My Fifth Monster: The Sunstalker (Painted Late Nov, 18)

"Once sky had no day. There was a Shadow that was sad, it could only play in small light of a lantern. The Shadow found a hole in the sky and decided to steal enough lanterns to fill it. It took many generations, and when it was done the shadow slept under its big light, dreaming dreams about how it would play. When it awoke, all of the light was gone! At the center of the hole in the sky, was a tiny shinning entity, with a great big mouth. The shadow names the tiny thing the sun and they played forever." 

- Excerpt from Kingdom Death: Monster - Sunstalker Expansion

By mid November, 2018, I had begun to get antsy about painting a new KDM miniature, and in full blown collection mode. At the time, all expansions were unavailable from the Kingdom Death Store, so I scowered until I found a Sunstalker expansion available from Ebay. After winning the bid, I soon got the expansion and about a week before Thanksgiving, I had the miniature put together. All I needed to do from there was figure a good time to paint.

So as usual, I did some research and found a color palette that most closely mimicked the artist's vision. This time, I did want to incorporate my own ideas as well, however minor they were.

The process of painting the Sunstalker was rather easy relative to painting the regular 30mm miniatures. I started with the base coats: the forest green, then the sandy tan tones, then the woodland brown. Given how large the surface of the miniature was, getting this part done was quicker than base coating a survivor.

After the base coats came the washes. I used The Army Painter strong tone wash on the green parts, then created my own darker green wash and applied that over the first wash for a layered shadow. Afterwards I used a lot of dark tone for the brown parts of the miniature, applying more was as I wend down the tentacles. The intent was to give the tentacles a dirty look since the Sunstalker moves on them. I also used a blotch technique to try to get the wash look more matted on.

After all the washes, I focused on dry-brush highlighting, especially around the "hands" of the Sunstalker. The picture that I went of had a good degree of highlighting here and I wanted to follow that. I also focused on layered dry-brush highlights around the nose and the bumps on the top of the "head".

A note about dry-brush highlighting: I've read a lot of commentary about accentuating highlights. Normally I want to be more subtle with my highlights, but that being said, I did go a bit overboard with the Sunstalker, and I think the pictures look good.

Before the Sunstalker, I had never tried to blend colors on a miniature before. I wanted to try with the Sunstalker since the miniature is large and easy to work with. On the belly, I wanted to blend the dark brown and tan colors into each other while at the same time doing the same with the tan and green around the mouth. For a first try, I think the outcome was fairly good.

I finally did some eyes! Given that this is the largest set of eyes that I've been given on a miniature so far, I thought I'd be very dumb not to try. The eyeballs and the pupils are both round without major blemishes so I'm happy with that.

Lastly, there's the mouth. I used an effect paint from The Army Painter to give a shiny, fleshy tone, and then when matte white with the teeth. I was kinda happy with how unnaturally white the teeth were so I decided not to do any shadowing or any further detailing. Over time, my opinion on this may change.

Lastly, I wanted to do a bit extra with the Poots emblem on the base of all KDM miniatures. Normally I give the base an ash grey base color then use a strong or dark tone wash to give some depth, then leave it at that. With this one, I went a bit extra. I gave the regular ash grey coat, then covered the base with a dark tone, then lightly brushed the base to give it the stripe effect. After that dried, I watered down some glistening blood effect paint then dripped it over the Poots emblem itself. I also used a painting effect to give the splatter effect. Afterwards, I tilted the base and had the watered down red drip to simulate blood running down the base. For my first attempt at this I'm happy. I look forward to using this technique later on, maybe for something more than just the underbelly. And of course, I ❤ Poots.

This is the largest miniature to date, was great practice, and was lots of fun to paint. I hope that this showcase is enjoyed and please feel free share any comments or critiques. If you find my blog enjoyable, be sure to follow or subscribe.

Thanks much!