Behold! A Beholder

Greg Bell, Greyhawk supplement cover (1975).

I recently painted up a nifty WizKids beholder miniature from the Nolzur’s Marvelous Unpainted Miniatures line. In preparation I turned to my trusty 1e Monster Manual for painting guidance, as it usually provides very specific coloring details—a legacy of the wargaming heritage, I suppose. But surprisingly, the MM doesn't actually have any painting notes for the beholder.

So then I began to wonder: what was the first-ever official color illustration of a beholder? Despite being an iconic D&D monster—a black and white drawing of one is on the cover of the Greyhawk supplement (1975)—the earliest color picture I could find was from the cover of the Grenadier "Dwellers Below" figure set (1980), part of their licensed AD&D line.

Ray Rubin, cover of “Dwellers Below” boxed set (1980).

This set contained, I believe, the very first “official” beholder miniature, sculpted by Andrew Chernak. Later editions of D&D have certainly used pinkish or purplish color schemes for their beholders, as seen on the cover of the 2nd edition Monstrous Compendium (1989). As further support of this color scheme, over on a Dragonsfoot thread the esteemed D&D scholar Zenopus noted that the Polly-S line of official AD&D miniature paints from 1979 or 1980 had some beholder-themed colors, which included “450 Beholder Body Fuchsia” and “454 Beholder Eyestalk Violet.”

I don't believe there was a beholder on a Dragon or module cover until the Waterdeep and the North supplement (1987), which depicts the infamous crime lord Xanathar as bluish-purple with yellow highlights.

The only other 1e-era notes I could find were in the Official Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Coloring Album (1979), a somewhat odd third-party product but with Gary Gygax listed as the author. The Coloring Album notes:

An olive-green sphere, this eye-tyrant is covered in enormously tough chitinous plates. Between these plates, cracks flush purplish-green, while highlighted areas glow yellow-green. The small eyestalks are a lighter olive, with disgusting pink sockets from which green and orange ringed eyes stare fixedly. A huge central eye stares balefully forth. Yellow-orange jagged teeth jut out from the pinkish mouth, ready to rend and engulf prey.

Zenopus also provided a picture of the “Official AD&D Rub-Down Picture Transfers,” which has a decidedly olive colored beholder consistent with these notes.

So it quickly became clear in researching color schemes there have been many different looks for beholders over the years. 5e really embraced this diversity, noting in the new Monster Manual (2014) that

The disdain a beholder has for other creatures extends to other beholders. Each beholder believes its form to be an ideal, and that any deviation from that form is a flaw in the racial purity of its kind. Beholders vary greatly in their physical forms, making conflict between them inevitable. Some beholders are protected by overlapping chitinous plates. Some have smooth hides. Some have eyestalks that writhe like tentacles, while others’ stalks bear crustacean-like joints. Even slight differences of coloration in hide can turn two beholders into lifelong enemies.

It also became clear in my research that many of these looks are awfully bad. The beholder might be relatively easy to describe as a concept—in fact, a floating sphere with an enormous mouth and many eyes sounds pretty metal—but it is actually rather difficult to depict visually, in part because the thing is so darned alien. It’s all-too-easy to end up with something completely risible or just too weird. And the beholder should look, if anything, terrifying.

And as hard as it might be to draw or paint a good beholder, it’s got to be even harder to sculpt one. You might get a perspective that looks great on paper but falls apart in three dimensions. But that hasn’t stopped lots of folks from trying: oodles of beholder miniatures have been produced over the years. And here a trio of reference sites—DnDLead.com, Minibase, and the Lost Minis Wiki—were invaluable.

As far as I can tell, the very first beholder miniature was an unofficial one made for Archive in 1976 or 1977, the “Eleven Eyed Floater” in Dungeon Nasties II. And as the beholder was pretty firmly the intellectual property of TSR and now Wizards of the Coast, we have a hoary tradition of alternate names for third party versions. One of the next unofficial miniatures was probably the “Beholding Sphere” sculpted by Max Carr for the Heritage Dungeon Dwellers, dating maybe to 1980 or 1981. (Heritage USA Dungeon Dwellers is a fantastic reference site for this line.)

Searcher of Souls, John Dennett (1984).

Many, many unofficial beholders would follow, including the Grenadier “Searcher of Souls” from 1984, sculpted by John Dennett. This was sold in a blister with a “Writhing Crusher” as part of the Fantasy Lords first series. This was one of the first miniatures I ever painted, many ages ago, and clearly I was using the Coloring Album guidelines as one can see the purple chinks between the olive plates. It was small even for 25mm scale and would be just a tiny thing placed beside 28mm figures.

Grenadier produced the Searcher of Souls after it lost the coveted D&D license around 1982, as TSR tried its hand at its own in-house line of miniatures. The results were short-lived and I do not believe a TSR beholder was ever released. The license was then issued to Citadel in 1985, which produced a pretty respectable line of miniatures in just 18 months, including a beholder sculpted by Nick Bibby. This model was notable for having a clear plastic “flying base.”

After Citadel the license went to Ral Partha in 1987, which released another Beholder in 1988, sculpted by Dennis Mize. (A big thanks to Richard Scott over at the Facebook Old School Miniatures group for this last bit of info.) After Wizards of the Coast acquired TSR in 1997, they let the Ral Partha license lapse and began releasing their own metal miniatures, including a really nice beholder (2000) sculpted by Kim Graham and Will Hannah as part of the 3.5 line.

Beholder, Deathknell (2005).

On a parallel path Wizards developed the Dungeons and Dragons Miniatures Game, which premiered in 2003 with large expansion sets of pre-painted plastic miniatures. There was an extremely nice prepainted beholder in the Deathknell set (2005), which I was lucky enough to pull from a booster. A few other prepainted miniatures have been released over the last ten years, though none are probably as nice as the Deathknell model. These include the “Beholder Eye Tyrant” in Monster Manual: Dangerous Delves (2009), the “Beholder Ultimate Tyrant” in Legendary Evils (2009), and most recently the “Beholder” from D&D Icons of the Realms: Monster Menagerie II (2017).

Beholder, Nolzur’s Marvelous Unpainted Miniatures (2017).

Which brings us back to the WizKids unpainted miniature, which I believe represents the first official, unpainted plastic beholder ever. This is a great model with lots of detail—it very closely emulates the beholder on the cover of the 5e Monster Manual. The model is rather customizable, as you can swap in different eye stalks, some showing spell effects zapping out at unseen targets. A notable feature is the central eye has a plastic “contact lens” you can add to create a glassy eyeball effect.

I watched a few different tutorials in anticipation of tackling this model, and it was well worth the time. I discovered some good techniques for painting eyes and picked up some new ideas for approaching highlights. For my beholder, I decided to go with a classic purple palette, with an undercoat of dark blue and highlights of red and light purple. I had a couple of false starts and it was on my table for a long time but overall I was pretty happy with the final results.