Super Dungeon Explore - Starfire (Part 2)

So now that I've got Starfire primed it's time to start thinking about what kind of color I am going to use.  I've already decided on VMC Red 70.926 for the basecoat and VMC Burnt Cad. Red 70.814 for shading.  To help figure out what else to use I turn to one of the masters of fantasy painting, Larry Elmore.  Here is his classic artwork that many are familiar with from the old D&D red box:

More or less, this gives me a roadmap of the colors I would want to use.  Primarily, the dragon is predominantly red, orange, and gold.  There's more that I'm seeing here but I will save that for later.  For now I will focus on the colors needed just for the dragon.  So I will pick three additional colors to build-up highlights: VGC Orange Fire 72.008, VGC Filthy Brown, VGC Gold Yellow 72.007.  I can also see some cool deep shades and reflected highlights, but for this model I am going to keep it simple.  The underbelly, horns, back spikes, wing webbing, and claws will be basecoated in VGC Khaki 72.061 and a more greenish golden tone will be built up on those.

 

I also need to put a bit more thought into what I'm using for the stonework on the base.  Since the dragon is going to be primarily a warm color, I am going to choose cool colors to produce better contrast.  For that I'm simply going to use VGC Sombre Grey 72.048 as a basecoat.  Then layer on progressively lighter layers using  VGC Cold Grey 72.050 and VGC Wolf Grey 72.047 if I need higher highlights.

 

I will also need to pick out colors for the mouth, and teeth.  For the darkest recesses of the mouth I will use VGC Charred Brown 72.045.  The teeth will be based with RMS Russet Brown and layered up to RMS Blonde Highlight.  For the tongue I will base with Burnt Cad. and layer up with RMS Blush Pink.

 

For the eyes I will use Khaki layered over Charred Brown with Charred Brown for the slit pupil.

 

Now that I have my palette selected I'm ready to start painting.

 

I've started by basecoating the base completely with the Sombre Grey.  Some of the paint got on Starfire but I will clean that up in the next step.

 

 

Because red is highly dependent on the colors underneath it, I don't want the Sombre Grey that I got on Starfire to effect it.  So I will clean that up by painting pure white over those areas before basecoating the dragon.  Once the white paint dries and I'm satisfied that I've covered up the slop I start with my basecoat of red over the entire surface of the dragon except for the eyes and mouth, which I will treat differently.  After the red paint dries I will then apply a second basecoat of the Filthy Brown to the underbelly, claws, horns, spikes, and wing webbing.

 

After applying the red basecoat the model looks like this:

 

 

And here is the model after applying the khaki to the "golden" bits:

 

 

 

I think that the contrast of the khaki against the red is going to work well here.  There is still a bit of clean-up work to do on this tonight but I should be ready to begin shading and highlighting tomorrow.