On their way from Elturel to Baldur’s Gate, my players decided to meet a circle of druids in the forest. Halfway through the forest, they found the cave of a ferocious beast and encountered a D&D classic: The owlbear!

I haven’t used owlbears in any of my previous campaigns and never encountered one as a player. So it was about time. The owlbear mini from Reaper was part of the first Kickstarter, so I dug it out and prepared it for the encounter.

The owlbear is one of the iconic fantasy monsters, and it underwent redesign a couple of times. In its current iteration, this it what it looks like in the D&D 5E Monster Manual:

The Reaper Bones miniature is very popular in the internets: There’s a white “snow owl” version from Dan Marsh, a brown version from Jessie, a striped brown-white version from Kitchen_Wolf, a light brown version from MojoBob, a dark brown version from Tiniest Thombus or another white “snow owl” version from Zoroaster100. My favorite is the brown version from Studio SFS.

My goals were to use both brown and white to achieve some contrast, and also to use yellow eyes with a black iris. The beak should be yellow, too.

Basing and Priming

I cleaned and glued the mini together back in autumn 2013. I also put it on a 60mm base then, but never found time to really start painting. So, I cleaned it again and primed it with my usual method. I also tried something new: I sprayed the mini with dark and then brown air brush color to create the lighting on the base. It didn’t work out that well, so I painted over it later.

Painting

I used a variety of colors on this one. First, I painted the fur/feathers in Vallejo Model Color (VMC) chocolate brown and washed it black and drybrushed it with lighter shades of brown and beige. For the beak, I mixed beige, yellow and cork brown. The eyes were painted with bright yellow. Then, I painted the white fur/feathers, washed it with Vallejo Umber Ink and highlighted back with VMC pure white. The tips of the featers were painted black, the claws with a mixture of black and very dark grey. I used a little “flesh wash” on the fur/feathers near the beak to indicate some leftovers from the last meal.

I was quite pleased how it turned out in the end. For finishing the base I used the usual grass tufts from Army Painter and also their woodlands scenic flock mix.

Here is the finished miniature: