Is it 5:00 yet?

Slow day at work, so I was looking at techniques for painting scales and found out how they do fish scales with a paper pattern (not the fishnet type). Did some gimp magic on a pattern I found to use as dragon scales, and now I'm really excited to go home and try a quick test with some spray paint...

Why don't they have spray paint at work for me to use??? :laugh:

Thought I would share, I had a chance to do a quick test with the pattern I made. This is on an old sign that had silver and gold paint on it from previous projects, and I simply went over the pattern with some flat-black spray paint. Nothing fancy, and yet it turned out surprisingly well and went really fast. For reference, each scale is 1 inch wide, and when I held it up next to my tank it looked like a really good size.



The only thing that bugs me is it's too easy to flip the pattern in my mind, seeing the scales as recessed, but I don't know if this is something that can be 'fixed'. I might try playing with the offest of each row so they don't exactly match up and see how that changes the appearance. I can also print the pattern in different sizes, working it with gradually smaller scales towards the top, but that might just be overkill. One thing that's really standing out to me though, the random gold/silver pattern showing through has a certain appeal to it, and it might really add something to the final paint to lay down a couple of light copper lines on the metalflake before doing the scales to give it some distinction.

Nice optical. NOW GET BACK TO WORK. :woohoo:
Steve