The Next Monster: The Lonely Tree (Painted 1/21/19)

"If you can see the Lonely Tree for what it really is, it's probably too late. This carnivorous organism hypnotizes anything that comes near, luring prey with hallucinations of their innermost desires.
Once they draw near, the hallucinations turn to ceaseless dreams, while the roots consume the victim in their sleep."

- Kingdom Death: Monster - Lonely Tree Expansion

Lonely Tree and Lonely Lady, together again (not so lonely now)

I've always liked to keep a balance in the miniatures I paint, and excluding all the busty babes that I paint, I think I've done a good job at keeping this balance. To prove this, after the Paladin miniature, I decided to work on a monster that had been sitting in my collection for quite some time: The Lonely Tree.

The Lonely Tree was actually the first expansion that I had ever purchased from the Kingdom Death Store. I had painted the Lonely Lady miniature very early on (she was actually my third KDM miniature ever painted, and it shows) and at the time, I felt very intimidated by the Lonely Tree. There's a lot going on with the miniature. In fact, to date, the Lonely Tree is the hardest miniature I've had to put together. There's a lot of nuanced detail to take in. As such I wanted to put it together, but I wanted to wait till I felt more confident in my capabilities. By the second week of January, I decided to tackle the miniature. Not because I felt confident enough to do so, but just because I got a bug up my ass to just get the damned thing painted. Here's how things went.

I should point out first that in the month of January, I was working six to seven days a week. My only time to paint was in the early morning, usually two to three hours. As a result, it took me over a week to finish this miniature (I started on Jan 12, and finished Jan 21). Ideally I'd like to finish a miniature in one sitting. However, the Lonely Tree was such a test of endurance (more on this later), that there would have been no way in Hell that I could have finished this miniature in one sitting. Indeed, the date that I finished, I basically just gave up; I could have easily spent another day or so finishing up the details. Still, it was an (exhaustive) labor of love.

When I was considering what color scheme to go with for the Lonely Tree, I didn't want to just take the artist's direction like I normally do. I drew from inspiration from Japanese lore of haunted trees, since I knew that the Japanese culture had these kinds of stories (I've watched Anime before). Sometimes it's a haunted bamboo forest, or a weeping willow with the ghost of a scorned lover. However, I ultimately decided on something akin to a cherry blossom tree. One belief about the cherry blossoms is that they bloom bright pink due to the bodies of the dead buried around it. Sounds similar to the Lonely Tree, yes? So with an idea in mind, I went about painting.

I first started with the foliage of the tree. Since the leaves aren't actually blossoms, I actually ended up modeling the tree after a Japanese red maple, but it still worked out. I put down a base of Crusted Sore from the Army Painter. This provided the dark red that I wanted to start with. Given all the nooks and crannies, I probably spent a good six hours plus dedicated to paining all these leaves. It was a pain in the ass. While I provided the base coat to the entire tree before doing any shadowing or highlighting, I did eventually apply a wash and dry-brush technique to the foliage. I utilized a Dark Tone wash that I added some crusted sore. I used this blended wash for the shadowing. I wasn't delicate in the application; I practically tossed the wash onto the leaves. After that dried, I applied another lighter coat of the crusted sore then went with a lighter version for the dry-brushing, adding varying degrees of off-white to lighten the tone. There was a lot of surface to cover, so I ended up rushing.

The next major part that I worked on was the bark of the Lonely Tree itself. Like a Japanese maple, I wanted the base color to be a much darker brown than your normal vibrant brown tree bark. Going for dark and gloomy here, after all. The slightly interesting aspect of this was that the base tone that I wanted to go for didn't really exist in my paint selection. As such, I ended up blending a dark brown with a very dark grey tone. The end result was passable. The only problem: I was painting the base of the bark

over three or so days and each time I had to recreate the blend. The end result (and this might now show as well in the pictures) is that there are slightly different tones of the blended grey/brown throughout the tree. It looks fairly cool (I need a better camera to show off the details!). The wash was straight forward: dark tone wash splashed around the crevices. For the dry-brush high lighting, I used the base brown that I first used for the blending base, and dry-brushed it lightly on the lifted bits of the bark. After that I used a much lighter brown and added it to the original brown to bring up the tone, and applied it. Pretty standard, all in all.

The next part that I focused on was the base. I went with the standard Ash Grey that I commonly use for a bunch of stone bases that I've done in the past. Afterwards, I used a Strong Tone wash for the shadowing. After the wash, I wanted to go a bit different with the dry-brushing highlights. As you can see, I went with a red tinge: I started with a pinkish red dry-brush layer, and then went more vibrant red as I added layers. Normally I go lighter with the additional layers, but this time it was a reversal. The idea was to have the highlights represent blood without being blatant (i.e. not just a bloody mess everywhere). I really like how it turned out all in all.

One thing that I've wanted to mention for a while about the wash technique: I've found that using a wash can be an excellent means of covering up imperfections, and I was pointedly reminded of this notion with the Lonely Tree. When applying the various base coats over the miniature, there were a lot of areas where I was pretty rough and tough. As a result, I got a good amount of paint in areas that I didn't intend to. I've seen a lot of miniature painters doing this through video tutorials (with the intent of fixing up the miniature later). However, I've always tried to hone my paining accuracy by not painting what didn't need painting. Still, with this miniature, there were so many hard-to-reach areas along with a lot of minute detail parts that I inevitably painted parts the wrong color. Thank the Gods for washes! They really helped clear up any imperfections by just creating shadows. If you're intimidated by the idea of trying miniature painting, know this and take heart! I'm not that good, it's just easier than you might think to do miniature painting.

Back on topic... (forgot what I was talking about)... oh yeah. After the stone base, I went about tackling the more nuanced details of the miniature. In order to not go crazy, I tried to keep to a uniform color scheme for all the accessories that are hanging in the limbs of the Lonely Tree, i.e. all the lanterns looks the same, the skulls look the same, the chains look the same, etc. I didn't go too detailed with any singular part except for maybe the hanging shields and axe. I started working on the leather straps and used Necromancer Cloak for the base. Once I was able to find and paint all the leather straps, I went about trying to paint all the chains, using a Gun Metal metallic base coat. I went with the chains next because a lot of the leather straps had metallic links that I wanted to paint second. After I was satisfied with the chains, I took care of the lanterns, painting them with a base matt black, then the skulls and other miscellaneous bits. I used a copper and rough iron metallic combo for the shields and for the hanging bottles, I actually created a dark green blend for the base mat (I had an image of the classic green Italian wicker wine bottle in my mind when I decided the color scheme).

 So after the base coats, I went simple and applied almost all the hanging accessories with the same wash color. I think I changed things up with the skulls. I used a Flesh Wash for the skulls. I honestly didn't do much dry-brushing for the accessories. I think the exception would be the leather straps and the bottles. By the time I was

at this point, I was getting really sick of painting this miniature. I just wanted it to be done.

So in case it isn't apparent by now, I did not have the best time painting this miniature. The biggest issue is just the overwhelming amount of time that it took to get to a "finished-ish" state. I appreciate the lessons I learned though.

1. Learn to be patient.

2. Be patient with your miniature.

3. Get a damned day off once in a while to actually focus on painting!

Seriously, I probably would have had a better time if I was able to put a few days to focus on this miniature. Until I have more monies than sense, I'm stuck working like the rest of us. And until then, it's more waking up early and painting for a few hours a day... shit.

Ah, enough of my bitching. As always, I hope that this showcase is enjoyed by all whom read it. Please, please feel free share any comments or critiques. If you find my blog enjoyable, be sure to follow and subscribe. And to my devoted legions of fans: I do apologize for taking longer than normal to get posts out. Time is not on my side so far this year.