The A(mateur)M(iniature)Painter

"There once was a man who could not hide his fear. He wore a mask that transformed his cowardice to rage. In turn, the man transformed into a monster All that remained was a devouring fury that stalked the night, collecting the fearful faces of others." - Excerpt from Kingdom Death: Monster, Butcher Showdown After painting the Pinup Sci-Fi Twilight Knight miniature, I took a bit of (unwanted) time off from miniature painting. By late October/early November, 2018, I got some free time and so chose to try another monster miniature. In the regular KDM campaign, after encountering the Screaming Antelope, the Butcher becomes the next monster that is encountered. Given this, I wanted to try painting the Butcher.  I learned something interesting about this miniature as I painted it: it was a hell of a lot of fun! I've enjoyed painting all my miniatures so far, but sometimes I felt frustration at my lacking skills, or sometimes fatigue from staring at t...

So I didn't get enough Twilight Knight with the last miniature (and I had this one made anyway) so by early October, 2018 I went ahead and began painting the Pinup Sci-Fi Twilight Knight miniature. Unfortunately, overall, I'm happier with my previous attempt versus this one. As usual, I wanted to try to emulate the artist's design for the miniature. Given the really light coloring of the artist rendition, I didn't do a lot of shading for this miniature. Conversely, given how light the color scheme was, any dry-brush highlighting that I did didn't show up too well in the pictures.   One new technique that I tried that I hadn't really messed with beforehand was the use of paint shining effects that are available through The Army Painter website. If you note the picture above, the character has pale blue lighting elements on the costume, so to emulate this, I painted a few parts on the character as well as the sword a very light blue and applied...

So back to the 30mm miniatures. It's late September (or early October?) 2018 and I recently purchased a few pin-up miniatures from the Kingdom Death Web Store  and I was anxious to paint them immediately. Presenting the Detective Twilight Knight Pin-up miniature! Original artist's rendering The Detective Twilight Knight Pin-up is one of a few different renderings of the Allison Twilight Knight KDM miniature. There's some lore behind the character, and the character itself can be used in variations to the Kingdom Death: Monster campaign. I've painted a few of the models and will post them later on. I chose this miniature because of the style. Many of the KDM miniatures are representative of a quasi- medieval fantasy universe. This miniature forgoes that style in exchange for a more modern, police theme. It was different, the promo cards that came with it were intriguing, and so I wanted to give this one a try. As normal, I wanted to capture the ...

"There was once a monster who was shunned by its creator and left to wander the darkness. Lost in the world of humans, it was driven insane in its attempts to comprehend them. Now, the only reality it accepts exists deep inside it hollow, broken mind." - Excerpt from Kingdom Death: Monster, Lion Knight Showdown By early October, 2018, I was getting restless and wanted to get another monster miniature painted. I had a lot to choose from but in the end I wanted to try one of the humanoid monsters. I had recently purchased the Lion Knight Expansion from Ebay (they were sold out on the Kingdom Death Shop website at the time). This monster didn't have a detailed art design like many of the individual miniatures available, so I scanned the web for some inspiration. In the end, I found this site and I loved how the artist interpreted the miniature, so I copied much of the art design. You know what they say, "imitation is the highest form of flattery" or s...

The next miniature that I decided to paint was the Pinup Order Knight. This is usually the section that I post a blurb from the game that articulates the miniature, but I couldn't find anything. Poo. So I'll make my own. "This miniature could have come out better. What's up with the eyes?" - KDM painter Not the best quote, but it's true. I chose this miniature next because of the action in the stance of the miniature as well as the unique design of the base. I think I painted this miniature around the end of September, 2018. As usual, I painted the miniature based on the original art. This time, I went ahead and took a picture of the art card for comparison. Hopefully me take a pic of this doesn't break copyright laws... I first wanted to get the details down pat. Fun fact: the eyes used to look worse! I like the base color theme for this miniature, but I could have spend more time on the shading and highlighting details...

"Fade violated White Speaker's oath against childbearing. Expecting no mercy, she fled the cult with her child and the Sword of Silence stolen from the Sword Hunters' armory." - Kingdom Death Shop Description When I first saw this Fade miniature in the Kingdom Death Store, I knew I had to have it. A few reasons: 1. The backstory was intriguing and the optional additional content to the game itself is intriguing to me.  2. This miniature has a lot of detailed elements going on, and I thought she'd be great practice to paint. 3. While a good deal of the Kingdom Death miniatures are overly sexualized (this is represented by the "pin-up" miniature series of KDM), I liked how this miniature is presented post-natal. This miniature had just given birth - represented by the still large belly and also the infant carried behind the character's back. I actually have no issues at all with the sexualized nature of a lot of the miniatures ...

"The was once a fearsome monster that was trained by the Hand to be a steed for the Goblin. However, upon smelling its new master, the monster's mind shattered and it ran into the unknown,foaming at the mouth and biting the noses off the stone faced floor." - Excerpt from Kingdom Death: Monster, Screaming Antelope Showdown The time came that I had free time and the courage to tackle another monster. I chose the Screaming Antelope Miniature from the core game since it's the second showdown monster that survivors face. This miniature was painted mid September, 2018. The Screaming Antelope, difficulty wise, is on par with the White Lion . For my miniature, as usual, I wanted to experiment more with shading and highlighting while staying as true as I could to the artist's vision of how the Screaming Antelope looks on paper.  The fur on the back of the miniature offered the greatest opportunity to play with shading and highlights. I gave th...

"Somewhere in the place of stone faces, nameless men and women stand together. They have nothing but a need to survive and a lantern to light their struggle." - Excerpt from Kingdom Death: Monster, The First Story Starting Survivors: Alister, Lucy, Ezra, Zachary Since the White Lion , I wanted to finish the base playing set, so I set on the path to finish the beginning Survivors: Lucy, Ezra, and Zachary. Alister isn't included in this blog post other than the above picture since I focused on him earlier. All of these were painted around mid to late September. When I began on the rest of the survivors, I had a slightly different direction versus what I had in the past: I wanted to experiment with the color scheme a bit and go out of what the expectation of the DKM artists had in mind. First up: Lucy Lucy is depicted as a pale, dark haired, almost timid looking woman. The pose she takes with this miniature illustrates that well. I wanted all my...

"There once was a beast that wanted to feel how soft its fur was. Since it could not reach its own back, it killed many other creatures and spent time rubbing its paws over them. They say that when the monster finally killed a human, it fell in love with their soft hair and its paws grew into a pair of fine human hands." - Excerpt from Kingdom Death: Monster, The White Lion Showdown  The White Lion is the first monster that survivors face in KDM, and that introduction should give you some insight as to what to expect from the game. It's stark, bleak, violent, and incredibly unforgiving. As such, it makes sense to have the first monster encounter embody these elements with its presentation. I wanted to embody this when I painted the White Lion.  The creature was refreshingly easy to do; the miniature is much larger than your average 50mm miniature, and the details are simplistic yet very striking when done right. Classic coloring pallet - just as...