Seeking inspiration from Hollywood and Mother Nature's palette

After spending months working my Black Legion / Word Bearers army (with not much progress to boot), I am literally running on empty and have been left hankering for more variety in my miniature painting projects. Having always fancied a go at painting fantasy-based miniatures, I decided the time was right for me to start painting my diorama involving the Lord of the Rings Dragon and the Kingdom Death Pinup Saviour miniatures - that has a working title of "A Marilyn Monroe Moment".

Marilyn in the iconic white dress from the film 'Seven Year Itch', 1955

An iconic Hollywood image - re-envisioned in a fantasy setting

Work on the Kingdom Death Pinup Saviour is still in the very early stages and all I have done is to begin work on the skin tone. Painting on the miniature has gotten off to a rough start because priming it with Skull White spray caused a powdery (as opposed to a smooth) layer to adhere to the mini. I will need to shop for a Tamiya Gray Primer as it should be better for minis with more flesh showing.

Very early stages on the skin tone

Work on the Dragon is even further back in the progress timeline with its basecoat yet to be finished. While it might seem silly to seek a different challenge in my projects and still paint red - more so when I have just finished painting some Word Bearers - the reds for the dragon will eventually be much brighter and warmer than the dull-red of Lorgar's warriors.   

Work on the dragon's basecoat is ongoing

While trying to find the best possible colour scheme for the red dragon, I decided to see what Mother Nature had to offer. In particular, two animals caught my eye namely the Scleropages legendrei (red arowana fish) and the naja pallida (red spitting cobra). Both their red scales looked very beautiful and will be the inspirational foundation from which to paint the dragon.

Scleropages legendrei

Naja pallida

Meanwhile, I decided to also continue working on the Word Bearers without neglecting the creative diversity that I sought. That meant resuming work on Cyrene Valantion which is actually a Kingdom Death White Speaker Pinup miniature. One of the reasons I stopped was because I unhappy with way the mini was turning out. But I decided to suck it up and proceeded to repaint the skin and fix my earlier mistakes. While it still needs more shadows and highlights, the skin tone is now looking much better than my earlier attempt. Other parts of this mini is still at the basecoat stage.

WIP - Kingdom Death White Speaker Pinup, my proxy for Cyrene

My approach to both the Pinup Saviour and Dragon will be to start with the mid-tones first and then work towards shadows and highlights from there. It is a bit different than the usual base-to-midtones-then-to-highlights approach that is usually recommended by Games Workshop for beginners. Starting with the mid-tone actually lets me have more control over the application of shadows and highlights. Thanks for checking out my progress on the diorama and I hope to post more updates soon, especially pictures of a completed Cyrene Valantion.