This is an old Citadel 'DS7 - Young Fire Dragon' with some conversion/restoration done to it. Picked this up a few years ago from a market stall which sold 2nd hand comic books and action figures, I bought it as part of a diorama, bent, damaged, covered with thick enamel paint and with the back of the head missing.
A long soak in paint-thinner and a good scrubbing with an old tooth brush removed the layers of enamel paint and cleaned away the glue from the joints. With the model cleaned up and broken back down into it's component parts I could begin work.
The wings were bent to the point where they were in danger of breaking apart if straitened out again, so I cut the wings away from each other and pinned them onto the dragons shoulders, rather than the middle of the back (where they looked rather awkward). I replaced the missing 'fins' from the back of the head with spare horns from a Citadel plastic Beastmen set, filled the gaps and rebuilt the middle of the back with green stuff and sculpted a few extra scales here and there. I also filed down and re-shaped the Dragon's rather peculiar looking lower lip.
The model was a little too big for the WarMachine style base I wanted to mount it on, so I expanded the surface of the base using a chuck of flagstone textured plastic and added an earth texture using Green Stuff which helped to cover where the existing texture sculpted between the Dragon's toes met the textured plastic giving it an more coherent look – further details were added to the base in the form of a loose tile and scabbarded sword.
When it came to painting I went with a fairly 'traditional' colour scheme inspired by the way I'd seen in an old Citadel Painting guide. For the red of the scales I used formula P3 Sanguine Base highlighted up through Skorne Red and Citadel Blood Red to a mixture of Blood Angels Red and Fiery Orange as an extreme highlight on some of the scales. The Yellow of the wing membranes and vulnerable underbelly was built up from Citadel Iyanden Darksun, highlighted up to Golden Yellow shaded with Griphone Sepia and then re-highlighted with Golden Yellow. Many paint jobs I've seen on this miniature have made a big deal of the 'wart' on it's stomach, but I decided to play it down a little on mine. Horns, teeth, claws and spikes were painted in the usual way I do bone and Dark Angles and Emerald Green was used for the eyes
This Dragon has a certain 'old Citadel' quirkiness to it that I really like and I'm pleased that I've been able to turn the old battered miniature into something I can now use in my games. I had originally planned to have the model finished for a demo Quest game I ran on our 'Day of the Damned' event, unfortunately I didn't get it quite finished and it had to go into play with an unpainted base.
And no post of my miniatures would be complete with out a bonus picture or 2 ….
Here's a picture of the stock miniature as it appeared in White Dwarf once long, long ago and a picture of my one before I painted it – I think both pictures should give you a fair impression of the work I did which makes my Young Fire Dragon unique.
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