This picture is of one of the limited edition of “Lavender and Red Autumn Leaf” Old warriors, a variant of Autumn leaf, that we will be putting on Ebay soon. He is more golden and red than the first Autumn leaf color I painted, but equally complex!
There are two ways to come up with a color for Windstone Editions dragons:
The first way is to sit down and paint away with any color you feel like and see what happens . This is easy, fun and sometimes rewarding .
Then there is the way I do it. I usually visualize the way I want something to look and spend YEARS trying to get there from here. That is what I am doing with the Autumn leaf color. I KNOW what I want it to look like, but actually getting the colors to produce what I visualize is nearly impossible. Success happens when I find that the color created is is pretty anyway, even though it isn’t exactly what I had in mind.
(Both methods create lots of cool raffle prizes for our beloved forum members! http://www.windstoneeditions.com/forums/)
“Autumn Leaf” dragons are a good example of an elusive color I am wrestling with. I love it . I love the crazy interweaving of unexpected colors. None of the other colors of dragons we have done have this depth of complexity ( except Olimpia’s Rain Forest color!) When you look at these Autumn leaf dragons, you can feel your poor brain trying to sort it all out. Seems to take my brain a second to decide, “yeah, I guess pale lavender, fiery orange and greenish red actually look good together!”
However, the way I have been painting Autumn leaf has lots of problems; such as:
1. It doesn’t look good on all pieces.The arrangement of the different colors is important to how the piece looks. This color pattern looks best when the dragon has large upward facing wing webs, to reflect light on the copper, gold and green colors. These colors counter-balance the murky plum color of the body.Because of this, the Mother dragon, with her downward facing, partially furled wings doesn’t wear this color too well. She looks excessively murky.
2. Autumn Leaf is built up with many layers of airbrushed paint and hand painting, so it isn’t quick or easy to paint. This also makes it very difficult to touch up if there is a blemish on the dragon, or the dragon needs repair sometime in his life.
3. Replicating a color like this consistently is very tricky, because too much or too little of any one layer of paint will change the look of the color.
4. This color is very hard to photograph!!
I will keep working on this color, and see what happens. I enjoy smacking my head against walls. I still have enough prototype Old Warrior dragons to do a few more test paints on. The most recent edition of Red Autumn Leaf warriors ( pictured above) will be on ebay soon! -Melody
Wow, he’s a wild one! XD I like it! How different is he from your ‘goal’? Is there any way to describe what you’re trying to get to…say, in comparison to this one?
He is a wild one that’s for sure. When comparing him to the autumn leaf old warrior that was previously sold on ebay, this one almost looks like a cross between the autum leaf old warrior and the violet flame fledglings.
wow…that is..bright.
It does, doesn’t it! That VF color…I’d be in shock from that on something large. XD It would be pretty (I like those colors a LOT), but you’d have to set it off by itself, or it’d dominate the collection! Or at least it would mine…I’ve noticed that I’ve collected mostly the darker jewel-toned dragons (the Poads are a collection all on their own). I wonder what it’d look like on a Lap Dragon. >.>