The A(mateur)M(iniature)Painter

So I had just finished Old Joe and I wanted to keep the momentum going. During the Black Friday deal last year, I ordered  The Echoes of Death Series 1 . Since I had done really well with Old Joe, I decided to see if I couldn't do a good job again with the Fighter. So I put her together, gave her a base primer and went to painting. My decision to paint up the Fighter next was rather simple; I liked the action in the miniature, and I wanted a piece that had more variety of accessories and equipment. I've been accused (by myself and others) of not putting in enough attention to the equipment or weapons that my miniatures carry. The Fighter presented a good opportunity to fix that. So as always, I focused on getting as much detail as I could. I used the artist's vision of the miniature as the painting scheme where possible and then went the creative route when I didn't have an idea what colors to use. First, a comment about the details: ...

So Xmas had come and gone. During the month of December, I painted a decent amount of miniatures and I didn't want to lose the momentum. As such, I decided to start up a miniature that had been in my queue for some time: good Old Joe. This miniature is part of a set: Old Joe and Young Rachel. I've been pretty interested in these two since I first opened up my KDM Core Box Set . I mean, what are they for? What's their lore? Why are they a part of the core set? Seriously, does anyone know the answers here? I'm dying to know. I mean I know that Old Joe is included as one of four mystery miniatures, but still... Poots! Tell me why! Anyway, I put together and primed up Old Joe months ago, so he's been good to go for a while. However, I've been contemplating how I wanted him painted, and it took a while to reach a decision. In the end, I took a bit of inspiration from the Greek God Poseidon. Poseidon is a God from the polytheistic religion first created by ...

"There was once a ruler that outlived their kingdom. As their body began to petrify, they were visited by a worm that offered them power in exchange for their memories. Now a mindless beast, silver oozes from its nails and warps its bones as it rages in the ruins of its city, always in pain." - Kingdom Death: Monster - Lion God Expansion So by late Dec, 18, I had gone through a fair amount of 30mm miniatures. Indeed, relative to my productivity in the previous months, December turned out to be a really industrious month. However, I was beginning to get antsy and I wanted to switch over to something more aggressive. I wanted to paint something that was more graphic, more gritty, more unusual (something with less boobs and more penis) and something that wasn't a 30mm miniature. Luckily, I had a few boxes of miniatures left to put together and paint (Thanks again Black Friday Sales !). Now that all the Xmas hubbub was over, I sent on my next project: the Lion God...

"When the lantern light is at its dimmest, there's no one else I'd rather have at my bank. The Intimacy Couple faces peril together, unflinching faith in their union to the end, even as it draws near." - Kingdom Death Store In a previous post, I mentioned how much I liked the idea of the intimacy couple as a mechanic in the game. So it stands to reason that when the special Till Death Do We Part came up last Black Friday for half off, I bought it. Since I actually decided to work on the individual intimacy miniatures as practice for this miniature set. I was able to work on this a few days before Xmas, 2018 and I think I either finished the day before or after the day of presents. With this miniature, I wanted to honor my previous palette scheme decisions from both the Intimacy Female  and Intimacy Male . I started first by painting the  Intimacy Female miniature separate from the stand. I rushed a bit with this painting job, so all in all, ...

So if you read my previous post, then this next one comes as no surprise. I painted my Intimacy Female Miniature in the likeliness of my better half and so it stands to reason that the male should look like me. Apologies beforehand, everyone. Oh, and since this is essentially an extension of the previous blog post, I won't be adding too much to the conversation. Like the Intimacy Female, I modeled the Intimacy Male on something other than the artist vision. I like green, I've got brown hair, and I'm white, so that's what I went off of. Easy. There really wasn't any new direction that I was going for with this paint session other than choosing my own color scheme. I primarily focused on detailed work (although, I see now that I accidentally got some red on the green cloth). Personally my favorite color is green so that's why the Intimacy Male is draped in green. I do wish I had olive drab paint hues though. I also wanted to add good ...

Up until now, my blog has simply been a medium for me to showcase my Kingdom Death miniatures. With this blog post, I wanted to go a different direction... I've been very interested in the paints that are utilized for miniature painting. The acrylic paints that are available are varied; in both color range as well as usage. I've been interested in creating a blog post that discusses both price and quality of different brand miniature paints. This blog will attempt quantify these aspects and compare them to one another. Unfortunately, I'm only really acquainted with one brand on a personal level, and so I'm really hoping that more seasoned miniature painters chime in with this one. So please comment if you have any thoughts, especially when it comes to quality of paint brands relative to one another. Also, please note that in no way should this blog be considered an advertisement or endorsement of any one brand. First Topic: Price Tag The first topic I want to lo...

One thing about Kingdom Death that I've always loved is the duality of hopelessness and hope represented within the game. Do not develop an attachment on your people, because they will die, often, and usually by unexpected, gruesome means. Still, even in this bleak existence, the game offers sparks of light in the form of hope. An excellent example of this is the Intimacy Couple, a miniature duo offered in Kingdom Death: Monster 1.5. Along other additional miniatures (such as Till Death Do We Part), this group gives a window into how the survivors can develop true loving ties that ultimately provide redemption and strength to the survivors. It's an aspect that I really admire and as such, I wanted to start painting the miniatures that represent this touching facet of the game. Presenting the Intimacy Couple: art design inspired after my better half and myself Normally this is when I say, I've tried to honor the artistic design of the creators of the miniature by...

Like many, I took advantage of the Kingdom Death Black Friday half off sale last year. I was fortunate to get a lot of stuff that I had been eyeing for some time. Included in my purchases were the Aya the Survivor Series: Before The Wall and Beyond The Wall. So my next project was to paint Aya as she stood - Before The Wall. Aya fighting the deadly Monster: Sugary Snow Man (Xmas Special) Like normal, I wanted to honor the direction of the artist, so I used the same color palette that came with the miniature's art card. However, since I began painting this miniature in mid December, I wanted to keep things simple. The reason was simple: to me, December sucks. It's too damned stressful, I've had a history of working too damned much, and I just wanted to be able to escape while I painted. Therefore, my focus was just to enjoy myself and not worry overly much over the miniature. The end result - I ended up doing a better job on the details while trying out a pain...