Our weekly contributor Sven is truly turning out to be a painting machine. Not content with powering through his impressive Dung Beetle Knight in a few days, he has followed up with another trio of Kingdom Death miniatures...
Following my plan of "Paint a monster, then a character"- approach I decided to tackle all three variants of the Forsaker Knight this week. Mainly because I wanted to see how the
true metallic paints work on a whole model as opposed to in bits. I was also very excited to paint one of the
rarest Kingdom Death models; the original Forsaker Knight; this figure was one of their
earliest and it was stated that this figure/pose will not be produced again.
Building the models was quite a challenge since they have some extremely fine pieces such as the chains and horns. One thing of note is that it is clearly visible how the
casting quality has improved with each release. Next to the Pin-Up and the dynamic variant Forsaker, the original miniature
looks like a little like a child's toy...despite this, I soon came to enjoy that fact. A testament to how fine some of the pieces are, is that I managed to break the chain hanging off the Pin-Up's sword three times! I did not even bother to count how many times her horns; that are separate pieces that need glue; came off as well as the handle of the variants sword breaking several times. Now I'll confess that the original Forsaker fell off my table
not once, but twice and showed no damage at all, but I dread to picture what
would have happened to the other 2 miniatures had the same fate occurred.
I started the miniatures by painting the Pin-Up's skin with my regular natural skin tone mix and then went on to the fur on the variant Forsaker, after which came the metal work. I began with a foundation of copper, which I wanted to ink with a sepia tone. When the ink dried I realised, that I had grabbed a wash by accident and all the shine was lost in an instant, which left a grisly worn out look that...that actually I liked. For that little special look, I applied some green ink (yes, this time it was an ink) to the recesses. Then I moved on to the swords which are probably the most iconic part of the Forsaker. A nice coat of silver was treated with sepia, brown and black inks, which despite my good expectations removed the shine of the metal as well. Finally I dry brushed the edge of the sword with silver again.
For all those bones I decided to use the metals as well, as I liked the monochrome look. For the golds I started out with red gold, inked the recesses, highlighted with gold and finalised the edges with white gold. Despite the different approach and silver highlights, I was quite disappointed that these parts didn't stand out from the copper. For the cloaks I originally wanted to decide whether they should be black or dark red and it was rather by accident that I stumbled across my GW Camouflage Green when painting the plant on the base. The cloak was shaded with a mix of green and brown washes and the worn out parts dry brushed with Vallejo earth and desert yellow.
Finally I must admit, that I'm more happy that the miniatures are finished
then I am happy with the result. The Vallejo Real Metallic paints proved to be very
uniform when you're trying to use them for different materials and were also
very annoying to use over longer periods/multiple models, as they dry very fast on the paint brushes. Nevertheless I believe that the group will look good next to
my other miniatures.
So Sven finishes strongly again, adding three more figures to the completed list. I expect that over this process, he will have a very impressive fully painted collection, which I have to be honest is not something a lot of people can say they have, when it comes to Kingdom Death. The full slide show from build to final paint is below:
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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