Painting with Dinosaurs

My friend Rossco has a secret passion for collecting Dinosaurs. He’s been begging, stealing and borrowing them for quite a while. The idea has always been to put them towards some form of a game. Cue the day Casey (the Brixham Berserkers chairman) said he’d run a ‘Lost Island’ campaign. There are several good choices for such games, such as Dinoproof or some of thepulp games. In the end, the decision was made to use Where Heroes Dare (admittedly not my first choice, but it’s not my campaign).

Of course, this means Rossco’s grand collection of creatures needed painting. Casey hit on the idea to give one to each person who expressed an interest, let them take then home and paint the dinosaur. That way we could all pitch in to paint Rossco’s dinosaur collection for the game fairly quickly. Some of the ‘cool’ dinosaurs had already gone - no Triceratops nor any Tyrannosaurus Rex, but that was ok. My favourite dinosaur as a kid was the Stegosaurus anyway.

Of course, being evil* and devious* as I am, I could not resist the lure of painting more than one - that’d be no good for a blog entry, so I took two. There was a nice looking Ankylosaurus, and he (she?) came home with me too.

I started painting ‘Anky’ first and tried to copy the pattern of a Komodo Dragon, inspired by a Facebook post by my friend Jeff Jonas. The picture was so cool, though I wondered if my painting skills were up to the challenge of reproducing anything like the photograph? That is, I’d be trying to put dark scales over a seemingly light skin tone. I attempted to do so, but this failed spectacularly, so instead I opted to use ink washes and highlights.

I started with a dark ivory colour which was then washed with Army Painter Strong Tone. The original colour was then reapplied as dots on the surface. This was quite time-consuming, but very effective when finished. I decided to paint the horns dark using Vallejo Black Grey, to add contrast with the skin of the body, adding the odd fleck of grey and white. I was pretty happy with the results.

Next up is the Stegosaurus. I’ve given it a dry brushing with Kommando Khaki which looks good, but I am struggling to find a decent, distinct colour which will work well with it. I’m also thinking of giving it pink fins, as some of the pictures show - but will it look any good if I do? Questions, questions! I’ve put ‘Steggy’ on the back burner for now… I’ll keep you all updated how I get on.

* Necessary skills for being an editor, so I’m told…