Another KD Satan Miniature: the Santa Satan 30mm Edition (Painted 2/1/19)

After working on the Lonely Tree Kingdom Death Miniature for over a week, I wanted to work on something that wouldn't take white as much time. Last December, a few specials showed up on the Kingdom Death Store including a few special Christmas miniatures. One was a Satan special edition: a 50mm pinup display miniature that unbeknownst to me, also was accompanied with a 30mm miniature as well. I knew the Santa Satan 50mm came with a mysterious extra something, but I wasn't expecting another miniature! So I took this as a sign, put together the 30mm Santa Satan Miniature and primed her up for painting.

Before I begin to regurgitate my painting process and how the overall experience was, I do want to note two things:

1. Normally I have someone better than myself taking the pictures. Alas, for this miniature there was just myself to take pictures. I apologize beforehand. 

2. This miniature does contain nudity (specifically nip slips). While I do have a disclaimer regarding

graphic content before you enter my blog site, I want to reiterate this. If this is bothersome, then you're in luck; I already mentioned that I take crap pictures so said nudity won't be overly apparent. If you were looking forward to some nipples, then I'd recommend seeing about getting the miniature for yourself (eBay?) and giving her a paint. Anyway, back to the action.

So my plan for this model was pretty strait forward and in keeping with how I normally go about painting my miniatures. I wanted to keep with the Santa theme that the artist envisioned for the Santa Satan. While the miniature only came with an art card for the 50mm miniature, it was still a good source to work from. Secondly, I wanted to focus on accuracy and really putting more depth into shading and highlighting. 

As always, I started with the skin tone of the Santa Satan. In the art card, the miniature has almost paper like tones to her skin. I've tried to make a very pale skinned miniatures in the past and it didn't work out so well. This time, I went with a bit more traditional Caucasian skin tone. I've typically used layering techniques for the skin tone of my miniatures and 

the same applied for this miniature. I typically use three to four base paint tones for skin layering. For this miniature I used Army Painter base tones:

- Tanned Flesh
- Barbarian Flesh
- Corpse Pale

I started with the tanned flesh first since it was the darkest shade. I covered 100 percent of the skin areas of the miniature. After I got a good consistent base color, I moved on to the barbarian flesh and painted most areas of the skin, making sure to steer away of the areas that would produce a natural shadow. After I put down a few coats of this, I then went with on to the corpse pale. I used this paint similarly as I would any dry-brush paint; I only focused on highlighting areas of the skin that would see more light. 

 Normally the KDM miniatures that I work on have very little else to work on when it comes to the skin: eyes and a mouth, and you're done. This miniature had a bit extra going on with it.

For the eyes, I use a slightly darker tone than the tanned flesh (usually a brownish wash) for the foundation. Then I use an off-white wash for the eye itself. Once I've got a nice dried eye to work off,

then I go for the pupil. For this miniature, I wanted to go dark red instead of my more traditional black pupil. Also, I went and used the same said red to give a bit of a cosmetic eye-shadowing and such. I also did a faint line of black to simulate the dark eyelashes on the tops of the eyes. Afterwards, I used a lighter pink tone to do a once over on the lips.  

It's here that I normally go on to another part of the miniature. However, I also had nipples to touch up. I used the same pinkish tone that I used for the lips and gave a once over for the base tone of the nipples. After that, I created a lighter tone of the pink and used it add a bit of highlight the nipples. I also used a bit on the lips of the miniature. The end product is as you see. 

The next part of Santa Satan that I focused on was the blouse. I went with a pure red as the base. Then I used a matt white for the trim. This was actually one of the rare times that I used a matt white instead of an off white as the base; it's my belief that few things in this world are truly pure white, hence the reason why I rarely incorporate that color in my work.

Normally I'd go on to paint another part of the miniature. However, I decided to focus a bit longer on the blouse. This is mostly because I was paint in the morning (as I usually do) and thus have limited time in a day, but also because I was actually really proud of how the miniature was turning out thus far and I wanted to keep that motivation up.

I created a slightly darker wash from the pure red (I blended it with a strong tone wash) and then went about creating the shadowing on the blouse. After that was done, I created a lighter shade of the red to use for highlighting. I did some dry-brushing on the folds of the blouse and then went and touched up a bit of the blouse that hugs the hips. I've seen countless other miniature painters add artificial highlighting before but I've always hesitated doing it myself, mostly because I though it looked a bit unnatural. However, I'm glad that I tried it out on this miniature; I think the outcome is pretty good. I didn't do much with the white trim however. I created a bit of an off-white wash and dabbled a bit on the fluff and called it a day.

After the blouse was done to satisfaction (I actually spent two days on it) I went about doing the rest of the clothing, hair, and gimmick antlers. I did all the base coating first, and then applied the associated washes and dry-brushing. I used orc blood for the gloves and stockings (or at least I think I did), bright gold metallic paint for the gold trim and shoes, and an off-white for the base color of the hair (again, I very rarely use pure white for anything). As one might expect, I created darker blended washes for any shadowing and lighter tones of the base color for dry-brush highlighting.

Two things to point out though regarding the hair and antlers: 

1. I created a slightly darker red wash (dark tone wash incorporated into the red base) and basically randomly splotched the wash on the antlers to recreate the same effect seen on the art card.   

2. With the hair, I created a grayish wash that I also incorporated silver metallic paint to create a bit of sparkle. The wash was assimilated into the gaps in the hair. I then created an off-white/silver metallics dry-brush blend to touch up the hair highlights and add more sparkle.

After I finished the main miniature, I began working on the accessories. Now here's where I was forced to be creative with the color palette. I started with the skull accessory in Santa Satan's left hand. With the skull itself, I went with a usharbti bone layer paint from Citadel Paints (a while ago I bought some Citadel Paints to test them out. So far so good). After the base was down, I went with a green base for the weird face thing that pours out of the skull's mouth. After the green base was down, I used a bit more usharbti bone for the teeth. Afterwards I placed a flesh wash on all the bone colored areas and put down a dark green wash for the green face. I don't really remember doing any highlights for this bit, so there you go.

After I was done with that bit, I went on to work on the wand in Santa Satan's right hand. A note about this: when I was first putting together the Santa Satan 30mm, I had no idea how to put together the wand properly, The end result is how I suspected the original design to look. Some time later, I found a picture of the completed product from the Kingdom Death site, and I did a pretty good job guessing. Apparently the wand is supposed to come out of the red satchel though...

Just like the skull accessory, I had no artistic input as to how this accessory would look. I went back to a previous Satan miniature that carried a wand and took inspiration from that. I used the same bright gold metallic paint from the Army Painter as the base. After I had a few coats down, I decided to paint two areas with a glistening blood effects paint to give the impression that these were gems studded into the wand's shaft. I then went and painted the head on the top with a darker pink flesh base and the laurel wreath with a forest green. Afterwards I applied the necessary shadowing and highlighting effects. 

I did decide to add an extra effect to the wand: I normally don't incorporate any blood effects in my Kingdom Death miniatures (I don't want the miniatures to seem too campy like an overly gory horror flick) but I decided to make an exception. I decided that the lower half of the wand shaft would have blood running down. I wanted the blood or originate from the Santa Satan's hand. The concept was to have the hand itself have no blood on it, but instead have the blood draining from the hand itself, sort of like water draining from a pitcher. I also incorporated a bit of blood on the snow below the wand to further simulate dripping. 

Last but not least: the Santa gift satchel. For this one, I kept the accessory separate form the main miniature till it was completely painted and dried. I gave it the same base coat as I did for the Santa Satan's blouse, then went with the same darker flesh tone that I used on the wand ordainment and painted the random body parts protruding form the bag. I then did the necessary shadowing and highlight effects. It was a pretty rough-and-tough job, but it looked pretty good all in all.

Given that this miniature was holiday themed, I wanted to go a bit further with the base and add an element of snow. I'd never done this before (intimidated) so to get over my trepidation, I kind of just went for it. I bought some generic snow flock from my local hobby shop and put down a few layers of snow. The Santa Satan miniature itself was already glued to the base before I put down the flock, and I placed one layer of snow flock on the base before placing the satchel. A few touch-ups later (I wanted the snow to look somewhat uneven) and I was done.

I've said this before, but by the time I was done with this miniature, I was pretty proud of the end result. At the time, I considered it to be my best 30mm work. I had a really good time painting this one, and learned a lot from the practice, especially with the custom base. Also, while this is considered a 30mm, the miniature is larger than many of the other KD miniatures so it was a great canvas to work on. Before this miniature, I wasn't really confident at all to create my own custom bases. After the practice, I decided that I'd give custom bases a try in my future works. We'll see how they turn out! Also, while this miniature didn't take too long overall, it still took about a week from start to finish. This was mostly due to the limited daily time I had to paint, the time I waited to complete the custom base, and also because I was working on parts of the miniature that I will post next.

Sorry for the delay in getting out this post. As is often the case, life often takes precedence. I hope that this showcase is enjoyed by all whom read it. Thanks so much for reading and please feel free share any comments or critiques. If you find my blog enjoyable, be sure to subscribe to get notifications on future posts.