Miniature Monday – Bloodmane, Gnoll Warrior
This week’s monster is a RPG classic from the realms of Dungeons & Dragons: The Gnoll, a humaoid hyena. Let’s see what the furry fiends look like!
I didn’t manage to paint a mini this week, due to work and life and stuff. I already picked a color scheme, inspired by African Wild Dogs, but perhaps I can do it another day.
To make up for that, Dirk painted not one, but seven Gnolls! Here they are, in various states of completion:
Because there were so many gnoll minis in this Kickstarter, Dirk decided to do a “speed painting” to get color on as many minis as he could manage.This way he could also try out different color schemes to decide which one he would use for the leader, i.e. Bloodmane himself 🙂
He settled for beige fur and reddish brown spots, which looks good, but the true highlight in my eyes is the tartan (scottish kilt pattern) – he used red, greenish beige and yellow (like blood, rotting flesh and bone) because, well, gnolls are always hungry 😀
Now the other gnolls just have to wait until they too are honored with their clan’s colors 😉
For this week’s mini, Arjen chose dark and grim tones:
The gnoll looks dirty and ragged, with the blood spattered axe, like he’s seen many battles and dismembered many enemies- with the dark fur and the whitish mane, he even resebles a drow (red eyes!). Was that intentional? In any case, I like the interesting choice of colors!
David R. used a classic color scheme, beige with dark dots like a real hyaena:
I like how the browns work together, they give the mini a natural and realistic feeling. It really looks like an illustration from the monster manual :).
Good work with the shading of the mane!
That’s it for this week, sorry for my brief words I’ve had quite a day, fortunately the minis speak for themselves! If I forgot someone, or if you still have pics or painted gnolls lying around you want to see here, just tell me, in the comments or with the email below.
See you in the comments and hopefully next week when we go back to… dragons!
Coming Next:
06/06/16 Dragon Hatchlings Part II: “Blue“ and “Green“ (Bones II Core Set)
Want to participate in next week’s post? Email the pictures of your minis until 06/05/16 to
06/13/16 Cassiatta, female Dark Knight (Bones II Core Set)
06/20/16 Nakayama Hayato, Iconic Samurai (Bones II Core Set)
06/27/16 Basilisk (Bones II Core Set)
07/04/16 Rogan, Half Orc Rogue (Bones II Core Set)
07/11/16 Tiik Baron, Fish Humanoid Champion (Bones II Core Set)
07/18/16 Troll Slayer Sophie, Mascot Demon Lady (Bones II Core Set)
07/25/16 Ape Demon (Bones II Core Set)
08/01/16 Whispering Tyrant, Undead Villain in dramatic pose (Core Set)
after that… perhaps some classical or strange dungeon monsters? Or demons?
(Wishes? Ideas? Tell us via email or in the comments!)
Caffeineforge 
I love the tartan, both the idea to do one as well as the choice of colors and neat execution. A classic green and red tartan would have killed the idea, but this one somehow fits a gnoll perfectly.
David’s colorscheme is nicely balanced as well. I admit I tried some schemes out on the flail gnolls and not all worked well.
On the next list: Whispering tyrant…good choice. Its half finished in my to do box.
wait….”dark and grim tones”? This is a happy gnoll in bright colors!
I hardly touched the black (grey and brown fur if you look well), gave him an orange skirt, shiny armor pieces and a nice splash or red in the right place!
Oh, yes, of course! The grime and blood spatters made me overlook his happy grin 😀 It’s perhaps a bit like the Terminator smiling: Still looking dangerous 😉
– Antonia
I have a feeling that you are going to describe all my miniatures as having “a natural and realistic feel” hehe. I feel like I just use the same several browns over and over in different ways for every miniature. I like that at least it makes all of my miniatures kind of flow together better.
Normally on Monday I wish I hadn’t painted my miniature yet because I get a neat idea from someone else’s work but luckily this time there are a ton of other nearly identical gnoll figures I can paint.
Haha, yeah! I guess I’m just a fan of browns and natural/realistic color schemes, which I try to emulate with most of my mini projects.
Perhaps it’s the biologist in me? Any excuse to look at animal photos and illustrations :p
Anyway, you’re right, using similar colors help to give the different minis a touch of “same world” and makes them look more harmonic on the table.
Do you use them for a game somehow, or just paint for the fun of it?
– Antonia
I mainly use them for D&D. I like being able to tell my players that they encounter x weird tentacle monster or y interdimensional demon and actually having a model for it. Bones is awesome.
They are also pretty cool for wargaming. I always have some appropriate models to fill in the ranks no matter what game I am playing it seems.
I have a tendency to use the same colors as well, so I tend to set myself challenges, like “use bright colors”(Autumn bronzeleaf), “do not make the armor silver” (almaran, paladin), “give it a proper base” (minotaur), “paint it just like Derek Schubert” (Vaeloth tiefling), “make a ranger that is not brown or green” (nienna). For this mini, I wanted the armor to look like pieces collected from the battlefield, with slightly different colors, but still looking good together.
That is a really interesting idea.