A druid circle tasked my players with chasing off a young green dragon that settled in a ruined woodcutter’s village recenty. I had two old Medium Copper Dragons (#20) from the Blood War set, and I converted one of them into a green dragon.

As I had two figures of this model, I decided that I could spare one of them and try a conversion. I haven’t done this before, but what could possibly go wrong. So this is what the original miniature looks like:

The miniature really doesn’t look much like a green dragon from Dungeons & Dragons (3E and 5E, let’s all forget 4E, please). Green Dragons not only have green (leaf-shaped) scales, but they also have very specific features such as a spiked fin on the head and the back, as well as no horns.

I am using three Reaper Bones Young Fire Dragons as large drakes for the Cult of the Dragon’s armies. I have primed them and also used them in the game, but haven’t had time to paint them. Anyway, the drakes don’t have wings, so I clipped them off and kept them for later. They are the perfect size for the Copper Dragon miniature, so I swapped out the wings. Next, I cut off the copper dragon’s horns and used green stuff and small plastic sheets to sculpt the back fin of the green dragon. I could have done more with the face, but this would have to suffice.

I primed the miniature black and dusted it white with the airbrush and then it was ready to be painted.

Painting

For the color scheme, I used the reference picture from the new D&D 5E monster manual, which is also used on the Forgotten Realms wiki here. So it’s basically forest greens and green-yellow. I basecoated the figure with Vallejo Model Color (VMC) Reflective Green and washed it with a mix of Black Ink and Green Model Wash. I highlighted it back with Reflective Green and VMC Lime Green.

The underside of the wings as well as the belly scales were painted with a mix of VMC Lime Green and VMC Light Sand. For the eyes, I used VMC Yellow. The claws were painted black. For a better contrast, I painted black lines on the back fin – but I toned them down at the end with a quick green drybrush. And that’s about all I did. It was a very quick paintjob (~ 2 hours), but seemed good enough for me.