Painting the Storm Knight from Kingdom Death by Branislav B aka Paintguild!

Kingdom Death Storm Knight – the PRELUDE

Kingdom Death (KD) has created a huge following in recent years. This year their Kickstarter was one of the greatest ever when considering the amount of project backers and money invested, so the KD universe will be even greater with new miniatures arriving in next few years. Mr. Adam Poots has made a very distinctive and addictive horror game-play, but my interests in the first place as a painter, are the miniatures.

I recently painted the older resin limited version of Storm Knight, very fragile and interesting piece. The new miniatures are mostly durable hard plastic, but as we all know the resin versions are more detailed but less durable, especially if intended for game play.

EARLY STEPS

For my painting process I mostly use Vallejo acrylic colours, Model Colour, Game, Air and washes/inks. Winsor & Newton Series 7 brushes size 0 and 1, AB Harder & Steenbeck Evolution 0. 2 or Infinity CR plus 0.15.

 

The first step was to remove the mould lines and scrub all the resin parts of miniature in warm water (not too warm, because of possible bending of parts due to hot temperature). Assembly when fully dried is with Cyanoacrylate glue/superglue. I always use superglue when assembling miniatures and because of fragile parts, I drilled small holes with Dremel and pinned head, body, and hands of the Storm Knight model with short lengths of 0.5 steel wire.

Kingdom Death

Incredible detailing!

For super small parts like this I usually use guitar string, not paperclips. Not everyone will pin their resin miniatures, but if my painting is intended for gaming I always secure a miniature in this way. Feet are secured to the base with paperclips. Once conversion done is reducing number of steam pipes/chimneys on his back to only two because they are easily breakable.

For easier painting, the model is first placed on a cork base, and after it is finished, I move it to the intended base and secure with pins once more.

Primer is standard zenithal highlight priming, with black primer and white paint from above the miniature to fully expose contrast and help guide me with placement of light and shadow.

Kingdom Death

Zenithal Lighting process

FROM ARTWORK TO FINISH

The model has many armour parts, so based on the official KD Artwork I decided to use Gold NMM painting for the full armour. Artwork is open to interpretation, so you can use silver/bronze NMM as well to get similar results.

Kingdom Death

The concept artwork which I adhered to

For Gold NMM of the armour I used Vallejo Game Color Scrofulous Brown 72038 , Model Color Black 70950, MC Ice Yellow 70858, Air Tank brown 71041,  MC Royal purple 70810, Schmincke Primacryl Titanium White. Of course, you don’t have to follow any recipe completely and always experiment with paints. Base colour is painted with combination of Scrofulous Brown + Black with a touch of Tank Brown.

First highlight is somewhat watered down Scrofulous Brown, then I sketched with Titanium White upper highlights; over that I glazed with combination of Scrofulous Brown + Ice Yellow. The final highlight is Ice Yellow with a touch of Titanium White. In the deeper shadows I added glazes of Royal purple.

For Gold NMM of smaller scales/on hands, hips and thighs I used the same colours and technique with one difference, I switched from Scrofulous Brown to Vallejo Japanese Uniform 70923, so now the base colour is combination of Japanese Uniform, Black and Tank Brown and highlights with Japanese Uniform, White, Ice Yellow. These scales are painted mostly with just the tip of the brush (size 0).

For the ethereal, steamy cloudy Cloak and it’s many jets of steam, the paints used are:  Vallejo Game Color Sombre Grey 72048,  MC Pale Blue 72906, GC Wolf Grey 72047 with a touch of white. Base is Sombre Grey with Pale Blue, first highlight with base + Wolf Grey, second highlight with pure Wolf Grey, and glazed with Pale Blue to reduce roughness of highlights. On some parts just a touch of white spots to make it more interesting to the eye. Cloak colour is actually based on the same recipe for my 40K Space Wolfs armour!

Thats about it for painting of KD Storm Knight. Large gaming base 50 mm is made from miliput and rollers from greensstuff world. Finally I added some of the flower foliage from MiniNatur.

Hope this short write up gives you a little insight into what I do! Thanks for reading!

Branislav Babovic / Paintguild Miniatures

contact / gallery of my work:

www.facebook.com/paintguildm

www.coolminiornot.com/artist/bane3d

www.puttyandpaint.com/paintguild

instagram.com/bane3d