Owlbear

Once again I have dug into the vault to find a model that I painted many years ago. This is a Reaper Miniatures Owlbear sculpted by Jason Wiebe. that I bought from Orcs Nest. The Owlbear is a magical beast in the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. These fierce creatures attack on sight and always fight to the death - usually their own when they encounter a group of adventurers.

This was a model painted specifically as a game piece and when I painted it (probably five or six years ago) I was quite happy with the end result. But looking back I can see lots of ways to improve the model. Using a wash would have helped bring the model together for instance. Also I usually finish with a Matt varnish on my display models, but in this case I used a gloss varnish for toughness. I also experimented with a sculpted rather than dressed base. This was fine for a model expected to have a lot of handling but isn't as good to look at.