Kingdom Death Monster - Pinup White Speaker

I’ve wanted to play Kingdom Death: Monster for a while now. However, it is very expensive and very unforgiving which has stayed my wallet for the time being. Plus as far as legacy games go I already have Gloomhaven which I’m enjoying. Not to mention Frosthaven should be arriving at some point this year or early next year. So I’m unlikely to be picking up Kingdom Death anytime soon, unless I win the lottery and/or manage to complete Frosthaven in a week. Fortunately, the makers of Kingdom Death produce a lot of one off characters and expansions so I was able to grab a kit off of eBay for fairly cheap. I decided to go for the White Speaker pinup model, I figured with that much skin on show it would be great practice for painting flesh. And as a bonus, she has a blindfold on so I don’t need to worry about painting eyes. Said model arrived and I threw it on the pile to be painted at some point in the distant future, having more than enough to get on with for the time being.

Things changed somewhat when I saw on Reddit that the Lantern’s Reign discord group is holding a Paint Me Like a Pinup contest. And wouldn’t you know it, I have a Kingdom Death pinup lying around. So being the idiot I am, I signed up to compete. Not only will this then be the first Kingdom Death model I’ve painted, this will also be the first painting competition that I have entered. Oh and it’s predominantly focused on skin, which I know I need more practice on. What could go wrong?

The first thing I needed to do was to get her assembled. Which all things considered wasn’t too bad, she was a bit fiddly as one might expect from such a slender model. I pinned her as best as I could to the base but there isn’t a lot of model to drill into, I think I only go about a millimetre or two into the ball of her foot. And of course the base itself is quite thin. If I had been clever I would have mounted her on some bark or cork to give the pin a bit of extra material to grab onto. Alas, I was not. I did however, leave her cloak separate for ease of painting. I might go back and paint it at a later stage, but for the time being my White Speaker will be capeless.

I made extra sure to remove any seam lines, which are always hard to see until after the model is primed and then they stick out like a sore thumb. Assembly also left slight gaps between the joins, most prominently where her right leg connects to her thigh. I don’t have much, if any, practice with gap filling so this was the ideal time to do it perfectly with no room for error. The smaller gaps were quite easy to deal with, so I sacrificed an old brush to paint a very layer of plastic glue over the gap. This fused the two bits of the model together and eliminated the gap between them. The larger gap on her thigh I used a modelling tool to carefully fill with superglue. With the gaps filled, all I needed to do was to clean up any mess I had made, such as the superglue I had smeared down the inside of her leg. The best way to do this is some fine grit sandpaper. No easy feat as I couldn’t really put all that much pressure on the model, for fear of snapping her, and some areas are just plain hard to get to. Like the seam lines I did the best I could and just hoped nothing would be too obvious once I got to the priming stage.

First things first though, I needed to sort out her base. For board game pieces I’m happy to just slap some texture paste on it once the model is painted and call it a day. For my White Speaker I wanted to make the base part of the painting process rather than an afterthought once the model is done. With that in mind, I started by glueing down some rocks. I then spread some PVA on the base and sprinkled on some sand. Once that was dry, I watered down some more PVA then used a pipette to carefully drop it all over the sand to seal it down. Not the most adventurous base, I wish I had some skulls for example, but it should suffice. However, for some reason though this caused some of the sand around the edges to curl upwards slightly as the glue dried from the edge of the base inwards. Sigh. Perhaps if I had used some white spirits it might have evaporated a bit more evenly. In any case I soldiered on and primed the model with Army Painter Matt Black.

Before I actually put any paint to model, I needed a plan. Or at least, an idea of what I wanted to do. From the beginning I was leaning towards warmer tones, despite Kingdom Death being a cold and cruel universe. Fortunately, Duncan Rhodes’ tutorial for Horus Lupercal had a scheme for a warm skin tone. Ill-fitting for the traitor Warmaster I felt but it produced the look I wanted. As a bonus I had most of the paints too. To start with I basecoated the skin with an even coat of Skrag Brown. I figured this would take a while as I used to paint my Tau with Skrag Brown before a coat of Tau Light Ochre, then called Vermin Brown and Vomit Brown respectively. In the end it took around five or six coats to get a solid finish. The next step was a fifty-fifty mix of Skrag Brown and Cadian Fleshtone which I applied to most of the skin in a few thin coats. I left a thin border of Skrag Brown around the straps and in the deepest recess in the skin (i.e. the butt crack). The next step, as one might imagine, was a few thin layers of pure Cadian Fleshtone. I did have a bit of trouble thinning it though as the white pigment in Cadian Fleshtone can make it rather chalky. Next I did a layer of Cadian Fleshtone and Kislev Flesh mixed in a one-to-one ratio. I tried to keep this as more or less a chunky highlight. I could then come in with pure Kislev Flesh and really drive home those highlights. To finish off the skin, I mixed some Screamer Pink with the Cadian Fleshtone and Kislev Flesh mix from earlier to make a light burgundy. I then carefully applied this to her lower lip and the tops of her cheeks.

With the skin done I could move onto the series of belts that she is wearing as clothing. To start things off I basecoated all of them with Vallejo Khaki. I don’t know if it was the cold I was suffering from when I painted this model, but my hands were really unsteady. Which made painting all of said straps a real pain. Fortunately a lot of the straps stand quite proud from the model, so I could use the side of the brush to paint them. And honestly, leaving a thin border of Skrag Brown around the straps really worked in my favour as it compliments the Khaki wonderfully. Once I had a solid basecoat I could start to build up the highlights. I started with a fifty-fifty mix of Khaki and Army Painter Skeleton Bone. Then pure Skeleton Bone, followed by a mix of Skeleton Bone and Vallejo Pale Sand before giving it a final highlight with pure Pale Sand. Given the lack of clothing, this didn’t really take all that long.

The artwork shows the White Speaker with red hair, so I cracked out the usual red suspects: Vallejo Scarlet Red (as my pot of Khorne Red has finally given up the ghost), Mephiston Red and Evil Sunz Scarlet. I started with a base coat of Scarlet Red, which took a while as the coverage isn’t quite as good as Khorne Red. I got some Rhinox Hide off the paint rack in case I really wanted to punch in those shadows but I turned out not to need it. For highlights, I used Mephiston Red as a general highlight, picking out most of the raised areas. I then used Evil Sunz Scarlet for the brightest areas such as on the top of her head.

The blood spell that she is conjuring in her hand presented a bit of a conundrum. You see blood is (usually) red and her hair is already red. In the end I decided to go a shade lighter and base coated the blood with Mephiston Red. The first set of highlights I did with Evil Sunz Scarlet. For the second set of highlights I mixed the Evil Sunz Scarlet with some Troll Slayer Orange, this brightened the colour without shifting it too much into the orange.

The last few details that I needed to do were the various metal parts on the model, which aside from the dagger are bracelets and ringlets. The ringlets that are holding her straps together are quite small so all I did was base coat them with Mechanicus Standard Grey and give them a highlight with Dawnstone. The dagger had considerably more area to work with, so I used Corvus Black in addition to the Mechanicus Standard Grey and Dawnstone to create gradients across the blade. I finished it off by mixing Dawnstone with some Matt White and highlighting the edges of the blade. For the gold bracelets and the hilt and pommel of the dagger I stuck with Squidmar’s non-metallic gold recipe that I have used for a few miniatures before. For those unfamiliar, I started with a base coat of Vallejo Scrofulous mixed with some Mournfang Brown. I then glazed in pure Scrofulous Brown where I wanted the highlights and pure Mournfang Brown where I wanted the shadows. For the brightest highlights I mixed Scrofulous Brown with some Matt White, and in the deepest recesses some Rhinox Hide. To finish it off I glazed on some Iyanden Yellow contrast paint.

With the White Speaker done, the last thing I needed to do was the base. This one stumped me for a bit as I didn’t want to do a usual brown dirt base as the model already has a lot of browns and warm tones on her already. So to provide a bit of contrast, I mixed some Fenrisian Grey with some Mechanicus Standard Grey which made a nice cold blue-grey colour. I then applied this to the whole base. To punch in those blue tones, I mixed some Two Thin Coats Celestial Blue with Matt Medium and thinned it to a wash consistency with water. I used this on the rocks, attempting to create a transition across them, and in a small radius around the White Speaker’s feet. To tie everything together, I then washed the base with a mix of Nuln Oil and Drakenhof Nightshade. Once that was dry I then dry brushed the base with Vallejo Wolf Grey followed by a light dry brush of Pallid Wych Flesh on the tops of the rocks. To finish things off I was tempted to stick a solitary tuft to the base but I decided against it, in the end just painting the rim of the base black to tidy things up.

And with that White Speaker Kisya was complete. I’m really pleased with how she turned out, she might just be my best painted miniature so far. Not to say there isn’t room for improvement, there’s heaps of it. The blends on the skin aren’t as smooth as they could be. In fact the paint on the skin isn’t as smooth as it should be, there’s a lot of texture there when you look closely. And once I had done the skin I pretty much fell back into standard highlights rather than blending my layers. And I could have done more to make the blood spell actually look like blood. Not to mention being too much of a coward for the free hand on her mask and dagger.

But overall, I’m still really pleased with it. Is she a competition winner? Not even close. Did she force me out of my comfort zone so that I could improve my painting? Absolutely. Will I enter a painting competition again? Almost certainly. Provided they have an appropriate skill level for me to enter at!

Technically, she could be considered a board game miniature. But firstly I don’t own the board game Kingdom Death Monster. And secondly I’m not sure that the pinup models are used in game for anything. Alas, my count remains the same.

Boardgame miniatures left to paint: 580

Boardgame miniatures painted this year: 186