Hi there! I’m not sure why I find posting my work so tedious. Sorry about that! Also, I’ve seen a huge jump in views lately, and I cannot figure out why. If you’re new and would let me know how you found me, I’d be super grateful. 🙂

I’ve been home for the past 3 weeks rehabbing after having surgery. Children are magical, but they wreck a mom’s body. Like, a LOT. So, that’s all healing and now we can sit and paint all day while the Great Bearded One is at work, and the Tiny Overlord and Chaos Goblin are in school!!! That’s exciting!

I started working on this big old boy. I was super lucky to have been gifted this at Reapercon last year. (This is the box he came in, with some saran wrap thrown in. lol) He’s the BIG resin Nethyrmaul. The bones model was mistakenly made significantly smaller, pic for scale.

I haven’t painted a ton of dragons, but I figure he’s a giant monster, so I should just go for it. ( Just FYI, since he is not the Production Model, but a special resin cast, he will not be eligible for manufacturer’s awards like a Sophie trophy or the Giant Monster award. So, I will have to paint other giant monsters for Reapercon. 😀 )

Anyways, I got started prepping him. I’m not sure if you’ve ever painted one of these older resin sets (he’s from Bones 1, so that was 2012), but they are quite a bit of work. The gaps are huge, as are the mold lines. I definitely had to bust out my nail drill, and had to get a whole set of bits for it to really clean it up. It also required a lot of green stuff work. I had to go buy more to make sure I had enough. This kit has been sitting in Ron’s office in a random box for *a decade* so it was also missing a few pieces, and had some bits broken off. So I made a new tail, sculpted some extra back bones, and lots and lots of scales. Please, Dearest Julie Guthrie, forgive me for sculpting on your beautiful work. It felt like repairing the Mona Lisa.

I don’t usually assemble my models before I paint them, but he required so much buildup, I really didn’t have any other choice. So I anticipate a lot of cussing when I’m trying to get into some of these spaces. I’m also still too much of a weenie, and too lazy to set up my airbrush. So I did all of this by hand. 😀 Also, it would require being outside or in the garage, and it’s been less than 50 degrees every day I’ve been off. Before all you Northern folk start yapping, I’m from South Texas by birth and choice. I am a tropical creature, and just because you don’t love yourself enough to live somewhere with normal weather doesn’t mean I have to deal with the cold. I don’t want to. I want 75-103 temps year-round. Anyways. The point is, no airbrush. Just brush. 🙂

I’ve been batting the color back and forth. Obviously when I was considering the smaller one, I was going for a Maleficent vibe, but now I feel like I want a little less saturated, green theme. But then I found that pink, and well….

I decided I didn’t like the purple after all. So it went away, and the pink is taking over!

I’ve been pushing it back and forth, but so far I’m loving the super saturated pinks as the ‘magical muscle fibers’, the desaturated green for the fascia, and I’m still dialing in the scales and wing colors.

I’ve been working on a few other crafty projects too, since I have the time! I built (another) book nook! It’s my third one. I find these very satisfying. It’s all the same skills as mini painting/modeling, but I have specific instructions. Sometimes it’s fun to just go along with a plan instead of having to make everything myself.

And then so many octopi. I have been crocheting octopi as presents for a few years now, intermittently. I think I’ve made over 50 at this point this year though. So, it’s been a lot. 🙂 Since I’ve shipped them all over the US, I don’t have a group shot. But you can see one peeking around the dragon up top. 😀

Let me know what you think!

-marinealRose