Reader's Showcase #2: Kingdom Death Grand Mother

Sven is back with another devilishly good Kingdom Death painted figure in the form of the disturbingly alluring Grand Mother miniature. 

As with almost all kingdom Death figures, please consider this NSFW - just to cover yourselves from scarring the less open minded of us out there!

The Grand Mother is certainly one of the most popular yet rarest Kingdom Death-Miniatures released. It embodies the spirit of the gaming world in a unique way, as it is beautiful at the first glance and then upon closer inspection; utterly disturbing. An pregnant, female angel with a lion mask and no need for underwear is strange enough, but not nearly enough for Kingdom Death specifications. It takes most people a while and a really close look until they realise that, its not a tail between her legs...This is something I haven't encountered on any other miniature. The switch from beautiful angel to unholy monster, makes this one of my favourite figurines, so I could not wait to paint it, when I finally got my hands on it.

The model was already partly built when I received it, which made things a little easier, the only things that were left to do were glue the wings in place (which nevertheless snapped of about 4 times while painting...) and make it fit on the base. I must admit, that these super fine and thin resin models are brittle and it takes a lot of care and patience to work with them, but the amazing details on the sculpt more than make up for it. Speaking of details, the miniature had two very small holes (one in the left hand and one in the right foot, which I just filled while applying the foundation.

Following the background of the miniature the Grand Mothers are meant to be giving birth to the "massive, winged blessed ones", which I suspect, are the Chosen. The Chosen was the first my first Kingdom Death-miniature I ever painted (article on that one coming soon!), and so I decided to tie them together with similar palettes. While the Chosen has dark wings and rosy flesh, I decided to lighten everything up for the Grand Mother. So I used the same colours for the wings as I used for the Chosen, but kept highlighting them further to give it a more angel-like touch. For the cloth I decided to use the exactly same colour, bone white, to show, that they're coming from the same place.

There are three areas on the model, that I think are dominating the miniature. The wings, the metals and the "tail". The technique I used for the wings will be covered in detail when I do an the article on the Chosen. But generally it is a mix of  browns and bone white, shaded with dark brown ink. The metals I'm using for my Kingdom Death-pieces are something special. I started using the Vallejo Range with real metal pigments (I think those are 8 different colours). The are quite awkward to handle, as they are alcohol based. That means you need special (cheap) brushes, as the alcohol can harm them. You can't mix them with water-based colours and will need an alcohol-based brush cleaner. They also dry very fast (so don't leave the bottle opened for to long). BUT: They create a very nice, shining metal coat, which just looks more realistic than normal metals. My only real issue with them is that they need to be washed to create shades in the recesses, but once that is done, they loose a little of the brilliance and you just can't get it that shiny again with highlights. Nevertheless, I think they add something special to the metals on this miniature.

For the "tail" I'm using a colour that probably most wargamers will have heard of: Tamiya Clear Red. For those who are unfamiliar, it is a red transparent paint, that keeps shining like wet when it's dry and is perfect for a gory look. At first I painted the "tail" in dark, reddish skin tones, then I covered it with a mixture of Clear Red and dark brown, to give it that gory look. It was at this point I decided I wanted to add slimy thready bits to the "tail", and almost ruined the figure! I originally tried to use super glue; which seemed to shrink too much while drying; causing the threads to dissolve completely and lumps of glue sticking to the surface. So I tried again, but this time using regular glue and it worked perfect. To finish off, I applied a final coat of Tamiya clear red to the threads and any parts of the "tail" that had lost shininess

Below is the full slide show of the Sven's Kingdom Death Grand Mother, from construction to final paint.

Once again, an awesome figure from an awesome guy. Thank you Sven for your submission, I look forward to you next submission.

The Reader's Showcase is a series dedicated to the you the reader! If you have a painted piece you really love and want to share with the blog, then please send me an email titled Showcase HERE.

Thanks for reading,

DiStudios

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