Gather 'Round for a Story - A Life Update (also, a pretty Kingdom Death Lion Knight)

Some of you readers may have noticed my posts have been a bit sparse, recently. So, this post will be a little different than usual, in that I'm stepping a little outside gaming, painting, or reviews, to say a little about myself.

The short version is, describing my life right now as "tumultuous" would be an understatement.


There have been a lot of, frankly, overwhelming changes in my life, in both positive and negative extremes.

Among the negatives, there've been some major family illnesses, both returning and new. Among the positives, I've had some pretty radically new options and successes that will likely alter the next 10-15 years of my life/career... When I can describe things—after confirming what needs confirming and when private things can be public—I'll announce some of the good stuff, but, for now, I'm only able to say, well, there's stuff, and it's not all the derailing kind.

Rather than the slowish summer I was expecting, life has been packed, and because of the aboveI've had basically no personal gaming or painting time, and actually publicly posting my commissions has fallen off the priority list a bit (though I've got a backlog of pretty pics, as I try to get back into this).

So... I dunno if the above is hopelessly opaque, or gives the gist of what's been going on, but hopefully the latter. 

Well, with a little info out of the way, on to the model(s)!

The Lion Knight was just too colorful for me to play around with standard, stronger source lighting; I had a pretty specific vision of this one, going in to it. I felt like rich colors would be ideal for the Knight's heroic sensibility and the entourage's distinct colors (of course referencing the 3 main KD color aspects). In order to get that cleanness going, I experimented with a  barely off-white glow. 

Part of what the light allowed was some particularly colorful and more atmospheric freehand on the book, which references the Kingdom Death rulebook, adapted to a rougher and more natural aesthetic (I'd cite the page, but I'm curious how well it reads, in miniature).

Finally, for completeness, I've re-posted my versions of the Lion Knight hybrid armor... My favorite is still the Brawler, which my group uses as a kind of fun champion model and reminder to actually use Fist and Tooth when training. (I haven't decided what to do with the Role survivors... Open to suggestions, since I don't really know how one would use them, despite being fun models.)