D&D Monster Manual 46: The Legend of Drizzt – Feral Trolls

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Dungeons and Dragons D&D. The Legend of Drizzt - Feral Trolls

More D&D stuff today, and another example of Trash Models which, despite the uncharitable term that I use can very much be an opportunity for something positive in terms of painting. Once again, I’ve used these models to experiment on – and in this case, I think that they turned out pretty nicely. I should probably start by saying I’m no fan of these sculpts. The oversized Warhammer-goblin-esque heads just look silly to me, and the pony-tails don’t help, either. But since I needed to paint the fucking things, I wanted to make the process worthwhile, so it was going to have to involve some experimentation.

Dungeons and Dragons D&D. The Legend of Drizzt - Feral Trolls

The models are mostly exposed skin, with just a couple of more detailed areas, those mainly being the head and the furry loincloths. Loincloths being simple things, I painted them very simply, and didn’t even bother with the multi-tones I usually do. Wasn’t even a conscious decision to skip them – I just forgot literally until now that I’m thinking about and describing the paint process. They’ve got a bit of musculature, but are overall pretty sparely-detailed figures, and even that musculature is pretty softly detailed.

Dungeons and Dragons D&D. The Legend of Drizzt - Feral Trolls

So this left me with a bit of a quandry – how to paint such large expanses of skin without driving myself insane? So with that, I decided to try was a thinned down paint glaze over a stronger-than-usual zenithal spray prime. It worked okay, but it was also, frankly, boring. It doesn’t really show here, but the two trolls have slightly different skin tones as well. I added some additional shading with a darker thinned green and a few highlights in the usual manner, but you know what? Still boring.

Dungeons and Dragons D&D. The Legend of Drizzt - Feral Trolls

So I left them for a week or two, then came back to them and just started doing vaguely South American-style patterns as tattoos on them. Aaaaand…. then I kept going, and going, and it turned out I was enjoying it, so I kept doing them back and forth across the two of them until I felt they were done.

Dungeons and Dragons D&D. The Legend of Drizzt - Feral Trolls

So in the end I’ve ended up with a pair of models that are still dodgy sculpts, but I’m able to have some fondness for. Also another pair of models done and ready to go when we start playing the Drizzt campaign as well. 🙂

34 thoughts on “D&D Monster Manual 46: The Legend of Drizzt – Feral Trolls”

    • Not exactly what’s transpired in terms of expectations or purchases – the vast majority of these D&D models I’ve been posting are the ones included in the Adventure System board games which I’ve been painting up as we’ve been playing through them – doesn’t mean I can’t point out shortcomings in the sculpts, though! 🙂
      Appreciate the compliment on the paint! 🙂

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    • Thanks mate – just keeping the hand straight and bracing the model and my hands on the table as I go. Also, I like to give the model a quick varnish and let it dry fully before adding tattoos, which gives the paint underneath some protection in case you need screw up and need to use a rougher brush to scrub off and “erase” a mistake.

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  12. The sculpt is funny how they took a goblin and made them taller and stronger looking but even with the odd physique they look seriously sinister! While I love the tattoos and think they really add something to the models, I appreciate the time you put into the skin too and I don’t think these would look nearly as good without your hard work there. Awesome job and as is always the case, I love being constantly surprised by what shows up on your site in each new article. I’m always seeing something new 😀

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    • To be fair to them, faces like that do appear in a lot of classic troll artwork, just the size of the heads on these in proportion to everything else is what makes them look extra odd to me. Painting the tattoos on these was basically therapy to be able to transition back to painting models with more detail on them again. The fact that these models didn’t really matter was very freeing.

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      • I’ve found it is a great idea to play around with techniques on gaming pieces too. At worst, you’re not totally pleased with the paint job but at least its done. At best, you learned some new techniques that really worked well. Your freehand tattoos are always great but the style you used here could be transferred to a lot of other minis I would think and that (along with the fact that you had fun) is a very worthwhile endeavor 🙂

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    • Thanks Wudu. You’re on the money for those sculpts. They’re like big, especially misshapen GW goblins with a touch of weird proto-macrocephaly going on. And bad 90’s Paul Heyman pony-tails.
      With the tattoos on them I can at least look at them without retching! 😉

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