A God Among Monsters: Presenting The Lion God (Painted 12/28/18)

"There was once a ruler that outlived their kingdom. As their body began to petrify, they were visited by a worm that offered them power in exchange for their memories. Now a mindless beast, silver oozes from its nails and warps its bones as it rages in the ruins of its city, always in pain."

- Kingdom Death: Monster - Lion God Expansion

So by late Dec, 18, I had gone through a fair amount of 30mm miniatures. Indeed, relative to my productivity in the previous months, December turned out to be a really industrious month. However, I was beginning to get antsy and I wanted to switch over to something more aggressive. I wanted to paint something that was more graphic, more gritty, more unusual (something with less boobs and more penis) and something that wasn't a 30mm miniature. Luckily, I had a few boxes of miniatures left to put together and paint (Thanks again Black Friday Sales!). Now that all the Xmas hubbub was over, I sent on my next project: the Lion God.

First I put together this miniature in installments. I kept the model and the base separate during the gluing and painting process. A strategy that I've used has been to focus first on the base, then once it's done, superglue the miniature and then work on that. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that for the first 6 or so hours of painting, I focused entirely on the base. 

You might be thinking, "6 hours is a hell of a long time to spend on a simple base." And to that, I would respond, "Shut the hell up. I'm slow." Just joking. I'd probably drop a F Bomb instead. But in all seriousness, the base for this model is just so gorgeous that I wanted to spend the time and skill to do as much justice as I could. It just so happens that it took me a while to do so.

See! There's a penis! Now I can't be called sexist b/c I paint the pinups!

I started first with providing the base colors to the base - dark grey for the stone, then I used a new metallic paint that I got for Xmas on the lanterns, Rough Iron from The Army Painter. The bottle leaks like hell - even with the cap on - but the pigment is fantastic. After I was happy with the base coats, I applied some wash effects and dry-brush highlighting to the stone surface. After that, I created a light-yellow wash and used that to fill in the lanterns to give them a glowing effect. The closer to each lantern center, the more wash coats I put down, and I used a more vibrant the yellow wash. The idea was to give them all the look of a natural glow that cascades onto the surrounding lanterns and stone.    

From there, I began to work on the Lion God itself. This time I didn't want to appropriate any styles from third parties. Still, I wasn't quite sure how I wanted to go with the color palette. Eventually, I took some inspiration from the White Lion Miniature that we're all pretty well acquainted with. Then I tried to go "natural" with the extra bits, i.e. the head, tail, arms coming out of the back, and whatever the hell that thing is on the Lion God's chin. 

The fur of the Lion God is similar in tone to the White Lion, so I tried out a layering technique with 3 layers, each going lighter and covering less of the surface area as they were applied. I did try some experimental shading on the body after the layering, but I don't really remember exactly what I did. Let me just say it better in theory than in practice.

With the mane, I kept it simple; I used a tan/orange blend to create the base color, then I used a generic The Army Painter wash to give it some tone and depth. I then lightened the original tan/orange blend, and did a bit of dry-brushing for the highlights. To this day, I think that the easiest surface area to paint on any miniature is mangy fur. It's so easy to make it look expertly done! I then did the same for the other orange furry bits on the body and under-body.

Next was the penis tail. Yep, penis tail. I went red with the base, then did a feathering technique to give it a transitional color from the base of the shaft to the penis head. Then applied the necessary wash shading and dry-brush highlights. I used used the normal strategy with the hands; base coat, wash, then dry-brushing. 

After that I worked on the hands holding the lanterns on the back. I used the same technique as I did with the hands holding the tail. I considered doing different skin tones for the arms - kind of a nod to multicultural and racial understanding. Then I stopped; I'm not using my miniatures to make a statement right now. Maybe next time with the Gambler?

A note about the gruesome vulgarity of Kingdom Death: While I'm sure that a good amount of people will find elements of this miniature very weird or gross or whatever, honestly, I love it and had a fantastic time painting it. I think I did a great job overall given my current skill level, and it was just a really interesting medium to work on. I should point out that while saying all this, I fully believe that the head is actually coming out of a vagina. So, yeah.

That looks like a vagina to me...

Anyway, on to the head. This is where things got interesting. I went with the same flesh-tone base for the face and the vagina opening. For the weird chin thing, I again use different shades of red to give a feathered tone effect; going from almost purple at the tip, and getting lighter as the appendage got closer to the face. I painted the veins using a blood effects paint from The Army Painter. Then I applied the regular washes for shadowing and dry-brush techniques for the highlights. 

Finally, I wanted to have some fun with the underbelly of the base. As you may know, the creator of Kingdom Death, Adam Poots, has an emblem on each base underbelly, and in the past I've gone a bit creative with this. As you can hopefully tell from the picture, I tried to make the emblem look like a phoenix this time around. I didn't go too detailed - I'm still not that good - and also, this is the underbelly of the miniature. Besides this picture, no one's going to go actively looking at the base of any of my miniatures. Well, probably no one besides myself or my finance, because she's super supportive. Just nod and smile, Love. 

In the end, this was a very fun miniature to paint, especially after I got done with the base. The art design was exactly what I felt like painting at the time, and it's a perfect representation of the more gritty, vulgar - certainly nightmarish - and yet almost elegant nature of some of KDM's miniatures. I look forward to showing you the next monster soon. As always, I hope that this showcase is enjoyed by all whom read it. Please, please feel free share any comments or critiques. If you find my blog enjoyable, be sure to follow and subscribe. Not sure what either do but it should be fun either way.

 Thanks very much!