Kingdom Death: Monster - Mountain Dungeon Armour Pinup

An alternative title for this article might be “Testing the Scale75 Flesh Paint Set”. Buoyed by my success with the Vallejo Malefic Flesh paint set I really wanted to up my skin game. And what better way to practice than with a model that has a lot of skin showing. I had previously used another Kingdom Death Monster pinup to go all out on the skin and achieved good results. So I was keen to see how much I had improved the two years since I had painted up the White Speaker pinup. 

I had picked up the Dungeon Armour pinup a while back, more than anything the premise intrigued me. The model is orientated upside down, to make it look like she is hanging from the ceiling. 

Assembly

First things first I needed to get the model assembled, which is easier said than done as there are no instructions. Neither in the box nor online. So I had to muddle along and hope I got it right. The straps that hold the model to the base were the hardest, I think they need to be glued in place before the lower leg is attached to the upper part. I didn’t do this so I had to shave down the straps enough that I could slide them into place, and hope that the glue would hold. I had initially planned to leave the model separate from the base to make things a little easier to paint. However the model was a tad too delicate for my liking so I glued them to the base to extra stability. 

More aggravating was the fringe. You may notice dear reader that my model does not have the same fringe as the box art. That’s because the fringe is a microscopic separate piece that needs gluing to the head. And I lost it. Twice. The first time I simply dropped it on my hobby desk and got lost in the various bits of detritus. I finally found it soI used some tweezers to hold it rather than my meaty ham hands. Instead I only sealed my fate, squeezing on the tweezers a bit too hard the fringe slipped and pinged across the room into the carpet. Honestly at this point I lost it and had to go on a walk with the wife and dog to calm down. 

Once I had cooled down I returned to the task at hand. As I had lost the original fringe I was going to need to sculpt a new one. I have next to no sculpting experience so it was a fairly daunting task. With no choice but to suck it up I put on my big boy trousers and mixed up some greenstuff. Using my craft knife I poked the small sausage of greenstuff into the slot where the fringe goes, then used the blade to add small cuts to simulate the look of hair. When I was happy with it, which was pretty hard on such a small detail, I left the greenstuff cure overnight and then primed the model with Colour Forge Matt Black. For a first attempt at sculpting hair I think it turned out alright.  

Skin

Like the Malefic Flesh paint set the Scale75 Flesh Paint Set comes with a little, albeit not extensive, guide. I figured I would follow that to get started. The first step was a basecoat of an even mix of Basic Flesh and Pink Flesh. This was easier said than done as the coverage was terrible, it probably would have taken ten layers or more to get an even coat. I did try using the airbrush to speed up the process but it was still slow going. I eventually gave up and used Army Painter Air Nomad Flesh to quickly and easily get an even basecoat on the skin. To help map out the lights and shadows, and while I had the airbrush out, I gave the model a zenithal highlight from roughly the direction of the lantern. 

With a basecoat and now a map to follow I could make a start on really getting to grips with the paint set. To begin I made up a mix of Basic Flesh and Golden Skin and layered this on the white areas hit by the zenithal highlight. The shadow areas meanwhile I painted with a mix of Pink Flesh and Indian Shadow. I then highlighted the cheekbones and nose with Light Skin. For the deepest shadows and recesses with the between the skin and cloths, I used a mix of Indian Shadow and African Shadow. I also used this mix to outline the eye sockets. Lastly for the skin I used glazes of Pink Flesh and Indian Shadow to soften the transitions between the shadows. 

I really like how the skin turned out, this might honestly be the best skin I have painted so far. And honestly, the paints in this set are great. Not for base coating obviously, for that they’re terrible. Like a lot of other Scale75 paints they’re more “gel-like” than paint from Vallejo or Citadel deal. This makes them, as mentioned, real bad for base coats but amazing for glazing as they thin wonderfully with water without splitting or becoming chalky. 

Eyes and hair

At this point I decided to get the eyes out of the way. I started by base coating them with Ulthuan Grey, I tend to use this as a starting point for most of my eyes. I use this because it’s an off-white and the white part of your eye (the sclera) isn’t white. There’s a lot of blood in your eyes and while Ulthuan Grey skews more to the blue-grey it’s a more dull white. If I used a pure white then the eyes would practically glow. Which can be useful, but not in this instance. So Ulthuan Grey it is. Anyway, I then carefully painted the iris with Two Thin Coats Celestial Blue and the pupil even more carefully with a dot of Army Painter Matt Black.

For the hair, I mixed Two Thin Coats Scorched Earth with Vallejo Khaki in equal parts and used that as basecoat. I then built up the layers, first with pure Khaki and then with a mix of Khaki and Vallejo Pale Sand. And lastly a final highlight with just Pale Sand. 

Clothing

It took me a while to work out how I wanted to paint the clothing. If you could call the very long scarf wrapped around her clothing. Like the White Speaker, I knew I wanted to paint the base in colder blue tones to contrast the warm tones of the skin, so the clothing needed to compliment the skin. I was tempted to paint the scarf with reds and oranges but I felt that it leaned a bit too close to the pink notes of the skin. I eventually settled on forest green, the natural colours will work with the skin and the warm browns of the leather, once I get around to painting them. I didn’t have any appropriate colours so I turned to the Army Painter and their “desaturated cool greens” flexible triad. I picked up the darkest colour in the range, Evergreen Fog, a mid-tone, Patagon Pine, and the brightest colour, Mossy Green. The keen eyed might recognise the greens as the same as I used on Yeatrice in the Malefic Flesh Set article, she was a convenient test model. Once I had the paints and was happy with how they performed, I started things off by basecoating the scarf with Evergreen Fog. I didn’t paint the tassels at the end of the scarf and alternated sections on the part around the neck. Despite being the darkest colour in the flexible triad, I had learnt from my tests on Yeatrice that Evergreen Fog wasn’t quite dark enough. Searching amongst my paints I came across Incubi Darkness, it’s a bit blue but when you thin it slightly it is nicely transparent so it was ideal as a shadow colour. I glazed this into the shadow areas, and where necessary wet blending with some Evergreen Fog to get a nice transition. I did a similar process for the highlights, layering and blending first with Patagon Pine and then with Mossy Green. For a bit of extra punch I then highlighted the edges of the scarf with Mossy Green.

For the tips of the scarf and the sections around the neck I started with a basecoat of Vallejo Heavy Goldbrown. I felt that if I used brighter yellows for the highlights then these areas would draw too much attention away from the rest of the model. So for a more muted highlight I mixed Heavy Goldbrown with some Vallejo Pale Sand. For the shadows I used Iyanden Yellow contrast paint which is a nice rich but transparent colour. 

It isn’t completely clear from the artwork but the model appears to have some feathers coming out the back of the scarf and out from one of the wrist guards. I didn’t want to add another colour onto the model, knowing I still had to paint the leather and metallic details, so I decided on a similar yellow to the tassels on the scarf. From a basecoat of Vallejo Heavy Goldbrown I then gave the feathers an all over coat of Iyanden Yellow followed by edge highlights with a mix of Heavy Goldbrown and Army Painter Matt White. The Iyanden Yellow darkened the feathers sufficiently to make them look subtly different from the yellow parts of the scarf. 

The last bit of clothing I needed to do was all the leather details like the straps and the boots. To start things off I gave them all a basecoat of Rhinox Hide, a rich and warm brown that compliments nicely with the natural greens of the scarf and the warm tones of the skin. I highlighted the straps and bikini with Vallejo Khaki mixed with a bit of Rhinox Hide. I had hoped this would look different enough from the hair, but unfortunately it did not. To remedy this, I painted a thin layer of Gore Grunta Fur over the straps and bikini. This gave the leather a reddish-orange tint that separated it from the hair. The boots however, as they’re mostly under the straps and simply gave them a coat of Garaghak Sewer to provide a bit of shading and darken them down. 

Metal

In order to help the metal details like the climbing-hook/weapon stand out on the model, and for other reasons I shall explain in the Base section, I decided to paint them in a cold-blue non-metallic metal. In contrast to the warm and natural tones of the skin and clothing. 

I started by giving the kneepads, lantern and climbing-hook with Two Thin Coats Death Reaper. I then mixed Thousand Sons Blue with a little bit of Death Reaper and painted this over the majority of the metal areas with it, leaving the deepest recesses in black. For the next layer, I added a bit of Army Painter Matt White to my previous mix and painted it onto the model in a series of small scratches in a smaller area than the previous layer. I then added in a bit more Matt White into the mix and painted this into yet smaller areas. I also used this mix to basecoat the ringlets and buckles on the model, as the previous ones were a bit too dark. It was once again time to add some Matt White to the mix, which by this point should be close to a sky blue, and painted this on as a final layer. I finished the metallics off with a point highlight of Matt White. 

For the lantern glow, I carefully dropped Liquitex Titanium White acrylic ink into the recesses. I used an ink because it flows easily and has great coverage. I then tidied up any spillage with Two Thin Coats Death Reaper. For the actual glow, I painted a coat of the super bright yellow that is Imperial Fist contrast paint over the white areas. 

Base

When I painted the White Speaker pinup I painted the base in cool blue tones to offset the warm tones of the model. At the time I considered it to be a purely stylistic choice, but in hindsight it’s a nice narrative choice as well. From what little I know about the lore of Kingdom Death Monster the world is a bleak and miserable place, so painting the base in cold tones makes a lot of sense. I painted the weapons in the cold blue tones for similar reasons. Hunting and killing is a necessary part of life on the Plain of Faces, the game isn’t called “Kingdom Death: Making Friends with the Local Fauna” afterall. The Survivors aren’t hunting for fun, it’s for their very survival. I wanted their means of survival to be as bleak as the landscape they inhabit. 

In order to keep things consistent I initially painted the base in the same method that I did for the White Speaker. Base coating with a mix of Two Thin Coats Dungeon Stone Grey and Fenrisian Grey, followed by a wash of Two Thin Coats Celestial Blue heavily thinned with matt medium and water, and finally a second wash of a mix of Army Painter Dark Tone and Drakenhof Nightshade. The result didn’t look like the White Speaker base and I wasn’t happy with how it looked even if it had. Rather than tinting the base toward a lighter blue the Celestial Blue wash had simply pooled in the recesses. 

I decided to start again, carefully coating the base with Fenrisian Grey mixed with just a touch of Two Thin Coats Dead Reaper to darken it slightly. I then gave the base a coat of Army Painter Speedpaint Runic Grey. I finished things off by giving the tips of the stalactites (the model is inverted remember) an overbrush of Fenrisian Grey to brighten them back up. 

Final Thoughts

I am really happy with how this turned out, it’s easily my best painted miniature. So far anyway. I love how the warm tones of the skin compliments the natural greens of the clothing, and they both contrast the cold tones of the base. 

The Scale75 Flesh Paints were amazing, once you had a base coat anyway. The gel-like nature of them made glazes and smoothing transitions really easy. Likewise, I was really impressed with the new Army Painter Fanatic paints. The coverage of Evergreen Moss is fantastic and it was really easy to blend the layers of Patagon Pine and Mossy Green together. 

It’s not all sunshine and roses however, there’s definitely areas that I can improve in. The eyes for example, could certainly do with some work. Her expression does seem to be that of boredom. I also didn’t really do anything with the mouth, it’s so far recessed behind the scarf I felt that anything I did would just draw too much attention to it. 

All in all, a great paint job but still some areas to improve on. Which is ideal really, a nearly perfect paint job means I have an excuse to try again with a different model. And wouldn’t you know it, I already have another Kingdom Death Monster miniature sitting on the shelf…