A Lizard Bust with real life reference

Elli the bearded dragon is a bust from Martin Lavat created under his label Nautilus Miniatures

I saw his booth at SMC 2023 and immediately fell in love with the sculpt. Such a bust is definitely something special in our scene, that is dominated by Fantasy, Sci-fi or historical miniatures. But the truth is, I love lizards and my son takes care for a bearded dragon - Guess her name? Right, it's Elli.

The bust at the stand of Nautilus miniatures at Scale model challenge

Scale model challenge both of Nautilus miniatures

The Plan and who the heck is Elli?

Such a bust is special as it cover some of the frequent appearing things of our daily miniature painter life. No Skin, leather, Metal, cloth - just scales.

But I wanted to painted it as close as possible to our real “Elli” and create a monument on her. That’s why I took quite some observation time and photo shooting with the lovely lizard.

These shootings were of amazing value cause the colours that the pictures revealed quite surprised me.

Elli beside the primed bust from nautilus

We have

warm oranges around the eye
Grey on upper scale
Greenish yellow in the face and between the legs
Black - red - yellow - white transition in the beard
Desaturated yellow on the chest

Before presenting the coloured version, let’s have a look at the beauty just in zenithal. The sculpt is so great and full of depth - pure joy.

The Colors

I don't remember exactly what has been used - that's due to the workshops from Roman Lappat and Alfonso Giraldes, but these we're probably the colors

Red ( scale 75 artist )
Black
Yellow Off White ( AK sun something )
Warm dark Yellow - Zamesi desert GW
Warm desaturated green ( Vallejo )
Orange ( maybe Trolls later from GW )

The Process

Well - wild wet blending. I put the real Elli model photos on the big screen and tried to match the colors with the selected one above.

Focus was especially to meet the value range. Blacks mixed in darker areas and the off white where it's bright.

Initial colors blocked with warm tones as the real lizard

really worked out quite well, but then I realized that every scale needed some manual treatment - The scales transitions from black to red was not enough - we need to reach up to yellow and white.

The Eye

This is THE part of the mini - Lizard eyes are magical and if I'd nail that - everything else could be excused.

A close look at the real Elly, reveals the magic.

Black inner circle
Very bright and very fine ring
Very dark brown with texture after the ring
Brighter orange - yellow in the outer areas
And of course - a perfect reflection

Detailed picture of the lizards colourful beard

There is no trick for that - just be patient and repeat endlessly. Oh - and loud cursing whenever the new try turned out even worse than the previous.

WIP picture of the bust with painted eyes

The Detail Work

This is the endurance exercise - Highlighting all prominent scales with a little brighter color. By Hand - No Rush - No Drybrush. Otherwise there is the risk that a common colored and valued drybrush destroys the whole color appearance from the underneath layers.

And finally there is the necklace and other lizards. Since I didn’t want to introduce new colours and destroy the harmony, I used whatever has been on the palette with a lot of mixing. This helps o find color for not so important parts cause you cant go wrong - it will always look at least OK.

Sure - some purple could create a massive contrast if set right, but Elli is the star in this show - so let her shine.

About the Plinth, I’m not happy. I even tried a literally dangerous move. I stole a twig from “real Ellies” sleeping place and she can be quite a bear. Blue tagged it to the plinth and it looked … well, judge by yourself.