I recently finished painting my chaos lord on dragon. I wrote an article about her a while back when I first kitbashed her. I based her around Archaeon because I originally intended to play her in Age of Sigmar even though I greatly prefer the fantasy setting. But then The Old World came out so I wrote some lore for her to put her in that classic setting. That said, she’s way too big to proxy as a Chaos Lord on Dragon, so I’m also working on a smaller version that fits on a 60x100mm based. So she just sits proudly as the center piece in my army cabinet.
She’s based around Archaeon, but I don’t like Dorghar’s three cartoony heads. So I swapped them out for the two heads that come in the Sludgrake Beast kit from the Kruelboyz line. I really wanted to invoke that classic two-headed chaos dragon of yore. These heads fit perfectly in the opening. And they look mean and nasty. They remind me of something that might have appeared in that classic animated Lord of the Rings.
I sat on this project for a long time because I had never painted any big models before, and it kind of scared me. But over on instagram A_Brush_With_Death_Miniatures put on another one of his challenges and this time the theme was dragons. So that was the perfect opportunity to finally get over my fear of painting her.
As I sat on her for years, I was constantly pondering her base in the back of my mind. I really wanted to do a large pedestal or platform where her followers could go to summon her. Her original lore, back when I was making her for Age of Sigmar, was that she comes from The World That Was, but she was summoned forward in time by chaos worshippers. So I wanted to have her coming through a portal or something like that. But then, like I said, The Old World came out and rebooted that old setting. So I took that original idea and removed the portal aspect of it. So now this is the platform where her generals can summon her to report about the war effort and recieve new orders. Maybe she has a mysterious private keep just off the coast of the frozen sea where the army is camped, and this is where she makes landfall.
To simulate ice, I painted the base with various shades of blue, and then did a clear resin pour over top of that. Then I scratched it up with a hobby knife and applied some thinned down paint in key areas. It doesn’t translate well on camera, but in person the effect is very convincing and has a lot of depth. I’m really proud of how the base turned out!
I’m extremely happy with how she turned out. She’s not perfect, and she’s absolutely impossible to photograph, but done is better than perfect. And even though I see so many sloppy mistakes, the result is still better than I imagined in it’s own unexpected way. So if you are holding on to big models that you’re afraid to paint, just do it! You won’t regret it.
I also made a video about this on my YouTube channel. It shows a lot more of the process. Check it out below!
Kitbash Chaos 
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