Kingdom Death:Monster - What have I gotten myself into??!!!

I have been wanting to paint The Flower Knight for an absolute age. It is one of my absolute favourite minis from the house of Poots.

So was thrilled when a client approached me and basically told me to pick a KLD:M model to paint for them as a display piece rather than a game piece.

Initially I picked the black knight but the only copy of him the client had was already assembled and its really needs to be done in sub assembly. So I decided to go with the gorgeous flower knight.

The really nice thing about painting for display rather than play is that Im not constrained by the base size’s footprint. The Flower Knight plays on a 50mm base but wanting a little more real estate to play with I’ll be going with a 70mm diameter plinth for the base.

After recieveing said knight of flowers, immediately got to the prepping, assembling and priming. Very nice kit and an easy build with no real gap fill or GS work being needed unlike some other of the monsters *cough white lion cough cough*

Standard triple prime that i usually go with through the airbrush: light coat of base black then a second lateral coat using grey and then a final top coat hitting areas of reflection and light using white. (All Stylynrez primers btw)

Decided on an overall Autumnal theme for the knight – plently of browns, oranges, yellows n reds for any cloth and then silver and gold for the armour. Silver will be quite cold and then a nice older browning gold for the filagree, detailing and helemt wings. The roses on the pommel and crossguard of the sword may be done in a reddish copper for variety as well as keeping with the overall autumnal palette.

I started with the german puff and slash sleeves and knickerbockers the knight is sporting. Choosing a soft orange for the silk interiors and then a nice rich soft brown for the outer panels.

The outside of the cloak beneath the leaven bustle echoe the puff n slash but continues on into an ochre at the bottom. I will probably glaze in a more reddish brown to the top of the cloth disappearing beneath the leaves.

Unusually for me I am going nmm for the metals. With KD:M as a whole I have always felt that nmm suits the aesthetic better than tmm.

So made a start by sketching in dark silver of the many many armour panels on the knight. Ont he rare occasions when i turn my hand to nmm I usually sketch it in first and plot the main highlights while pushing fairly quick transitions from shadow to light. Any dodgy transitions can be smoothed out later when i add in some secondary tones and reflections from surrounding elements like a few touches of brown from the cloth reflecting form the cloth onto the armour.

With the armour panels started, I then make a start on the gold filigree and elements to get an idea how it will play with and reflect on the silver panels and also to get an early idea/feel of how the overall paint scheme is working and that brings us up to current point.

Oh – for the eyes – I could have gone with a more complementary colour to the yellow/browns of the surrounding golds. As the brown here is really a dark and muted kind of orange going into yellow – the comp colour to that would blue- blue/green aand that would have worked very nicely BUT would have interrupted the autumnal palette I want to keep quite strictly to so I opted to go with analogous choices rather than complementary ones – yellow/orange/red for the eyes – focusing more towards the red end.