Tiamat, Goddess of the Chromatic Dragons and my journey to painting her.

I am really proud of this miniature. This was my first time working on something this large and was a great learning opportunity since it was also the first time using an airbrush. This paint job is by no means perfect and there is way more that could be improved and worked on with more detail work, smoothing color, and highlighting. I am planning on coming back to this later after developing my bursh technique some more but for now I just want to share what I have and share a bit of the journey in crafting her.

The day I bought her I ended up pulling her out of the box and test fitting the pieces to see what I had to work with. The clear base she stands on has a diameter of 8in. or 20.3cm. This roughly on the game board translates to 40 feet or 12.2 meters. The dimensions given by Wizkids who produced this model give the dimensions of 28 inches (71.12cm) long, and 14 inces (35.56cm) tall. In short she is massive for a miniature and is more of a statue than anything else.

The detail on her was incredible. I love working on monster miniatures due to the different colors, and details that get put on them but Tiamat takes the cake from anything I have worked on thus far. From the testing fitting and from some this image there were some gaps in the miniature that had to be filled. There were as well some mold lines in need of being shaven or filed off.

These are just some of my other miniatures I own to show off her size. On the far left is a goblin, followed by an unpainted elven ranger, a zombie, a blue dragonborn, an owl bear, a young blue dragon, a reaper dragon I painted as a white dragon (up until this point my largest miniature I had ever painted) and Tiamat herself towering over all of them. I was quite intimidated over this but made my Wisdom Saving Throw and pressed forward.

The first thing I needed to do was clean up these injection spots, mold lines, and other little plastic bits that didn't quite fit. I knew from previous projects just leaving these would come back to haunt me as any paint would cause these to pop out. I had a crafting knife but I knew that wasn't going to be enough and went out to buy some diamond files.

These were the first big purchase for the project and an investment for future model painting that I am sure to do. These were Army Painter Files and I rather like them. The pack came with 3 files that let me reach into tight spaces and really help me clean up the wings.

This looks awful but honestly it was progress and moving along pretty well. The boon or curse of Wizkid miniatures is that they often come with a coat of primer already on them. This makes it easy to just start painting out of the box but anyone who does this hobby knows is that there are often mold lines you need to clean up before you apply any primer. You can see the actual plastic underneath the primer that I have filed away but I already planned on repriming the model anyway so this was no big lost.

Another thing I did was wash the model. It already had primer on it so it was probably already clean of any mold release agent but I cleaned it up anyways to get rid of any gunk that may have collected on it. I also took a hairdryer with gentle heat to reshape the fin on top of Tiamat's head. I then ran some cold water over it to get it to hold the new shape.

Unfortunately while this did work for a while the fin did end up dropping over again making it look like Tiamat has a bit of comb over. I may just go back and reshape it again but this was fun trick I learned from watching a ton of other miniature painters on youtube. While this didn't work as well on Tiamat it has worked great on many of my other models.

This to me was just another one of those unseemly gaps that probably wouldn't be seen by my players or even me when I put the miniature on the table but I wanted to go the extra mile here. I bought myself some Green Stuff, which is a 2 part epoxy that hardens in about an hour but is highly moldable before it does. I filled in all the gaps that I could find. There some on the wings, the heads, mouths, and legs that I used to fill every gap and shaped it as best I could.

I also bought myself some sculpting tools to help with this and it made the whole process go by super fast. I was racing against the clock though as by the end it was becoming really hard to handle the green stuff but I did it. I left it to harden then went back with my file to smooth out my gap filler and try to make it blend into the model.

With the Green stuff shaped and filed down it was now time to add some new primer to the model. This is where probably the biggest mistake I made came in. My thought process was I would buy red primer to base coat the main head, body and wings to save me time later on. Oh boy was I both right and wrong.

Here she is primed up and ready to be painted. This a big miniature and while the idea of hand painting it sounded like a great challenge to me, my more logical thinking side of my brain told me no. It was at this point (and many many hours of consuming miniature painting videos) that I decided to invest and buy everything I needed to airbrush.

I did my research, looked around and finally bought an airbrush, a compressor, cleaning pot, cleaning tools, airbrush thinner, and cleaner. They all arrived within a day of each other and I was ready to paint.
I won't share how much this project at this point cost me because at the end of the day if it was about the money I wouldn't have done this. I would have just bought the preprinted statue and left it at that. I love painting and assembling models and miniatures and

I don't have a ton of photos of me airbrushing this guy. Mostly it is hard to do proper airbrushing and take photos at the same time. I did systematically work my way through the wings, body, and head. I tried a ton of techniques as well such as working on how to blend and fade colors into each other, mixing my paints to get the color I wanted, lots of wet-blending, and using my brushes and airbrush together to get the effects I wanted.

I messed up a lot as well and had to go and repaint over the areas that I didn't like or that weren't coming together. That is the great thing though about painting is that if you make a mistake you are not left with it. I figured out a ton of effects like one effect around the neck in this photo you can see all the lighter colors underneath and as you move up see a darker burgundy red. It created this really cool magma like effect that was complete accident but I plan on using in the future.

After many many hours over the course of a couple of months I was finally at a point where I could say this is good. There is a lot more I can do, and probably will but she is ready for my players to face.

I am not going to mention how much I spent on this but honestly it was totally worth it. I plan on doing even more painting in the future so the price will pay for itself. I hope you enjoyed this and I have some internal lore about Tiamat down below.

I hope this inspires you to go do your own painting and that no matter how big a project looks you can finish it.

Spending all this time researching and reading on Tiamat I started to develop my own lore and take on this goddess of dragons. Every head to me is the pure archetype of each of the 5 chromatics. Each head has a different name but ultimately they are all Tiamat.

The red head for me is Takhisis. She is the classic red dragon being the most ambitious, avarious, and prideful head out of the 5. I also love Dragonlance and to me the red head best repersents that character.

Zirnitra is the green head and the most diplomatic but shewrd of the five heads. She can speak the truth and still be lying. She is not as strategically minded as her blue head but can learn a creature's deepest desires and use that to bind them to her.

Vritra is the black head and is the cruelest of the five heads. She will torture her prey by dripping drops of its powerful acid onto the victim's head. Only once she has exhausted her fun or the victim has bled their throat dry from screaming does she finally devour them. Her breath is so dangerous it could poison an entire lake or river for years.

Kulshedra is the blue head and the most forward thinking of the five. She spends her days thinking of endless strategies and counter-strategies to her own stratagems. She never rests in thinking of ways to take over the entire mortal realms and to defeat all her enemies but in ways that showcase how much more intelligent than them.

Jormungandr is the white head and is the most primal of the five. A superb hunter whose senses have become so refined to sneak upon her is entirely impossible. She enjoys the hunt and does not waste time with honeyed words, impressive strategies or even cruel torment. She merely acts and will not relent until she has her prey in her jaws.

Yes my children devour these so-called heroes. Offer their bodies and souls to me!

Flee mortals! You can not stand against a goddess!

May the dice roll ever in your favor!