Jes Goodwin's Woodelves: the Bear handler!

 

One of my many long term, ongoing projects is the painting of an 80's wood elf army, using the classic Jes Goodwin sculpts. I have collected a couple of dozen of the min so far and whenever I feel like it, I paint up an elf. They are hard to paint and take patience and skill and they intimidate me, so it takes me ages to drum up confidence.

I recently finished up a bear handler with his two animals. I had the handler for ages, but finally got a hold of the bears.

I wanted to give the bears a bit of height, so I could play with the base a bit more, but also make the bears different from each other. The sculpts are the same of course, Citadel made only one bear for this range.

I painted the bears sort of like a mix between a brown bear and a grizzly, and in real life bears have surprisingly uneven coloring with lots of yellows, so it was fun to create different hues on the same animal.

The handler got a colorful treatment, which was different from the previous woodelves I painted, which were all sort of grim dark fighters. But before the handler I only painted war dancers, so they are supposed to be grim.

I am planning a full contingent of the animal handlers, with three animals of each! The search is on for the remaining minis!

Here are the other wood elves I painted up so far

SC Mike