Painting and Miniatures Part 5: Griffin Week

A short painting update.

I haven't been doing much painting the past few weeks, mostly because I've had trouble deciding what I was in the mood to paint. It has been a month or two since I needed to do anything for D&D (we've mostly been talking to people, which does not need a battle map), and I'm still not in a "let's paint hordes of soldiers" phase like I was for the entirety of 2005 through 2011.

That said, we've had a few times recently in D&D when griffins were involved. After the first incident, I ordered some cheap griffin models from Reaper and... Pathfider minis? Might be Noziluk's Marvelous Minis, the D&D line. Anyway, I ordered them along with the two owl bears (I did post about the owl bears, right?), but haven't painted them yet. I also have a beholder, which I converted from a plastic Evil Eye (basically a knock-off beholder with tusks and tentacle legs). I cut off the leg tentacles and glued the giant head piece to a brass rod embedded in some bases. I want to get this one done by Wednesday in case we fight a beholder.

Here is the work in progress beholder.

Well, last night I was doing some Stellaris with my cousin at my painting desk, and I decided to get started on the griffins. I have an old metal Warhammer griffin I'm trying to paint like a fancy bird, but it's taking me no small amount of time because... it's fancy. So I thought simple would be best.

Here is the one I'm 98% done with:

Bald Eagle Griffin!

The picture was hard to take because the model sort of leans forward.

I like basing my fantastic monsters on actual animals I'm familiar with. The eagle part of this griffin is a Bald Eagle, while the cat part is a lion. It's easier to pick out neat detail on the wings and head; adding something cool to the plain cat body is a bit more free-hand effort than I felt like with this one. But fancy bird I may have some ideas for...

I realized after I got this far that maybe I should have taken some work in progress shots, but I don't have a great place for taking photos of these right now. I really should look into a light box if I'm going to keep posting these. So, in interests of some semblance of progress shots, here is the other griffin, as yet unpainted:

All I've done is glue it to the base and add a little green stuff to fill a few gaps in the mould.

And that's my progress as of today! I hope to have more to share by the end of the week though!