DSM Dragon Diorama WIP: Of Bases and Coins

Work continues on the base of my Dark Sword Miniatures Elmore Dragon Diorama.  The work has been tedious and at times rather boring. But I know I'll be happy with the end result when it is finally completed.  Slowly but surely the treasure horde is coming along.

I've kept to my goal of not drybrushing the coins.  Each coin thus far has been painted separately by hand.  I'm glad I have done so.  Though it may be difficult to tell from these low resolution iPhone photos, the coin horde is quite striking to the eye.  I do have to admit however that I am doing it the hard way.  Each coin, or stack of coins, has to be painted from several different angles.  I usually start with the top of the coin, then I hold the base at eye level and rotate it around, brushing on color where needed.  Otherwise the coins would look two dimensional without their sides painted.  Drybrushing the coins first, followed by the stone gray color probably would have solved this problem.  But I truly think the effect would be much less dramatic. 

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, most of the coins are/will be gold in color.  As you can see in the photos, the gold really does contrast nicely with the gray.  However, to break up the mass of gold I decided to add a few silver coins here and there.  The effect is subtle but does the job nicely.  When I finally get around to painting the assorted weapons and armor included in the treasure pile, the golden mass will be broken up even more.

I've dry fitted the dragon to the base.  Wow!  I had forgotten how massive the miniature megature really was.  The vast majority of the base will be covered by his body while the dragon's impressive wingspan will drape most of the treasure hoard in shadow.  These factors lead me to wonder if I am wasting my time by painting all the individual coins, especially when I will be the only person to really appreciate the detail.  What do you think?

I guess I should get back to painting coins.  I estimate that I'm a little over halfway finished.  Hopefully updated photos will be posted soon.

Thanks for reading!

Game of Thrones Season 4 Starts Tonight

The fourth season of HBO's Game of Thrones starts tonight in less than an hour.  I was able to score two bottles of Fire and Blood Red Ale before it sold out (I wasn't quite so lucky last time).  The maesters predict that both bottles will be gone before the night has passed.  I do not plan on letting them down.

While the first two seasons followed the first two books fairly close, season three failed to do so.  HBO ended last season at roughly the halfway point in A Storm of Swords, presumably due to the massive amount of material to cover.  It will be interesting to see how the fast paced and exciting second half of book 3 combines with the much slower (and frankly rather dull) book 4.  I am hoping that HBO is able to piece together a combination of A Storm of Swords and A Feast of Crows that brings the latter book up to par with the other books in the series.  Of course, there is always the chance that the second half of book 3 will fill the entire fourth season of HBO's version.  There is certainly enough material to do so.

Time to pop the top on bottle number one and find out what HBO has in store for us.

Thanks for reading!