Games Day 2002 entry- Dragon Duel

Full View of Diorama

This was my entry for the Golden Demon 2002 competition in the UK- my first ever entry. The chaos guy in the front holding the elf was the Games Day figure for that year. It was perhaps a bit ambitious for a first attempt and took me months to put together. Unfortunately it didn't make the first cut, depite the many admirers of it when I went to collect it. The two dragons in the piece are Baudros the old two headed chaos dragon and the wood elf forest dragon. The scroll reads "In war you win or loose, live or die- and the difference is an eyelash."

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Close-up of Forest Dragon

The forest dragon was painted in an autumnal scheme. Each scale was painted as if it were a leaf; colours were alternated like banding on a snake. The horns and legs were given a wood-grain effect and some fine flock was glued on to give the dragon a look as if he is practically growing out of the trees. The belly scales were painted to resemble grass and the nodules were painted pink to resemble flowers in a meadow. Furthermore, some green floral wire was wrapped around the dragon and paper leaves glued onto the wire to resemble vines. The banners were painted on tracing paper using acrylics and the elf was painted in pale blues and orange tones to make him stand out.

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Close-up of Chaos Dragon

As a contrast to the natural look of the forest dragon, I went all out on the chaos dragon to make him look very unnatural. To this end I decided to go with metallics. I created some metallic lilac paint by mixing purples and whites with mithril silver. The wings have been coated in a form of variegated gold leaf and even the teeth and horns have a pearlescent look to them. Similarly the whole of the chaos guy has been done in metallics and I tried to get a sky-earth look to the metallics on him.

I created the banner in Photoshop, using an x-ray picture of a lizard embryo, which I then modified to look like a dragon by cutting, stretching, distorting and layering some of the leg bones and claws to look like wing struts. After I had printed it out, I painted over the design using acrylics.

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Close-up of 2002 Games Day Chaos Champion, Holding Elf

This picture shows the close-up of the Chaos Champion holding the wood elf. As you can see, I went for a metallic look to his armour, again this is in contrast to the regular acrylics on the elf characters. I was aiming for a sky-earth look to the metallics here. Also this is the first time I’ve tried to paint a black guy. I think his skin turned out rather well.

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