Prehistoric Painting: Bringing Dinosaurs to Life

y Horizon Jurassic Park Velociraptor has won first prizes at nearly every contest it's been entered in. I thought I'd put together an article about painting dinosaurs in general, and my paint job on the raptor in particular. If you're into dinosaurs, there are lots of high quality models out there, and in a variety of media: injection-molded polystyrene, solid-cast resin, and hollow-cast vinyl dinosaurs are available.

Several companies such as CM Studios and Living Resin make resin dinosaurs that are paleontologically accurate, and Horizon makes a finely detailed line of vinyl dinosaurs, as does Kaiyodo. Tamiya puts out a line of injection molded dinosaurs which are pretty easily found. I'm going to focus primarily on vinyl dinosaurs in this article, although the painting techniques outlined here will work with resin dinos as well (for injection-molded models, I'd advise using enamel paints). These are usually top of the line models, and can be expensive, but the results can be fantastic.

Horizon makes two lines of vinyl dinosaur models. Their house brand, Horizon Original, includes a huge attacking Tyrannosaurus Rex (sculpted by Chris Darga), an attacking raptor (similar to the Jurassic Park raptor, and also done by Darga), a nostalgic, if paleontologically inaccurate Apatosaurus (Brontosaurus), an aquatic Elasmosaurus and a Stegosaurus. A Darga Triceratops is in the works, and you can still find a smaller, boxy-headed T-rex that I'm not terribly fond of.

The second line, now discontinued, featured four dinosaurs from the movie Jurassic Park: the T-rex, a huge Brachiosaurus, a "spitter" (Dilophosaurus) and my favorite, the vicious Velociraptor. All of these can still be found, but they are drying up, so if you get a chance to nab them (especially the T-rex) do it. All the Horizon models have outstanding detailing, but the JP models are real works of art (modeled as they were from the actual clay maquettes sculpted for the movie). The models are generally big: my 1:5 scale raptor is 27 inches long, and stands 10 inches tall at the hip. Combine the size with minutely sculpted detail, and you've got a potential showpiece on your hands.

You paint vinyl and resin models with acrylics, primarily. The thing to remember with acrylics is that, unlike enamels, they have a relatively short drying time, which can make blending difficult. In other words, you have to work fast, and supplement your base coat with washes and drybrushing. Acrylics also dry with a dead matte finish (which I like), so if you want anything to be glossy (eyes, for instance), you'll have to paint over it with either acrylic gloss finish or Future acrylic floor finish. After assembling and puttying my raptor, I gave it a base coat of gray acrylic (or laquer) primer and let that dry. Then I checked for any flaws that needed attention before I continued with painting. Note that vinyl kits are usually very clean, and require little work beyond puttying the joints where the parts go together. You may need to carry some of the detail across the putty with a rounded toothpick.

After priming, it was time to choose a color scheme. I had a lot of options, as no one know what colors dinosaurs really were, or what kind of skin patterns they had. The paint scheme on the box was a bit dark, I thought (although it is pretty close to what the raptors looked like in the movie), so I decided to do something different. I based my color scheme on our local anole lizards, commonly referred to as chameleons for their color-changing ability. I also wanted a subtle tiger-stripe pattern for the raptor. The primary colors for the raptor were a light gray, a light yellow, and a bright green. I mixed each color, thinned it to the consistency of milk with a 50/50 mixture of rubbing alcohol and water, then airbrushed the raptor with it, carefully blending the edges of the colors to achieve a translucent effect. I painted the underbelly, throat, lower jaw and inner legs with the gray, then sprayed on a "boundary zone" of the yellow all along the body. The I sprayed the upper body with the bright green.

Now for the time-consuming part: using a detail brush, I painted dark gray stripes and spots along the entire upper body, including forelegs and hind legs. I used a brush because I couldn't get the lines fine enough with my airbrush. In retrospect, I think I should probably have gone ahead with the airbrush and just settled for the thicker lines.

Many hours later, the tiger stripes were painted. Then I oversprayed the basic colors again, to mute the dark gray stripes and make them seem like they were pigment under the raptor's skin. Using a flat brush, I drybrushed raised detail on the green parts of the raptor with light yellow to give them some definition and help unify the color scheme. Then I touched up various points with a detail brush until I was happy with the overall paint scheme. I painted the claws dark gray, and drybrushed them with light gray.

I painted the mouth pink and gray, loosely mixing the colors on the gums and palate to create a mottled effect. I chose to paint the tongue pink. I painted the teeth an eggshell color (never use white for teeth--it's unrealistic), then gave them a light brown wash. I gave each tooth a heavier brown wash at the gumline to simulate poor saurian hygiene.

The piece de resistance were the eyes. I wanted them to look real so I took a lot of time to get them just right. I'm often asked if they're glass eyes, so I guess I did pretty good. I started by painting a dark gray undercoat. Then I split the eye in half with a thin, vertical black line. Most eyes consist of flecks of color, so using a detail brush, I loosely mixed green and yellow on my palette, applying dots of color from the edge of the eye (leaving a bit of the dark gray around the rim of the eye for definition) to the black vertical line.

I started with a darker green at the corner of the eyes and made the dots of greenish yellow brighter (i.e. more yellow) as I approached the black dividing line. This gives the eye a real three-dimensional highlight. Don't blend the dots of color too much, but don't make them too distinct, either. Once you've got the eye color applied, go back over the black line with more black, carefully painting an elliptical slit like a cat's eye. This will cut across your yellowish-green dots, creating a sharp line and a very realistic slit pupil. Touch up with a bit more yellow-green right at the edge of the pupil, but don't disturb the sharp line there

After the eyes have dried overnight, go back and apply a gloss coat. Also gloss coat the teeth and mouth area. I'd also advise painting over the whole raptor with clear, matte-finish laquer or acrylic finish to protect the paint job. I mounted my raptor on a piece of striped sandstone, which is a perfect base for a dinosaur.

The techniques above will produce terrific results on just about any dinosaur model. You can get a lot of ideas for how to paint your dinosaurs from book and magazine illustrations, as well as movies and Natural History exhibits. There's a wealth of dinosaur info on the World Wide Web, too--check out some different paint jobs on the Horizon raptor at the Gremlins web site. Finally, use your imagination: it's your most valuable modeling tool .