When I first saw this Dragon Turtle from Steamforged Games, I simply had to have it. I had absolutely no idea how I was going to paint it, but I knew I wanted to use it in my D&D campaign. Before long, I'd built an entire dream session around the miniature, culminating in an immense boss fight against this magnificent beast, and if the boss fight was going to be immense, the paintjob had to match!

The sculpt itself is beautiful, but the shell presented a particular challenge. Its large, relatively flat surfaces looked a little dull when painted in simple browns, and I knew it needed something more to bring it to life.

This became my first real experiment in creating texture through paint alone. I spent hours upon hours in the Forge, meticulously applying individual brushstrokes to build up the shell's texture and give it the depth and character it was missing.