layer:

The first one adds some yellow and a brighter green (Scorpion green) to start bringing it to my over-highlighted style. The turquoise and brown shades I've been using to tint the green are starting to fall off here, as they're starting to interfere with the brightness of the paint.

Sixth layer:

Now I'm putting almost as much yellow as green into the mix, and the vibrancy of the color is really starting to pop through.

Seventh layer:

1 Scorpion Green : 3 Lemon Yellow : 1 white, with touches of the SS Camo Black Brown and Turquoise to try to keep my green tint consistent.

Eighth Layer:

Added two drops of white to the previous mix and just gave light touches.

One of the last tests I always do is to turn off my painting lights and see how models look under sub-ideal lighting, just using ambient room lighting. It gives me a good idea of what the model will look like at a tournament. I thought I'd share the results of that one as well:



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Because it's neat, here's a quick progression of every skin layer, from roughly the same angle:

I love how those last two layers, which really only cover a tiny, tiny part of the model, make the whole paint job pop into detail. It's gratutious overhighlighting, but it's been the style I've been using for a few years now, and I love the way it makes the whole thing come together.

Now that the skintone is done, it's time to move on the rest of the model!
First off, I did the inside of the mouth, gums, and exposed musculature in purples highlighted up to pink. I did it very fast, and forgot to take pictures of each layer, so all you get is the final product.

Posed with some light in his mouth, so you can see the detailing of the floor.

It looks very odd now, but that's because of the contrast to the black teeth. As those get painted, it'll look more natural.

I then base coated the rest of the model - scales, teeth, claws, and the underbelly. I'm painting all of them the same color, and I will then glaze the underbelly to give it a more green tint to bring it back into the skin tone.


The first layer is 4 parts Leather Brown to 4 parts SS Camo Black Brown to one part Goblin Green, which if you remember, was the midtone for his skin. Though not obvious, using a touch of that goblin green will blend the two shades together and make them seem more natural next to each other. SS Camo Black Brown is one of the utility colors I use very frequently. Any time I want to make something darker without using pure black, Camo Black Brown is what I use. It adds an earthy realism to darker colors, and allows me to shade several vastly different color schemes will still pointing them to similar points of the spectrum.
From underneath, you can see some of the brown in place on the underbelly.

Second layer:


The second layer was 4 parts Cobra Leather to 2 parts SS Camo Black Brown, with 1 part goblin green for consistency.
The scales took longer than expected - there's a lot of detail there! You can see the brown already becoming brighter. We'll continue that trend...
The horns are being done the same way, but figuring out how to use the ridges effectively on the top set has been a challenge so far.

Third layer:

This time the color mix was simple: 4 Cobra Leather to one Goblin Green. You can start to see the highlights coming in. With the green additive I've been using, the scales look like they belong, instead of being completely apart from the skin tone. I decided to shade the bottom horns as I normally would, but to allow the rings on the top set to break up the transition from light to dark. At this point, it's still too early to tell if it will work.

Fourth layer:

The fourth layer showed 2 parts Cobra Leather to two parts Medium Grey and 1 part Goblin Green. I also switched from a Games & Gears 1, back to my Winsor Newtons. The scales are giving me more trouble than I want. There's an intricate balance I have to strike between correctly shading each scale as its own entity, and shading the back of the model as a whole. Some scales are just being highlighted at the tips, while some are being highlighted at 50% of their surface. I felt good about where they were last night, but looking again this morning reminds me I'm going to have to pay close attention to this. The horns on top, however, are coming along better than I had expected.


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(Mods, could you move this to Dakka P&M Blogs, please? Site layout has changed in the years since I've been really active...)

Looking very nice indeed - subscribed!

Well, I worked on Glaun some more this weekend, and thought I'd share where he is right now.

Layer Five is all Medium Gray, mixed just over 4:1 with Goblin Green. I've started pulling back the Goblin Green slightly, so that by layer eight it will be all gone.

Medium Gray is my second utility color - I use it in almost everything I paint. It allows me to grey out colors and dim their vibrancy without completely changing their hue. It also has a great side effect of being very useful in bringing darker browns into a bone shade, and you can see that leather brown starting to look much brighter.


Layer six:

Now I've mixed Medium Grey 1:1 with Pale Flesh. Usually I use bone white for bone, but I usually use Beastial Brown for my bone, rather than Leather Brown. Bone white is very close to Medium Grey, while Pale Flesh is closer to yellow than grey. With the goblin green still being added in minute amounts, I went with the yellower shade to continue emphasizing those shades.

Layer seven:

Layer seven is all Pale Flesh. I just barely touched the dropper of Goblin Green to my mixing tray, so there's a hint in there, but not an excessive amount.

The front from above and below. The chest is pretty much done with highlighting at this point - light reflected from the ground wouldn't highlight a model to my next highlight step.

Layer eight:

The last layer is a 50/50 mix of Pale Flesh and White. The green tint is entirely gone. Slowly, with a 000 Winsor Newton Series 7, we hit the edges of the scales, the tips and tops of the claws and teeth, and the horns.

And there you have it! Glaun, at 90% completed. The eyes still need to be painted and he needs to be based, but that's all that's left. I'm entering him in a contest on another board that requests no finished pictures until the contest is over, so you'll have to wait until September to see the fully finished model. I hope you enjoyed watching him get painted!

And subscribed. Seen this on the Mierce forum and am mightily impressed.