I've been making tentative first steps to painting my first large model for over a decade this week.

The model in question is a dragon, which will be used as either the "bog-standard" Dragon or Smaug depending on the scenario (I'd love the actual Smaug figure from GW but I'm not forking out £300 on it - I could by a couple of armies for that.

Instead, the model I am using is an old Grenadier figure from the eighties, Teronus the Ultimate Dragon. It was out of production for a good few years but an Italian company called Mirliton miniatures has resumed production of the old Grenadier figures.




For me, Teronus is the nicest metal dragon I've ever seen. I would like the wings to be a bit bigger but otherwise he is just perfect, a really crisp sculpt with incredible detail to the scales and a really characterful face and "rampant" stance as if he is in the middle of combat swatting some pesky hero. Easily my favourite miniature dragon ever. He just looks all kinds of fierce.



While he's no Smaug, he's rather big and bulky too....

I assembled this model about ten years ago, taking care to drill and pin all the pieces to ensure a very firm join, as everything is metal and the model is quite bulky. I mounted it on one of the GW oval bases.

Now, Smaug is red or golden in the films, but I wanted my dragon to be a classic green. I just have a thing for green dragons and the first image I ever saw of this figure in the Grenadier catalogue so long ago was green and I really liked that.

So I dusted it off and sprayed the whole thing with a green primer. The specific spray I used was Reed from the Montana Gold range. I really like these sprays as they come in a huge variety of colours and cover figures really well. Being able to choose a base colour rather than black or white really helps painting quickly, especially when batch-painting troops as you can choose a base colour to match the most prominent colour on the figures.

In this case, the colour is similar to GW Camo Green. I forgot to get a pic at this stage.

I then inked over the whole thing with a mix of black and dark green inks. This actually looked really good, and gave the figure a very nice colour similar to some crocodiles. The inks brought out all the details amazingly well.





I was tempted to leave the green like that, but it just looked a little dark and messy and it was not really the rich shade of green I really wanted.



My first attempt was to paint each scale with Dark Angels Green and highlight that with Snot Green and then extreme highlights of Goblin Green. Over this, the same mix of black and green inks, only more watered down was applied. This was nice but after some reflection it was still a bit too dark and boring (my painting light makes it look brighter than it is).

So the scales I had worked up to now looked like this:



I decided to start again as I wanted the beast to look slightly brighter and this time painted each row of scales again, Dark Angels Green on top, Snot Green in the middle, and a mix of Snot Green and Camo Green for the borders. (The belly scales were painted Dark Flesh, I will highlight them later).



I then painstakingly base-coated each scale Dark Angels Green.



This was more the colour I was aiming for, a richer, deeper green.





Will carry on with the first highlight and the head after work...

Wow, nice work so far. I agree that the figure has a lot of nice detail, and I have not seen very many green dragons, so I follow this with interest.

I have one from the 80s. Needs repair. I did not know about pinning back then.

I like the green

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"the same as a duck you must be made of wood"

Been cracking on with this tonight... admittedly it is a big project to undertake so soon after returning to the hobby (so far I've painted one Easterling, one warrior of Harad and half a mage...) but I am enjoying it very much!

So I am just putting on the first highlight, trying to take my time to be neat and careful (and not always succeeding, but hopefully the inks and glazes later will remedy that).

For the first highlight I am using really watered down Snot Green over the Dark Angels Green, and just adding more bit by bit to try and create a gradual highlight. The phone camera and spotlight make it look harsher than it is.







Have not really made a start on the belly scales or horns yet, I think I will do them last as I keep nicking them with the brush to get to the scales behind.



Have not made a start on the face yet, either.... to be honest I've only been able to do the neck and back and tail and make a start on the limbs. This is going to be a really lengthy project!



It is looking a bit more "jade" green than I wanted, but I actually kind of like it. I will probably add a light yellowy glaze later, we will see.

Thanks! It is quite an intimidating thing to paint but I keep willing myself to do the next scale... little by little, haha.



It is sort of an unhappy coincidence really, as I really pinned those wings a bit too well (I think I used three pins on each)... I had wanted to remove them to model on some much bigger wings from an old Todd McFarlane dragon, something that would make Teronus look even more impressive... but those things were not coming off!

Still it will be nice to have the model in its "original" form. Now that I know Mirliton produce it again I may get another one to model the wings on and paint him again... I am enjoying painting this guy that much!

Been making slow but steady progress with this thing, painting for an hour or two in the evenings. Most of the green areas are now done, except the head.











At this point I have base-coated the wings, horns, claws and eyes. I want to be careful to give the wings in particular a more organic blended look to contrast with the edge-highlighting of the scales. Same goes for the horns and beak.

Did not feel like painting more green tonight, so I decided to do his eyes instead before I make a start on his face.





I wanted him to look fierce as hell and as if he is looking at whatever he is about to swat with his claw... quite pleased with the result, I was going for a reptilian look like the eye of an alligator or crocodile.

Quite the beasty, looking very good so far. If you hit that with some Anti-Shine once you're done it's going to look top notch.

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