Because orange is so last season pass.

A few of us members of staff (me included!) were lucky enough to get our hands on an Ether Drake each, pulled straight from the master mould.

We took them home, glued them together, and painted them any way we wanted! Nice!

Let’s take a closer look and see what everyone painted!

Jay

Jay took home the Ether Drake determined to do something very different, and settled on bright yellow! Jay claims to actually enjoy painting yellow, which either makes him a masochist or he’s found an easy way to get this awesome result!

The wings he wanted to paint to look oily, using washes and a gloss varnish. I think the look as if they’re soaking up the darkness of space. Finally he picked out the eyes in a bright green, with awesome slit pupils to make it look really alien, but also have a conscience hidden beneath, making it look terrifyingly intelligent!

Jamie

Jamie brought us this completely different take on the Ether Drake, picking a stark white and black scheme. White isn’t an easy colour to paint at the best of times, and it’s even harder when contrasting it with black – any black on the white and you’ve got a heck of a job getting that colour back!

Jamie’s also gone with the pupils in the eyes, using a great deep red at his contrast to draw your attention to the head. But not too much attention, since he’s added lighting streaks across the wings. They’re big areas which will be perfect for a bit of freehand.

Lewis

That’s me!

I decided to try to go with a more classic glowing look for my Ether Drake. Fin painted his in orange, and I knew Jay was doing yellow, so I thought I’d pick one of my least favourite colours: green! I don’t know what it is, but I just never get on painting green.

I started with a white undercoat, and shaded outwards, starting with a classic Citadel Scorpion Green in the recesses (yes the old paint pot – I still have a small amount left!), before mixing in darker greens and finally black as I got further away from the cracks. I then went back in and did some tippy-top highlights by mixing white back in.

The wings I wanted to do with veins running through them to simulate the thin, membranous look of the game model without actually being see-through. I highlighted the green up with a bone colour to almost white before washing and glazing in green and finally tracing the veins with a very small brush and much cursing! I finally added a purple wash to the wings to make the whole thing look a little more organic. And – frankly – I was getting bored of painting just green!

Here they are alongside Fin’s fantastic studio job making our attempts look very poor in comparison!

We’ve got more Stellaris news coming soon, along with a release date for this Kickstarter on the horizon too! Just make sure to stop by TTCommunity for more info soon!

If you’d like to keep up with both Jay and Jamie’s painting, make sure to stop by the Bad Company Instagram and the Alchemist Painting Twitch channel, where they usually stream on a Thursday night. If you want to keep up with my painting, just come back here – I’m always finding an excuse to share my hobby time! 😉