Beorn in Bear Form

Games Workshop has rules for Beorn and Beorn in Bear Form, but no bear Model yet. The DoS rulebook has a picture of Bear Beorn, and most assume it will be a future release. But for some reason I didn't quite care for it. And if it gets released as Finecast, that is a deal breaker for me.

I didn't think it would be to hard to proxy him so I started looking around on the web for a replacement bear. I found one I liked on Ebay, a D&D pre-painted bear. I was about to click, "Buy it Now" when I remembered I had one! Digging once in again in my boxes of, too much stuff, yielded a mean Cave Bear!

He could be a bit bigger to represent Beorn, but you can't argue with free. So Cave Bear is my Beorn Bear

He was a little small for the 60mm base, so I wanted to "spruce it up" some. Lying on my painting table, I found a Warg that I stole the base from a while ago for some other project. He would make a good victim...er visual effect. I glue him down, more like mashed him down. And textured the base.

Those 24 Orcs will have to wait, Beorn has been bumped to the front of the queue. Inspiration has struck and my muse will not be ignored. Painting the base and Warg

With the base textured and painted, I got to work on the Warg. I spent 30 minutes looking on the web for a good painting guide when the book I needed, Scouring of the Shire, was sitting 10 feet from me. It has a very decent, and most important quick paint guide for Warg's.

Beorn Bear was very easy. Paint black, dry brush light grey to pick up the existing fur texture. Looking around for pics of bears, I noticed most black bears have a tan snout. So I dry brush some Americana Honey Brown(thematic) on his snout, then go back and paint the nose black. Pick out the teeth and claws with GW Bleached Bone and we are good to go.

Dead Wargs need lots of Blood

 I was going for a "throat ripped out" look, but I did not mangle/cut/gouge the throat area enough. So that just means more BLOOD!

For the claw marks, I just used a knife and gouged out the claw marks. The Blood is one of GW's new Technical Paints, Blood for the Blood God. It has a nice deep red color and drys shiny. I'm sure it is not hard to replicate, Red Paint and Gloss Varnish, but I like it.

So that's Bear Beorn, and that means back to the Orcs.

Cheers, Xin