Now this is a real cool miniature I am very proud of – an Adult Red Dragon in Dungeons and Dragons, for which I used the Fire Dragon miniature from Reaper Bones. Just like the Young Fire Dragon, this beast called Inferno was part of an ambush group of Red Dragon Cultists hunting my players in the Tyranny of Dragons D&D campaign.

Just as the Young Fire Dragon, the bigger Fire Dragon (77109) was sculpted by Sandra Garrity. The pair very nice together 🙂

I love the classic look of the dragon. The pose is also great and the size is perfect for a D&D adult dragon version. Overall, such a great miniature!

As always, I researched what other painters did with the miniature before starting to paint. Especially on the Reaper forums, there are lots of different versions of this miniature posted with various color schemes. You can see some of my favorites here:

Basing and Priming

This dragon is a special miniature, deserving of a special base. I’ve cut it from its standard plastic base and pinned the dragon on a 3-inch flagstone resin base. Perfect for an encounter in an old ruin! I then primed the miniature the usual way by airbrushing it in black and white.

Painting

Unlike the Young Fire Dragon, this adult dragon really looks like a Red Dragon from Dungeons & Dragons. Of course, I chose to stick as close as possible to the traditional D&D color scheme for the dragon. That meant bright red scales and yellowish neck scales. However, Red Dragons get darker when they age, So I tried to add some darker tones on the wings.

As the miniature is big, but not complicated and full of small details, painting it was pretty simple. I painted the base coat, and then added some shading by using different shades of reds for lighter and darker areas of the miniature. I then applied highlights by painting and some dry brushing, followed by using several washes for the shadows and the recesses.

To contrast the different part of the dragon, I used color blocking, adding dark brown lines between the scales on the neck and the body scales, as well as on the tail, the horns and the claws.

After painting and many phases of further highlighting with bright red, I decorated the base with some dried up vegetation and applied a matte varnish to tone down the shininess of the scales, because the different red paints (Vallejo Game Color and Vallejo Model Color) had different shines and that started to show on the model.

Here is the finished miniature – I am very happy how it turned out! My players loved and feared it on the game table!