Celestine Reborn? A Warhammer 40K miniature creation Story
Updated: Jul 27, 2022
So for the first time in a while I got to go travel for a bit. Sure it was a super cool just simple road trip with a ton of driving going across the US, all the way to the other side. At some point I stopped in Alabama and ended up being requested a super nifty commission. Something about Warhammer 40,000, a board game by Games Workshop .
At first it was meant to be one nude chickie from the sisters of battle ( Adepta Sororitas ), built by a company name Manufaktura Miniatures LLC.
I thought, "Cool."
But then I said, um ok, "but you have a lot of items I can custom add to this?
My friend replied, "Sure what do you have in mind?"
"Do you have one in there somewhere that comes with wings?"
He looked at me perplexed for about half a second and his countenance changed, "Yeah, there's the living saint."
So we proceeded going through some books with illustrations of this being who is supposedly important. What I gathered from the game lore was that there was a creature with wings, who somehow wasn't that cool before, the "Organization" is comprised of chickies with white hair among other things, and there is a new game expansion to the game that includes some creepy shiny green liquid that melts people away that the sisters of battle can somehow "pray" away if they get doused in it. I looked at some of the decorative elements and chose from the selection accordingly. A fleur-de-lis, and a broken helmet.
The base where this little statue is standing was very simple and smooth-surfaced, and all the elements you see here were added afterwards. I think I was maybe able to bring them together with gentle slopes of plaster to simulate dirt, until I liked it... Or almost. After looking some more at a few pieces of artwork, I noticed that there were some cool pieces of paper, with wax seals and found out they were called 'Purity Seal'. Obviously in a war game this term must be certainly used loosely, basically a stats enhancement of some kind. And so I asked, "Can I have one of those? It would be cool if she was. wearing one on her hip." And the rest of this 3D colored creation was history.
Next I wanted to her skin to have a different sheen from her wings, so I used two different kind of clear finish, one glossy and one matte. It really brought out her porcelain doll appearance. When I think of porcelain, I think fragile, delicate, timeless, and treasured. I think it worked well with some sort of new being that is different from the other Factions and somehow called their "Living Saint". So it worked well in my mind that way.
If you enjoy the process of creating miniatures from scratch soon I'll post some photos of most of the steps. Just know that I do not own any of the tools and materials that were used for the creation of this miniature and I can't achieve these results from my studio at the moment. The happy new owner of this little creation already had all the stuff available there, being a miniature painter by profession himself.
But I was happy to be asked to create this being adaptation based on my limited knowledge and limited fandom-ness of the game, I totally allowed myself to move my creation to a conceptualized idea instead of a concrete rendition of the model and her purpose in the Warhammer 40K game world.
I hope you enjoyed this little surprise artistic adventure I stumbled upon while traveling this summer ☺️. And thanks for reading!
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