My Next Miniature: Fade (Painted Mid Sept, 18)

"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 in this game, and just really love this additional attention to detail.

My focus on Fade revolved around making the details stand out, From the buckles covering the breasts, the feather mane, and the sword scabbard in back, I wanted to make the details stand out and be painted accurately. As such, shading and highlighting were a secondary thought, somewhat. 

Another thing that I wanted to try out was detailing the cape with Anti-Shine Matt Varnish from The Army Painter. I bought this stuff on a whim and wanted to see how it turns out. The thinking was that I wanted the cape to seem like a worn leather cape and hoped that an muted shine would help represent this more. It did not. The varnish came out rather gluey; the varnish looked like Elmer's glue. It looked sub par and it's likely because I used the varnish wrong. Still, I wasn't happy about it in the end. Something to come back to later on when I've learned more. 

In the end, the details did come out better than expected. I got a lot of good practice in and my improvement to my painting stability is notable, but I do think that shading and highlighting quality were sacrificed somewhat as a result. I would like to come back to this miniature sometime in the future because she deserves to look great. Also, I have some ideas to really accentuate the cape but I'd like to get more practice in before attempting again.