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Clearing out some old photos from a Beastfolk shoot. Do birds count as Beasts? It depends if you mean Animals, or Mammals; the connotations vary. But what doesn't vary is that these little crowfellas are hella rad! Look at those beady eyes, corvid beaks, samurai armor! I tried to give the rogue's feathers a blue-green shimmer and the fighter a purple sheen using drybrushed metallics. They're very detailed sculpts but still painter-friendly. A bit shorter than the average Reaper human but a bit taller than the average Reaper dwarf; seen here with O-Sayumi (60191). Hope you enjoy; I sure did!

Artisan Guild Gryphkin Infiltrators printed on my Elegoo Mars. Torii gate and lamps from Zenith/Kensei. These are Tengu in my Asian themed project, Nippon, Land of the Rising Moon. WIP: https://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/79416-nippon-land-of-the-rising-moon-by-glitterwolf/page/15/#comments If you need to take care of a "difficult" target, bring out The Three! Two brothers and a sister, specialized in stealth attacks. Blade, bow or magic, whatever it takes, they will succeed!

Looks sort of like a Tengu to me. This was part of the first batch of minis I had purchased a few years back. Re-discovered him inside my box of models to eventually get to...and finally got to the tengu. Couple of large pics Normal sized

Here is my painted rendition of the tengu wizard -- the last of the 3 tengu figures that I sculpted for Reaper. (The other 2 figures are the rogue(ninja) and the warrior(samurai). Click those links for my Show-Off threads.) My idea when I designed the figure was "Since crows like to collect shiny stuff, maybe a tengu wizard can work magic using shiny stuff." Hence, the preponderance of jewelry -- rings, a bracelet, an anklet, and a big octagonal pectoral. I sculpted the clothing smooth and simple so the painter could add freehand and shininess. Someone here on the Reaper Forum (sorry, I forget who) suggested that male and female tengus probably look the same to a casual viewer ... so although I hadn't thought of the wizard as female before, now she is! The colors of this zany old bird's feathers and eyes are not as bright as those of the other 2. Her left eye is clouded over. And here's a group shot: I have a few more photos to share, but I won't make you click through to a separate WIP thread. Before I started painting the figure, I didn't know what colors I would use, whether to harmonize with the cool colors of the other two tengus, or use more contrasting colors After applying a coat of black brush-on primer, I painted a careful monochrome value study, using Brown Liner as "black", plus the Shadowed Stone - Stone Grey - Weathered Stone triad. I spent about 3 hours on it. I forgot to photograph the result, but it was something like this. (This is a full-color work-in-progress photo that I converted to grayscale electronically.) To get inspiration for the colors, I looked through a few Spectrum art collections on my bookshelf, and chose a painting that was mostly rosy purple and salmon-pink, with some accents of blue, green, and red. After about 5 hours of painting colors over the grayscale study, this is how the figure looked (with a blue paper background instead of the gray that I used in the photos at the top of this post): I paused here so I could do some electronic "painting" for the freehand, and see whether the pants would look better green. Then I spent about 4 hours painting the freehand, glazing, texturing, and touchups. One more hour to make the base, and an hour to paint it. Enjoy! Derek

First Post! Hard to see in the pictures but his eyes and beak are done in a shiny varnish. Im pretty proud of him and might base him at some point. Any Critique is welcome!

My most recently complete project is the lovely ladies of Oathsworn Miniature's "Heroines in Sensible Shoes 3" Kickstarter. As always, they are a joy to paint. They have nice, bold details but without being overwrought. They definitely look like a bunch of starting adventurers! The theme this time was more exotic races, notably a bunch from "Volo's Guide to Monsters" The ladies ascend the mountain: The Kitsune. She could be a lightly armored Fighter, a Rogue, or a Ranger. The Kenku (or Tengu) Shaman. Or Wizard. Or Sorcerer. Or whatever. She's got a bone to pick with you! The Kenku or Tengu Rogue. I went with oranges for them to continue my previous work on the Bones Tengu...which were also dressed in orange to match the official D&D pre-paints. The Dragonborn, could be a Fighter or Paladin. The decision to make her red was regrettable...with that pointy face and dreads, I kept thinking of Ugandan Warrior Knuckles. Stupid memes getting in the way! Tabaxi or Catfolk. I tried to go with more of a Ranger color scheme than the intended Rogue. The other Tabaxi/Catfolk from the set. I liked the intent of this sculpt...she could be a spellcaster, a Monk, or a Bard! The Halfling Knight. Her mount was painted after my own painting gremlin, Hershey. He would be much smaller to scale, though. The Tiefling Paladin. I really like the pose of this one, though I questioned the hooves, as 4E and 5E Tieflings of this design have human feet. I may wind up greenstuffing her into boots at some point. The Firbolg Druid. As far as I know, this is the only miniature of a 5E style Firbolg. The Minotaur Swashbuckler. I bet you were expecting a cow joke here. The terrain:

I recently got in the latest "Heroines in Sensible Shoes" Kickstarter from Oathsworn Miniatures. I decided to get started on them and take (yet another) break from my in progress Rising Sun minis. As \always, they were nice, clean casts with lots of detail, but nothing over-wrought...which makes sense for low-level adventurers! They're such a joy to paint.

Painted this for a buddy who requested the wings not be attached. It is for the game table and says D&D Tengu don't have wings. I was a bit sad not using them at first, but had some odd fun filing and greenstuff-ing. Last month I did a blog WIP on eyedamageart.com if interested.

Here's my rendition of the tengu warrior (or samurai) that I sculpted for Reaper. You can see my very short WIP (final adjustments, really), here: link to WIP thread. He is a much flashier dresser than his "brother", the tengu rogue, but I still used a mostly cool-color palette to go with the green-purple sheen on his head feathers. In case you were wondering what's on his shoulders... They're different kinds of tengu! I found this image in the entry for "sode" (shoulder armor) in George C. Stone’s A Glossary of the Construction, Decoration and Use of Arms and Armor in All Countries and All Times (1934) ... "Iron plates embossed with tengu heads". I changed the shapes a bit. Enjoy, Derek

I've sculpted 3 tengu figures for Reaper -- a rogue, samurai (warrior), and wizard -- but until recently I had painted only the tengu rogue, and that was 2 years ago (July 2015). I had an idea to paint the warrior and enter both the rogue and warrior as a combined entry into the Open category of the painting contest at ReaperCon. They would have been "Tengu Twins", because the samurai uses the exact same head and feet as the rogue, but with a new body. I started painting him on the Thursday of the con, but managed to finish only the head and set him onto a base. On Friday, I GM'd a game of Pathfinder Society and taught a class in the afternoon, and had only an hour to paint in between. I blocked in some jade green on the armor, and purple-brown for the cloth -- dark colors like I had used on the rogue -- but they weren't working well. So I set the warrior aside and put the rogue into the contest by himself. One night in the hotel after ReaperCon, I watched 3 episodes of the blade-forging reality show "Forged in Fire". In one episode, the smiths had to put a hamon (wavy line) on the knife they were forging, so I knew should add a hamon to the tengu's sword. Back at home, I was walking around my neighborhood when I noticed the tiles on a nearby apartment building, in ultramarine blue and turquoise. Inspiration for the armor! I painted for several hours last Sunday and Monday and was nearly finished but wasn't sure of the last few moves: freehand on the cloth, and maybe some color shifts. I paused and took photos: And I sketched over it in Photoshop: So I went back to the painting table for a couple of hours.... Derek

Another set complete! This time it's a group of Eastern Fantasy themed adventurers and encounters. Almost all the minis are from the third Bones Kickstarter, with the exception of the Tengu/Kenku Monk armed with kamas. She's from Stonehaven. The group: The Oni: The Kitsune. The male is one of my favorites...I hadn't even noticed the sake glass in his hand until I started painting! That and his swagger make for a very characterful sculpt. Just some Human Monks: The Kenku/Tengu: This is the non-Reaper one, a Monk from Stonehaven Miniatures: Flock!

I liked that he was small for a tengu. The asian style and those wooden platform shoes are pretty nifty too. He just popped out at me and I had to paint him. Cute redhead with her measuring stick for scale.

I was really surprised with this model. A friend picked it out and I painted it for him, I don't think I would have looked twice at this model otherwise. I searched, used some google fu, but I could not find a single painted version of it to use as some kind of reference (which sort of worried me because sometimes I can't figure out what something is on a model. I love the staff with the face carved at the top (or maybe it was real, cut off and mounted on top? looked like part of the wood to me, but somebody could easily painted it that way) I never even noticed just skimming through Reapers model pages. I was unsure about the stance he is taking, but once it is painted, I thought it was really cool and looks like he is casting something wicked. The color combinations: personally I feel like I took a lot of chances, a couple of different color wash experiments, along with the blue/purple highlights and the cosmic stars in his cloak. Never did any of that before. I had a hard time with the base, but I tried to keep it in the fall theme as the other Tengu I painted only this one I made a little muddy and a little more leafy.

A friend requested this one, hope he likes it. I didn't realize the model had "rogue" in it's title until I went to post tonight. I get creative control which is the best part though. I should have started painting on models like this one. A lot of fun, not overly complicated with details or crazy flowing garments. Just an elegant sculpt. Hope you enjoy :)

My samurai Tengu Warrior. I could not figure out what was sculpted on his shoulder armor. My wife and I looked under a magnifying glass and decided "Cartoon Troll With Big Nose" and " Exploding Chicken Head On Fire" They are both different looking and neither is pictured in Reapers stock photos. Tough paint, because I could not find any painted examples online for reference. The static grass I ordered really helped break up all those browns.

I painted this kenku today. I would have liked playing with other colors for the beak and feathers, but my players will be meeting their first wereraven in Curse of Strahd next week so I went with boring black on black. I was picking between this model and the owl bear from reaper bones. The owl bear has that fierce lycan look, but it was more expensive so the kenku won out. This is actually my first non-bones miniature to paint which added to my decision process. I used a grey brush on primer for it because I've been having problems with the humidity and the spray primer I usually use. This is my first time flocking a base as well. It turned out ok, but I'm sure there is a much better way to go about it. I'm going to clean the flocking up a bit once it completely dries. I was considering using a brush on sealer on it. My tests on the flocking show that the sealer completely ruins the snow look and makes it just look like slush so I'll probably just leave it be.

For those that don't do the Facebook. From Reapers Facebook page, new releases for May 2nd:

It just wouldn't be fair if I didn't post at least 1 reaper figure today. This is there Tengu Rogue. tried to paint him up as more of a samurai coloring with lacquered wooden armor and I tried using some dry metallic pigment to get the sheen onto his wings. not everything comes out as you expect it to but I think he came out pretty well. the base is a print from one of the Basius pads. Enjoy!

Part of the Stonehaven Half-Orc Kickstarter were these lovely Tengu, or Japanese bird-goblins. I am in a game with many bird people, including a PC, so there's a real use for these. There's a little mystic, dwarf-sized, and two warriors, a male and a female, more human sized. They have a lot of gorgeous detail. At this point I've prepped them, removed flash, glued them to bases, primed white, and washed them, first with straight Burnt Umber, then with a bright deep purple mixed from Phthalo Green and Quinacridone Magenta. The purple isn't quite dry in a few places (like under their feet) and looks shinier and more opaque than it actually is. I next used a technique of mixing in warm yellow-white highlights to a very wet wash of purple shadow color to produce a monochrome toned effect. The highlight color is a sort of opaque warm pale cream-banana yellow-white out of Yellow Oxide (= Mars Yellow = Yellow Ochre = Yellow Iron Oxide = Reaper's "Palomino Gold") and Titanium White, not thinned down at all. As I said on the Half-Orc thread, you have to work fast to do this in acrylics. The highlight / blending brush needs to be cleaned frequently. It's really more of an oil technique. But if you can manage it, you can get really nicely blended colors. The thing that makes it work is to use a totally transparent shadow color and a reasonably opaque highlight color which are different, possibly even opposite colors. Also, keep it light and fast. At the moment, using a bright purple and a creamy yellow, they are basically grisaille (I haven't done the mystic yet).

This was my Pathfinder Society character for the friday night Pahfinder special at Gencon He was a tengu Oracle named Mojie Blackfeathers. He seemd like he was photographing well but he was a deceptive little elfhole as tengu tend to be and just didn't want to make certain details that I was proud of stand out. I may attempt some better photos tomorrow. Still figuring out my lighting. Edit: Sorry uploader was being dumb.

03698: Tengu Rogue by Derek Schubert This miniatures was done for the miniature Summer Exchange 2015 for Marineal. I tried a new masking technique with this one and used yellow (instense yellow) to back the bands. Colors in, now time for shading The base are two wood disks of different size bought from Hobby Lobby. I then glued them together and used a hole saw to crave out the spot for the MDF base. Greenstuff and sand. Made the large plant and log by hand.

Tengu Rogue: 03698 by Derek Schubert Work-In-Progress for the Tengu Rogue Completed for the 2015 Summer Exchange for Marineal. She requested bright colors. I pushed myself to go bright. Enjoy!

Mildly embarrassed to post this on the heels of Derek's fantastic painting of his own sculpt, haha. But here's my take on his amazing mini. Derek Schubert's Tengu Rogue. I straight up LOVE this mini. I was very happy with how mine turned out, to be honest. I was worried about trying to get something going with his plumage, but my initial impulse to use Nightmare Black worked out pretty well, I think. I mixed some gray in with it to highlight the beak, and I thought it worked out pretty well for me. Tried to keep the highlighting on the plumage simple. And I was hellbent to go with white for his top. But, yeah. Pretty happy with him. This was my first time painting on Rust-Oleum camouflage primer (the tan version), and I was pretty stoked about how it took the paint. Only problem, really, was that it doesn't hide my mistakes as well lol. Thanks for looking!

Thanks for your patience. I've finally painted the tengu rogue that I sculpted last year. (I know, you wanted to let me paint mine first, and then you'll paint yours and post it here.) I wanted to exaggerate a lively purple-green iridescence on the raven feathers, so I used an overall palette of deep purples and blues with accents of green, warm wood, and bronze. I painted his mantle/hood and his trousers a few other ways before settling on these colors. The mantle was red-purple at first (but it clashed with the greens), then blue-green (which made the green accents not so special), and then this light blue-purple. The pants were purple-brown at first (too warm and attention-getting), then purple-grey with a lighter gray freehand dot pattern (but the pattern wrapped around his crooked legs in a weird way), then similar but with a scribbly irregular freehand (which was too busy), and finally this sedate black-purple. I really thought I would put "Japanese"-style patterning or freehand on every cloth surface, but there's a lot of fine-scale detail on the rest of the figure, so some areas just needed to be left simple. Still, I've done a quick Photoshop study of the rear view, and I think the quiver would look better with something extra. Maybe I should have painted a little color-study on paper before starting, as I've done on some other figures, and saved myself the couple of hours of redundant work. I might take another set of photos against a background of a different color, anyway. For now, enjoy! Derek

The recent arrival of the Half-Orcs of Stonehaven led to a burst of inspiration (also, the fact that it was my last week before a big chunk of overtime helped). So, I'm sharing my works so far. My camera seems to highlight all the things I missed...a few have been amended since then. First we have the menfolk of the crew. Aragorc is inspiring a new PC concept, for sure: