the artifact *finished*

[Cardinal]

You wouldn't catch me flying near a dragon! Unlucky guy who happened to be nearby must be mad he won't be home for dinner.

[rob_van_riel]

You wouldn't catch me flying near a dragon!

While I do believe any introductions should be done with extreme caution (*), why not? Have you ever encountered one, or do you have reliable reports of their behaviour? Just lots and lots of unfriendly rumours I think. A bit like judging all Scandinavians based on the descriptions of the monks that were just raided by them. More so actually, the viking raids were real..

* I wouldn't want to swim inside a pod of whales, or take a stroll through a herd of elephants either, despite their rather benign reputation. Misunderstandings, or just plane accidents, would be fatal to me, but merely embarrassing to them..

[rob_van_riel]

Good or bad intensions aside, the dragon is being a handfull.
It's big, it's heavy, and it's wings and front leg are entirely too flimsy. As a result, many places are nearly impossible to reach with a brush, it's extremely hard to to get a stable grip on it, and putting any amount of force on the leg or wings will bend them. The wings are rather free form, a slight change of position doesn't matter all that much, but that front leg needs to stay lined up with the rock it's going to be sitting on.
It doesn't really help that almost white won't cover dark purple in a single coat, so misery is multiplied by at least two

[rob_van_riel]

The state of play at the end of the day:



I think I might add Junior to the vignette; plenty of room, and after all that hard work, a well deserved field trip with the master might be in order.



I struggling a bit with the horns and spikes. Ususlly, I find white to be too stark for claws and such, but it doesn't seem so bad against the purple. I just hope I can keep the number of coats down, as the quality of my paint work tends to drop sharply as the number of coats increases.

Just out of curiosity, I put the dragon on the kitchen scales. That's just over half a kilo of critter

[rob_van_riel]

Meanwhile, back at the pit, things have gotten grossly muddy



The picture is rather heavily doctored; the camera, in an effort to get a decent image, somehow increased the difference between the colours way beyong what the Mk.1 eyeball can manage, so I did my best to dial things down again. Even so, the individual colours still stand out too much.

[rob_van_riel]

Circumstances beyond my control, or to be more honest, that I failed to control properly, force me to call this done.

The plan was to use UV ink to create a ring of runes around the inner edge of the crater, but this step/detail/gimmick is not going anywhere. The inks perform reaonably well, although not as good as I'd hoped. However, the papier mache has dried with deep cracks along the edge of the inner walls and the floor of the crater. In principle, I like this; it reinforces the effect of the hole not having been dug, but ripped out of the ground by magic. Problem is, you just can't get to the bottom of the cracks, so there are some unpainted, and therefore white spots at the bottom. Even beyond those cracks, the rough surface of the papier mache is full of little depressions which can be reached with a brush, but are very hard to spot under normal conditions. Under UV lighting, they stand out like a very sore thumb (think white shirt under blacklight). So, any attempt to bring out runes or other gimmicks with UV light have the horrible side effect of mercilessly pointing out every imperfection in the paintwork of the crater as well. On the balance, the errors detract more than the runes would add, so this is where it ends.

The image is a quick and dirty shot. I'll add more and better ones after the weekend, when I've found the opportunity to play with better background and lighting.

[B4en]

*Tsk* Dragons and their magic - they've destroyed all the context for their archaeological find!

Shame about the UV but the scene still looks good, and the crater certainly looks suitably 'unnatural'.

[rob_van_riel]

*Tsk* Dragons and their magic - they've destroyed all the context for their archaeological find!

I guess some things never change. The Big Cheese swoops in, grabs the big, visible, and credit granting part of the project, and flies out again, while the little people plod on, ignored and forgotten, for years before and after this event and deal with the smaller stuff that is ultimately far more important.

Or perhaps this particular dragon was the only one old, big, and powerful enough to yank the main body out of the ground, while the smaller guys took care of the groundwork and further cleanup. A bit like the companies that hire out extremely large and powerful cranes or heavy lift helicopters for one-off jobs.

But you might be right, the dragon might just be an irresponsible opportunist like that guy with the hat and the whip

You never know with dragons..

[B4en]

I guess some things never change. The Big Cheese swoops in, grabs the big, visible, and credit granting part of the project, and flies out again, while the little people plod on, ignored and forgotten, for years before and after this event and deal with the smaller stuff that is ultimately far more important.

So that would make this a kind of draconic Time Team.
(I never dealt with them myself, but heard a lot of stories from disgruntled archaelogists who'd trowelled carefully on sites for months or years only to have it wrecked investigated for TV by good old TT with a mechanical digger.)

[JamesPerrin]

Love the shimmering purple on the dragon.

[rob_van_riel]

Real-life context:
The first meeting of the local IPMS chapter is traditionally at the LHS, and the owner always specifies a theme for the informal competition. For 2024, that theme is Fokker DXXI, and the owner generously handed out the 1/72 PM kit to anyone wanting to take part in the competition.
The thing is, I couldn't possibly care less about the Fokker DXXI. So, I'm going to cheat like crazy. The jury for the competition consists of the wife of the owner, and occasionally his daughter. And I just happen to know the wife's got a thing for dragons, especially purple ones

There were quite a few entries with a touch of the draconic, but mine was the only entry with proper dragons, so I won almost by default

Behold, the prize:



Some of the other entries, although short of dragons, were nonetheless magnificent. Once Ive got the pictures sorted and put on line, I'll put up some links to those as well.

[rob_van_riel]

I'd promised some better pictures of the finished product..



















Should anyone be interested in the other whiffery, or just solid modelling, the other Fokker D-XXIs endured, see here: https://www.cyberpolleke.nl/2024/2024-0 ... #wedstrijd

The text is in Dutch, a write up of who brought what to the meeting and the occasional bit of background, but I guess the images can stand on their own.

Meanwhile, images of the hot air balloon at the root of all this purple dragon business, can be seen here: https://www.kleinpaarsdraakje.nl/fotos.html

[DavidWomby]

Amazing. Well done, Rob.

David

[Andy Dighton]

Spectacular.

[B4en]

Excellent, and the prize was well worth it!