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I got into Games Workshop stuff when I was about 9. It started with Adeptus Titanicus, then the Space Marine boxed game, Space Hulk 1st edition, Blood Bowl 2nd edition, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and finally Warhammer Fantasy Battles. Yes... it was the 1980s. I'm now 38!

One of the best miniatures I bought back then was a Great Spined Dragon. I think it cost £15. It's a multi-part metal model and is famous for being one of the best sculpts of the era. It's even been used to win Golden Demon awards... here are 2 gold-winning versions of the model:



When I moved to university, most of my GW stuff got sold or thrown away. However my Mother took a special liking to this dragon and has kept it for the last 30 years. This weekend I asked her if I could reclaim it - I now have both an airbrush and a bit more skill than before!

This project blog will be my attempt to make it look good... either just a modern paintjob or - perhaps - as a diorama. Warrior vs Dragon? Dragon with its wizard master? Something else?

What do I want? YOUR ADVICE AND MORAL SUPPORT!

Here's a picture of the actual model... I have this plinth base spare and think it looks like a good fit.


It is painted a weird, sickly green colour, with very splodgy red eyes. I think it might go black and red?


You can see that the wings are not part of the model... in fact it originally came with paper templates to cut out and glue in! Looks like I have made some out of canvas but they don't look great.
I can either keep the wings that are fitted and try to blend them in better... or try to rebuild them.
A bit scared of trying to take these ones off, though... they might be glued with epoxy resin.

Someone has made green stuff wings for it here: http://harryhowells.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/the-great-spined-dragon-wings.html?m=1
Thoughts?

The paint is not terrible but I think it looks quite thick and I think I will strip it first. What do you think I should use? Isopropyl alcohol? Acetone?

Help!!!

So the first real task to get this model looking amazing is to get the green paint off. I bought 1/2 a litre of Isopropyl Alcohol 99% and soaked it in that for about 48 hours... but not a lot happened. Not sure if I've got the wrong stuff or if it's just not as effective as I expected.

So... into the Dettol it goes! This stuff stinks but it did start to work.


The head fell off, which is a good thing really as I can pin and re-glue it.


This paint and primer has been on it for 30 years so it's taken a lot of soaking, scrubbing with toothbrushes and scraping with sharp tools to get it to this stage.. and I can still see a lot of paint in the deep recesses that I think I will need to remove.

The end result is an amazing reveal of scuplted detail which was totally obscured by my pre-teen lack of painting ability! Compare the head to the painted one above.




Next step will be to use Green Stuff and Liquid Green Stuff to blend the wings in and try to give them more detail and texture.

Hello again dear readers. (!)

So the wings are the slightly disappointing part of this as they are pretty badly done. I am going to try and fix them up somewhat but am not going to rip them off and start again. Too much effort, too much risk of damaging the (very bendy metal) model, too much risk of leaving chunks of epoxy resin that I can't remove.

So here is the before and after of green stuffing the wings... it's... good enough. I smoothed and smoothed the green stuff and although you can still see the joins, at least you can't immediately see that they wings are just glued on top of the miniature.


I then decided to use my airbrush to prime the dragon in grey, with a black pre-shade. All using Vallejo Game Air surface primers so far. Body and head still separate...



Once that was done... and seeing as I had my airbrush out... I decided to just go for it and base the thing.

So here's the first coat of Vallejo Gory Red. It's quite a pinkish red but gives us a good, dark base. I love the effect of the preshade with nicely diluted air paints.



Then I switched to a brighter red to get closer to the final base colour

Finally, a very diluted filter of Hexed Lichen (dark purple) in the recesses and Sun Yellow on the highlights. It's important to not just have reds on a red model.



So this is where we got to after last night. Already looks better. IMO, anyway.

The next question is... to wash, or not to wash?

My options are either...
a) Agrax Earthshade, which would defo work but is a bit boring, or
b) gloss varnish it then do an Oil Wash/Pin Wash, which I have never done before but would be an interesting new technique to try.