3 replies to this topic

[Shogan]

Does anyone know any good tutorials or have any advice on painting reptiles? I have several lizard men and dinosaurs that I would like to paint up but not really sure how to go about it. Thanks!

[dks]

I don't know of tutorials, but I can give a little advice and maybe I can help you get more specific about your question.
Maybe ...
- naturalistic color choices,
- realistic color variations on different parts of the body,
- how to make the scales look shiny but dry (like real reptiles),
- how to highlight individual scales without making 10,000 dots of paint,
- ... ?
Have you tried painting reptiles but they didn't look right for some reason?

For starters, get good reference of real reptiles -- photos or actual living creatures to look at.
Artists who do 2D art of dinosaurs definitely use references from real-world lizards of today.

A general approach for painting a scaly creature: paint it like you would paint a smooth figure, but then go back with your shadow color and a fine-pointed brush (or even just a darker wash) to pick out the lines between the scales, and also highlight individual scales with a very light highlight color.

Here's my forum thread about a lamia (woman with snake tail) that I painted:
That thread also includes a link to my work-in-progress thread.
http://www.reapermin...showtopic=39105

Here's Eric Louchard's forum thread about a red dragon, which stood out in my mind as an excellent scaled creature.
His technique is unusual to me, since he uses a lot of ink glazes, but the results are amazing (as you can see).
http://www.reapermin...der-red-dragon/

And here's a thread on a Tyrannosaurus rex by "ogre", that I found by searching for "dinosaur" in the Show-Off forum:
http://www.reapermin...r-mea-dinosaur/

One more for now: MamaGeek's WIP sequence of a draconic (dragonman):
http://mamageekminis.com/blog/archives/tag/draconid

Good luck,
Derek

[Shogan]

Thanks for the reply Derek!

Sorry for being so vague. I think my lack of painting this type of mini has me intimated. I have painted one dinosaur before, it was pretty early in the hobby for me so I even hesitate to post but hey, if it helps me learn. I did try using pictures to pick colors and design but I had yet to really learn any skills as far as shadowing, blending, etc... I'm actually considering stripping it now that I know I can do better and trying again. I do have another one to paint. I tried to get some close up pictures to show that there are not always very well defines scales more like slashes for lack of a better word. Would you recommend just basecoating and drybrushing these? I'm not sure how I would go about picking out certain "scales". Thank you for the examples! I really love Ogre's T-Rex. I will definitely try outlining the stripes like he did. They look fantastic.





This is another one I would like to paint. Not sure what colors I want to use.

[ObsidianCrane]

I'm guessing for your triceratops you were looking for a colour scheme like the one found here.

First thing to notice is that the colours of the triceratops (in that picture) are a brown/green and something close to bronzed flesh with perhaps a maiden flesh under-belly. There are 2 other things to notice at this point; 1 the colour transitions of living creatures can be quite rapid but they don't really have sharp edges, and 2 despite that artist's rendition putting a light colour in the recesses of the scales when painting a 25mm scale model you want a dark colour in there.

Painting this sort of miniature really well requires a mastery of blending techniques (well lets face it all high end painting does). In this case you want to outline the positions of the major colours and then blend in the major shadow areas, but don't create deep shadows yet. Then as you paint you need to create a small transition area between each of the different colour areas (if you look carefully at the back leg on the image I linked you can see the artist has done this as well). Once all the major colours are blocked in and the main blending is done you need to come back with a very thin mid-brown wash. Applying a this in several coats will pull out the details on the individual scales (much like the linked picture has done with the light colour).

The main thing you need to look out for is that acrylic paints are translucent, if you paint the bronzed flesh over the brown/green you need to make sure the bronzed flesh ends up even in appearence with no brown/green colour showing through - it is this "showing throw" that emphasises the painted nature of your mini as it is now.

As to your second mini I suggest looking at sharks and whales; a dark blue grey on the upper body above the ventral line, and then a lighter blue grey along the sides blending to a white belly.