Grenadier Fantasy Lords #138, Hippogriff: Using Real World References

[Pingo]

Happy birthday, @TheAuldGrump and @Inarah. I hope you enjoy this. Notes follow after the photos.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is Grenadier’s Hippogriff, #138 from the Fantasy Lords series way back in 1983, now sold in lead-free pewter by Mirliton Miniatures, Italy. It’s well sculpted, with securely fitting wings.

 

I wanted to paint something different from the common hippogriff colorings, something with a little challenge to it. So I decided to go with several black and white patterned creatures. The front end is based on an osprey, the wings on a hoopoe’s, and the hindquarters on a zebra, all somewhat modified to suit the figure and to blend where the shifts happen.

 

Whenever you’re going to paint a chimeric model, a creature made up of the parts of other creatures, it’s a good idea to go look at real animals to see how their colors and feathers and skins look, and also how they blend into other things. If nothing else, there are excellent visual resources on the internet.

 

Technical notes:

Spoiler

I glued the figure to a large fender washer for added stability and painted the base, as is my custom, rather than trying to sculpt it realistically. As usual, I primed the figure withe Titanium White acrylic paint (Golden Matte Fluid Acrylics unless otherwise noted) and washed it with thinned Burnt Umber. I went over with thinned-down white paint to pick out the stripes and patterns as a sort of underpainting. I mixed a transparent near-black from Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Sienna and used that for the blacks and to mix grey on the figure, highlighting with pale greys and whites. There are a lot of other colors mixed in too, though the final effect looks like a simple black and white.

 

Edited September 13, 2020 by Pingo

[Glitterwolf]

I love the original take on this one.

A Zebra is an awesome idea!

[KruleBear]

Very cool. I absolutely love this unique scheme.

[72moonglum]

Whoah, opened that post up and wasn't expecting such utter coolness!

[Darcstaar]

Beautiful interpretation.

[Inarah]

That's really splendid. Thanks for sharing it.

 

[Wyvernfire]

Lovely, just lovely. In addition to all the striking stripes, the eyes came out really well, nice and fierce looking.

[GBPrime]

Agreed!  Zebra stripes are not the easiest to pull off, well done.

[MoonglowMinis]

Well that's a horse hippogriff of a different color!

[Iridil]

Fantastic - this is unique and well executed and works very well for the sculpt!

[Fencig]

impressive and very clever

. Really digging all the classic lead and pewter lately

[Pingo]

Thank you all.

[TheAuldGrump]

Nice! I always liked that model.

 

So, a breed of hippogriff from the dry savanna?

 

The Auld Grump

[DragonWyrm]

I always love you work, but this one came out really unique and interesting. 

[dks]

Wild and wonderful!  Thanks for sharing your novel interpretation.

The warm and cool colors really enliven the apparently simple B&W scheme.

 

I hadn't heard of a hoopoe -- I was thinking 'magpie'? 'mockingbird'? -- but now I'm looking at images of hoopoes.  Wow, bold wing colors.

 

I'm wrestling with color choices on a Reaper figure that's also an amalgam of real-world animals. 

It's easy to get bogged down by all the options, from the literal to a more fantastical "inspired by...". 

You're inspiring me to commit and finish my project... 

And then paint 10 other monsters with bird wings!  ;^)

 

Derek