Hello Friends,

i’d like to inaugurate this blog by showcasing a commission that meant a lot to me.

Some time ago a customer contacted me for painting the whole core set from Kingdom Death Monster 1.5: he wanted all the miniatures painted at a high standard, especially the monsters where he wanted more of an “artistic” approach and so, after a little talk and decisions, work began.

Here you can see the final result.

If you like my work and you’re interested in commissioning your own KDM core set, please feel free to contact me HERE for a quote: i guarantee you won’t be disappointed! 🙂

In this multi-part article i will try to explain the choices behind each paintjob.

Let’s start with the prologue survivors.

They were a simple paintjob given that the miniatures basically consists of skin and clothes, so i gave extra love to the bodies and added the OSL from the lantern.

They are painted like depicted in the book: two of them with pale skin, the other couple darkskinned.

Fleshtones are from the Nocturna Models Fairy Flesh Set: i suggest you to try them since they are really good, in fact i’m gonna review them soon.

However, i don’t remember exactly the recipes but the tanned survivors were simply painted with a reddish fleshtone, while the pale ones adding blues to the basic skintone:

In this case, the final result is a bit too grey, but i’m happy anyway( and so was the customer).

As you can see, the OSL from the lantern is quite simple: on the light parts(ground, clothes) it’s almost a drybrush, first with a pale orange and then adding saturation to the zones near the source of light.

On the skin, i’ve added yellow and orange to the fleshtone until i’ve used pure orange.

Very simple, but it works!

Overall, i think the sculpt for these four miniatures is far better than the other, customizable sets, probably because they are all individual, more characterized sculpts.

 

Along with the survivors comes the White Lion, which i tried to paint like a fierce, yet noble, animal.

 

For the skin i’ve used Titanium White from Liquitex Heavy Body: it’s a difficult color to work with, because it’s very pasty and does not cover well compared to the whites we usually use in miniatures painting.

However, here lies its strenght: being somewhat transparent you have to use multiple layers that automatically grants smoother blendings and, most important in this case, does not cover completely the tonal variations previously applied.

Also, it has a satin finish which is good when painting skin.

Speaking of colors in the fur: probably the pics can’t capture it, however i’ve used purples, greens and blues to make the white more interesting, leaving the pure white only for the final highlights, painting many many diluted layers as said before.

The mane is golden, like depicted in the equipment cards, and to do so i started with a mix of yellow and orange from Vallejo, again shading with purple, orange and sepia washes from GW.
For the highlights i added buff and various yellows.

I did the “wax in, wax out” technique, applying highlights and shadows/washes until i was satisfied with the result.

The extreme lightspots were painted with pure white and, on top of that, TAN GLAZE from Vallejo Model Color: it’s a transparent color that kicks a lot, if used correctly.

The face was the focal point of the beast and i spent extra time on it. The lion has a very “human” and sad gaze and i wanted to capture it in the paintjob.

Here you can see the tonal variations added in the shadows. I’ve also added pinkish glazes in the ears, around the eyes, the nose and mouth.

Gloss was added inside the mouth and also on the tip of the nose.

The eyes were painted with diluted red on top of pure white, and a simple osl was added.
The blood is Tamiya Clear Red randomly sprinkled around, while a “string” of gooey color mixed with glue was carefully applied in the mouth, to give the idea of a meal recently consumed (possibly a survivor).

Blood was splattered on the front arm also, as you can see from the previous pictures.

The base it’s a simple savanna setting made with real soil and real sand: i’ve added some resin skulls and real bones from a dead animal to display previous victims of the lion, while the bush is dried posidonia.

Everything was quickly painted with various browns and completed with heavy application of red, yellow and brown pigments, to give the look of dusty and dried soil.

 

After the lion i had to paint his armor set; the customer decided from the start that every quarry should have had its armor set painted with the same colors of the monster itself, and that makes sense cause it’s unlikely to kill a White Lion and craft green tinted armor from its fur!

Personally i like this approach, it gives me and idea of consistency through the game.

For these survivors i wanted to mantain the “savanna” mood and so i painted them with dark skin, Basic Fleshtone from Nocturna Models, shaded with purple and brown wash and highlighted with the usual buff and yellow.

The NMM is a mix of greys and browns, to mantain the warm color scheme.

The remaining colors are painted exactly like on the lion: also the base is made with real soil, pigments etc adding dried grass tufts from Mininatur.

As a side note, i did not use the female armor heads since they were very masculine and unappealing, insted i went for regular female survivors heads and painted the hairs with strong colors (it’s a fantasy game after all).

 

This concludes part 1 of this article, i hope you enjoyed the reading and found some inspirational tips!

Feel free to comment or contact me if there’s something not covered here that you’d like to know, and keep an eye out for part 2.

Lorenzo