Can you guess what it is I've been working on?
Yeah, that's right. Owlbears. I don't know why either. I just have this peculiar fascination with them, which somehow evolved into a resolution to paint as many Owlbears as possible.
Close enough.
So, let's get started shall we?
The funny thing about Owlbear models is how little most of them have to do with either Owls or Bears. Let's be honest, most of the time it's not so much an Owlbear as a Birdape. And this guy, whilst he does have the Owl part down does come across as a bit more monkey. Maybe it's the long upper arms or the unusual position of the sculpt. Let's be honest here, whilst we know he's meant to be running forward to attack what I really should have done was cut the base off and had him swinging from tree to tree. In fact I'm actually really disappointed in myself that I've only just thought of this. Seriously, I could give him orange fur for an Orang-outang vibe and everything. I suppose I'll have to get another one and try again at some point.
On that note, how come you don't see more Owlbears in trees anyway? I mean, Bears can climb trees. Owls can live in trees. Owlbears live in the woods. And the idea of a brave party of adventurers being flattened to a bloody pancake by kamikaze Owlbear attacks is UTTERLY HILARIOUS.
This particular guy is from Reaper Miniatures. He is pretty big by most standards. I figured I'd try doing him up as an old alpha male type, trying to mix brown and grey in the fur to give him that elder statesman of psychotic dismemberment vibe. Which I think kinda worked. Originally I was going to do him as a blind, crazy, giant, old Owlbear. But I found that I couldn't really make him work with white/grey eyes.
Anyway, moving on...
A wise man has never said that there's only so many Owlbears a man can paint before he starts to get stange ideas. This is because a wise man does not spend all his time painting Owlbears. Indeed even an average, not overly wise man would probably never paint more than a couple.
I am not, as you may have guessed, a wise man. But I still say that if you paint enough Owlbears you're going to start wanting to things a little differently after a while. As I said above, not many Owlbears combine both Owl and Bear very effectively. In this particular case we have one of the better cases of Bear, but very little Owl. So, having noted previously that one reminded more of a Parrot than an Owl I decided to try something a little more colourful. I think this guy is an old Ral Partha sculpt. What I particularly like about it is the simple fact that he's actually on all fours. You know, like a Bear. It's the insistence on an upright posture which I think in many cases evokes the Ape over the Bear in many sculpts. I also like the fact that he has a beak AND teeth at the same time.
And then we come to this. Trust me, if you paint Owlbears for long enough this WILL happen to you. You'll do brown Owlbears and Black Owlbears and Polar Owlbears to be sure. But eventually you will have no choice but to paint a Care Owlbear. This is another Reaper piece, and was an obvious choice for this particular idea because he is, let's be honest, silly looking. This isn't a slight on the sculptor or anything. It's just that Owlbears are, more often than not, inherently daft. I mean, I COULD have gone for a more naturalistic colour scheme. And as I've noted before keeping the eyes entirely black would have gone quite a way in ramping down the ridiculousness. But really, I've done plenty of that before. So doing something like this was FAR more interesting to me. Admittedly this guy is also a lot more Ape like than Bear, but when you're slapping the pink on in such an exuberant fashion why split hairs over taxonomic impressions?
The main thing I learnt here though was that it is REALLY hard to paint signs and have them come out legible. Once I'd finished painting the Owlbear himself I couldn't help but feel he was missing something. And that something was a sign saying "Free Hugs". So I got one and added it on. But somehow the text doesn't really stand out unless you get right up close. First I tried doing it in black, and then in red over the top again to try and get a bit more contrast. But then I'm not exactly a master of calligraphy at the best of times so that probably doesn't help.
BONUS ROUND: Something that ISN'T an Owlbear!
The Shadows by Otherworld Miniatures which originally led me down the dark path of Owlbeardom. It was by finding these guys that I first found an Owlbear mini that I actually liked, and everything kinda went downhill from there. But anyway. The question you find yourself faced with these guys is pretty obvious when you think about it:: How on earth do you paint creatures that are made of pure darkness? I mean, I suppose you COULD just leave them flat black, but that would be lazy. And a waste of the beautiful sculpting on these guys. The answer I went for was with careful highlighting and lots of ink washes. You want the detail to stand out after all. I suppose I went a little stronger and brighter than some might, but I'm actually really happy with them myself. After all, with the outer details a little brighter it makes underneath the hood that much darker.
And no, their names are not Richard and Cliff.
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