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Miniature Monday – Wyvern

Wyverns are often seen as the lesser cousins of dragons, although they’re probably every bit as stingy! And now, as you survived the pun, have a look at some painted minis!

(posting by Antonia)

The wyvern is one of the minis from the B4 Core set that attracted a lot of people, judging from what I read online, and I also like the model very much. The anatomy and surface detail are very convincing and the base ruin looks cool too! The pose (especially of the head) is a bit dramatic and might not be suited too much for a “generic” look, but even that is fixable (see below).

My wyvern is by far the most colorful, I guess:

I first wanted to go in the direction of green, wirh a red spot/display/warning color, but I tend to do that on reptilians (like the Pathfinder dragon or the Lizard Folk) so I picked yellow-orange and tiger stripes instead! I had a lot of fun wet-blending shades of white, yellow and bone over the whole body, the light white mottling on the wing surface (not quite visible on the pic, I’m afraid) was a happy accident while I tried to patch some mistake – the colors didn’t quite match but I liked the resulting variations so much that I used the stippling technique on the rest of the wings too.
I really like the result, although the color scheme might restrict the use of that mini to more tropical adventures – yet another monster waiting to devour the pirate PCs from our D&D campaign 😀

Dirk’s wyvern secured some breakfast:

The mini is still a WIP (the fact that I accidentally dropped it and caused the horse’s hind legs to snap off didn’t help either, sorry again, Darling!) but you can see that Dirk converted it to look like it’s snatching a horse in mid-run! A very cool idea for sure! He told me that he’s had the mental image of a wyvern carrying off a horse for years from when he once prepared to DM a RPG campaign for his siblings. The campaign never actually happened, but at least the wyvern finally got its chance!
(He also heated the neck to re-pose the head a bit, which works, just in case some of you were considering that.)

 

Jim painted the wyvern as a D&D staple:

He wrote: “I took a bunch of pics of my wyvern but settled on just one. I like the size and detail of the mini as well as the base but I’m a little down on the pose. I assume it’s roaring or screeching?! I have always imagined wyverns as being green though I have no idea why. I settled on a traditional D&D look of gray. The underside is highlighted in true grays while the upper surfaces include some browns. Overall, I’m happy with it and now have a very serviceable foe for any would-be heroes!”
It’s always good to go the classic route, your critter will be far more versatile than mine. Btw, I also had a green wyvern as a first idea, maybe there’s one in a famous comic or film? The wyvern-looking one in “Dragonslayer” is brown though, maybe we just associate green with the poisonous barb?

 

Timothy’s wyvern might be a missing link:

From what I see he also picked a classic brown, albeit a lighter one, so this one might be an evolutionary link between Jim’s (sub?)species and mine. Jim’s wyvern might live in colder climates (dark scales help with warming up faster on cold mornings), Timothy’s one could be mediterranean or sub-tropical, and my version roams tropical jungles!

 

Michael modified the base::

He wrote: “A while back on the Dire Crab, I mentioned wanting to do more modifications occasionally, and I got my chance on the base of the wyvern. I thought laying flat that his head was tilted strangely, but that it would look better if the whole thing was tilted. Since the base looked like ruins, I fashioned a larger bottom piece from Green Stuff and gravel, then painted it all as stone (lot of drybrushing for that).
For the wyvern itself, I went with the somewhat duller, more natural colors that wyverns usually are shown in, to contrast them from the brightly colored, magical dragons. I did try to add different colors to his dorsal and ventral sides – not actual countershading, but just for some visual contrast.”
I like how you picked a much lighter tone for the wing membranes, that’s somehow exactly how those kinds of wings should look like on proper fantasy creatures (at least in my imagination, I often end up painting differently, though)!
Re-sculpting and tilting the base is a really cool idea to alter the perception of a pose without cutting/heating the mini itself (I tried something similar with the Bat Demon) – and I have to say that the conversion is quite seamless, the paintjob unifies the whole thing well.

This week’s gallery:

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Coming next:

(OMG it’s Chrismas already! I hope some of you get the chance to paint a bit – I’ll add some more mini suggestion soon so you can use your (possible) free time to paint!)

12/23/19 Bones IV Villagers: Bandit with Dagger & Sword (B4 Core) Nr. 100 on KS pic

Want to participate in the next post? Email the pictures of your minis until Friday 12/20/19 to

MondayMiniature@fantasymail.de  (It’s a .de domain, in case emails are bouncing)

–> Attention: The submission date for photos is about three days before publishing date, to give us a bit of time to actually write about your pictures  😀

This way you’ll have two weeks/one weekend to paint, and we have one weekend to write (which is the only time of the week where we (might, *sigh*) have some open minutes).

You can of course send in pics later, but to take out a bit of the stress (most pics arrive here rather last minute) please consider the three day deadline. Later pics will still show up in an update  😉

I had to remove some of the shop links because the miniatures are not yet in official retail (the shop links showed “leftover” KS packs which seem to be out of stock completely now)

Here is the link to Reaper’s graphic with all the core pieces, but it’s one and veeeery long picture so be prepared for some scrolling. On the other hand it has separate numbers for most of the pieces. I will add individual shop links as soon as they appear!

01/06/20 Show me your project! Did you paint or craft something over the holidays that’s outside on MM’s schedule? Here’s the place to show off!

01/20/20 Bones IV Cyclops (No. 98 on KS picture)

02/03/20 Bones III Vernon, Ivy Crown Knight

I added some first picks from the Bones 4 Core Set, some monsters, creatures and villagers. The adventurers I’ll check next, the group was just too large for a quick pick. Any more suggestions?

–> Since reaper re-organized their online shop recently, some of the links might not be working anymore. Until we come around to fix that you can always use the miniature’s name and use the search box on top of the page.

This entry was posted by Antonia & Dirk Vogel.