GALLERY: High Queen Khalida

It's no secret that I like the Tomb Kings, and being a completionist I decided I had to have Khalida in my army as well. My wife actually got this model for me for Christmas this past year and she was pretty excited to see a cool female model for a change. I promised her I would paint Khalida soon because of that, and now she's done! One of the coolest, and most unique models in the entire Fantasy range in my opinion.

In the past I wasn't always a fan of the Kahlida model. It always seemed a little flat and two dimensional to me. As soon as I had the mini in my hands though I realized how wrong I was. This is an incredibly detailed model in a pretty cool pose. It's not often you see a character model not in some action or leading from the front stance. In contrast her's is almost relaxed. She knows she has power, she doesn't need to flaunt it. It's also pretty unique amongst the Tomb King range for being one of the only models completely covered in bandages.

She breaks down into two predominant color blocks; her bandages and her cloak. I started with the bandages since I knew exactly what I was going to do there. Like all of the rest of my Tomb Kings they got a basecoat of Charadon Granite, followed by a wash of Nuln Oil. Unfortunately Charadon Granite doesn't exist anymore, and their replacement color isn't as close of a match as it should be. It's much to light compared to the original. This was then tidied up again with Charadon Granite. I did a mix of over brushing and carefully layering the paint back on for this. The bandages are detailed, and condensed enough that over brushing works well. This is like dry brushing, but with more paint on your brush. I followed this up with a few highlight stages of mixing in Screaming Skull. 

The next obvious area to do was her cloak. I considered dividing this up into different colors, since technically there are two cloth pieces hanging from her arms, a skirt like thing, and an actual cloak. They intertwine with each other so much though that I decided it would just look odd and disjointed if they weren't all the same color, so white it was. My army's colors are white and turquoise, but I mostly just use the turquoise for smaller surface areas since otherwise it would overwhelm the model with color. I wanted my army to have a sepia, washed out quality to them. The white was painted with a basecoat of Rakarth Flesh and washed with Agrax Earthshade. This was then re layered with thinned down Rakarth Flesh to try and get some subtler blends to the shadows. The highlights were done by mixing in more and more white for each stage. Besides the initial basecoat this color was painted with fairly watery paints. This allowed the translucent nature of the paint to do a lot of the blending for me. It meant doing more layers, but I think it paid off in the end. After I took my pictures of her I decided that some of the shadows were to harsh so I went back and softened them up a bit with a Rakarth Flesh/Agrax Earthshade mix. These are actually my second set of photos of her from after I fixed the white.

After this I blocked in the basecoats for the rest of the colors so I could get a good idea of how the color balance on the model would play out. She is a little unusual with how the color blocks on her are laid out since she's mostly bandages and robes. It runs the risk of becoming just two colors. Once I was satisfied that she would look more balanced in the end I went on to painting the gold. This was actually done a little differently then how I have normally done it in the past for my Tomb Kings. This time I basecoated it with Retributor Gold, which I think is a lot better base paint for bright golds then Balthasar Gold is. This ran the risk of being almost too bright though. After the wash of Agrax Earthshade and a layer of Gehenna's Gold it was looking pretty similar to the rest of my army. This was then highlighted by mixing in Runefang Steel for two separate stages.

The turquoise was painted with a base coat of Sotek Green and layered with Temple Guard Blue. This was highlighted by mixing in Screaming Skull for two separate stages of highlights. The "rusted" areas were painted on in a splotchy pattern with Doombull Brown. The edges of these splotches were highlighted with the final highlight mix from the turquoise. The bugs and jewels were painted in a similar fashion to each other, with a black base coat. The first highlight was done with Sotek Green, the second with Temple Guard Blue, and all the remaining highlights were done by mixing in white. I made sure to make every highlight as thin as I could on the edges so that they looked black with a blue sheen.

For the skin I followed my guide here. The snake on top of her staff was painted in the same way as the bugs and the black was blended into the gold by painting several thin layers of black. I made sure to feather it into the gold until I got a transition I was happy with.

After I had finished her I decided that her base was too plain. Being the queen associated with snakes the choice of what to add was obvious. I glued down the skull first and then drilled a hole into one of its eyes. Cutting a paperclip to size I bent it into the shape I wanted and glued it in place. The back half of the snake was just sculpted with greenstuff, no paperclip armature there. Blending the head of the snake into its body was an interesting challenge, but I am pretty happy with how it turned out. The other snake was added since I had left over greenstuff.

Be sure to watch the video below for a 360 degree video of the model. The music is once again provided by Adam Harvey, you can follow him on his Facebook page and listen to some more of his music on his Youtube channel. I have also added in a little extra music from Kevin Macleod who I found on incompetech.com, a royalty free music site. Enjoy!

Be sure to vote for her on Cool Mini or Not here.

Until next time,

Tyler M.