Burrows and Badgers Adder Mage

Tail end of last week was pretty shit. My young dog Alfie has been struck down with some sort of mysterious illness and has been really quite poorly. It was touch and go as to whether he was going make it Thursday/Friday as he was really lethargic, not eating or drinking and I was having to keep forcing him to drink water using a syringe and eat a little bit of food. Vets haven't a clue what it is but it came on quite suddenly. I am hoping that him being only 2 1/2 means he can bounce back. 


Alfie with his new Bee Squeeky toy I really Love this little guy.

Alfie has reacted well to the steroids and anti-biotics that the vet has given us to give him. I am hoping he will make a full recovery and that there will be no long term effects fingers crossed. Alfie is showing signs of his normal playful and cheeky behaviour but we won't know until next week what the score is until he has more blood tests and they shows signs of improvement.  I am kind of scared to be to optimistic at the moment for fear of being disappointed. We lost our other elderly labrador Brandon in January and its not been a fun year so far.

As you can see we are very close and sits by me when painting or working on my laptop even as I write this post.




Anyway I've not had much time really to do a great deal of painting but after finishing the Shrews last week I decided to have a crack at painting a snake. Reptiles and especially a scaled skin is something new for me to paint so this was another interesting figure to paint up for me.

Now being B&B being based on British Woodland creatures I had a look at what snakes there were in the UK which isn't many! However I found a nice picture of an Adder so decided to try and duplicate its markings. As a mage though I made his eyes a little brighter than what would be found in real life.

In the end I use Rotting Flesh washed with soft and a thinned green tone. Then used matt black high lighted with oak brown for the black scales.

I really like how they have done the snakes poses. Its quite dynamic and I like how he (or she) is coiled around the staff and has numerous piercings with feathers, teeth and other trinkets.  There is a second one that is not available yet in a more traditional pose but coolly has armour. I used less foliage as I didn't want to detract from his skin tones.

The name has been the trickiest part to sort out. Carmen my daughter asked me if he was good or bad and wants to name him Kaa if he is bad and Haa if he is good lol.

 I ended up searching for mythical serpent names. Grootslang or Lotan were both ones I really liked but as not being based on British myths seemed wrong. In the end I found a site with various British myths around serpents/wyverns/dragons and spotted the Sockburn worm and really liked the sound of it. The Sockburn worm was a Wyvern and you can read more on the legend here.