Demonsub's Dragon Diorama

I decided to paint all the adventures and the pack horse at the same time. Rather than do a blow by blow account of how I painted each miniature and the colours I used I’ll just describe my general process.

I first blocked in all of the flat colours without any shading. In the photo above I did add a black ink wash to the armour to give it more definition.

The next step I drybrushed everything with a light beige colour which really brings the detail out on the miniatures. When I’d let that dry I covered everything in a wash of a mix of Agrax earthshade, light tone (from the Army Painter) and acrylic medium (to thin the wash a little as I didn’t want to stain the colours too much but just to creat shading).

These stages is what I generally do with my 28mm miniatures as well as it’s a good fast way of getting most of the legwork done on a miniature and get an impression of what the finished paint job will look like.

For the last part, and the part I enjoy the most, I painted over each part of the miniatures with one or two highlights of the original colour. Sometimes I’ll alter a colour slightly if I think it’s too dark or too light (I darkened the horse’s main and tail for example). Also at this point I’ll add extra details (such as the star detail on the knight’s shield) or go back over with extra washes or glazes if I think certain parts need more contrast.
Once I’m happy with the miniatures I called them done.

After several coats of varnish it was time to detach the miniatures from the wooden sticks. I’d used superglue and so was fairly confident that they would detach without much of a problem and, with a help of my trusty knife) they did.
This is the first time I’ve painted miniatures in this way so I was unsure how difficult or easy it would be, but I’m happy with the method I chose and will do this again in future projects.

That’s everything painted. All that remained to do was to stick the miniatures into position on the diorama and hide the joins. Then I’ll fiddle with some tufts and foliage and the whole thing will be complete.