After lots of modifications to the dragon’s heads and priming, the 12-inch beast was ready for some color! It took me two weeks of painting a couple of hours in the evening to finish the Dragon Queen. For the red alone, I used up almost a whole Vallejo Model Color bottle. But it was worth it: Tiamat is my biggest painting project to date, and I still love the end result. My players lost their minds, when I placed this beast on the battlemap in the final encounter of the adventure!

The colors of Tiamat

I already talked about Tiamat and the five types of chromatic dragons she stands for in the first post of the project. Now it was time to get the colors right. I took my inspiration for the colors from an official D&D artwork by Peter Konig, which you can see below.

Sure, the lighting is not optimal to judge colors as it is all very desaturated and has an orange tint. But I love the detail of the dragon heads and the glow in their eyes and I think, it gives each type of dragon a distinct feel and personality. I’ve further studied pictures of individual black, green, blue, white, and red dragons to get the colors right.

Painting Tiamat

First, I base coated the five heads and necks and also some details like the various horns.

Second, I applied a basecoat for the dragon’s skin and wings in red. Fortunately, I bought another red bottle of Vallejo Model paint, as I completely emptied the first one on the wings. Also, I painted the beige/sand colored neck scales of the main body.

Third, I continued with the base, which I haven’t talk about since now at all. But again, it’s just a big tree stump with lichen and moss on it.

I then stared shading and highlighting the individual heads and the main body. This took ages! But it was fun to paint such a large scale as I could do more details on the skin.

Finally, I painted the mouths, tongues, and eyes of the individual dragon heads as well as other details such as colored scales and further highlights.

Show off!

After a little over a month of regular work on the “miniature”, I called her finished. Sure, there’s always something to improve. But the final session of the adventure was coming up, and I wanted to use her on the battlefield.

Here she finally is: Lysander the Five-Headed Dragon from Toscano, converted into Tiamat, the Dragon Queen!