Warhammer 40,000 - Saint Celestine Shrine

I had recently picked up the Blood and Zeal box for Kill Team as it was filled with goodies that I wanted. Chief amongst them being the statue of the Living Saint Celestine, because nothing cements your terrain in the 41st millennium like a statue of someone standing on a pile of skulls. Also, I recall the kit being fairly pricy, even for Games Workshop terrain, so grabbing it the Kill Team box set seemed like a no brainer.

With that in mind I cracked open the box and set to assembly. The kit went together fairly well, compared to some other kits it wasn’t too much effort to get everything lined up. The only issue, so to speak, was that the candles are a little precarious, and it’s quite easy to accidentally snap them off while one man-handles the statue. There were some gaps though, so I broke out the greenstuff and got to stuffing. It did get a little frustrating filling some of the gaps, but it was my overuse of Vaseline that was to blame. Whilst it’s useful to stop the greenstuff sticking to you or your sculpting tools, it’s also really good at stopping the greenstuff from sticking to the model. But a quick wipe down with some white spirits solves that issue. Once I was done gap filling, I let the greenstuff fully cure for a day or so then primed the model with Colour Forge Standard Grey.

I started the painting by giving the statue and pile of skulls a basecoat of Vallejo Khaki. To speed things up, and to ensure an even coat, I used an airbrush for this step. I then gave these areas a wash of Army Painter Strong Tone thinned with Lahmian Medium. This brings out the texture of the miniature without, hopefully, darkening it too much. I kept an eye on it, particularly on the wings, for any pooling of the wash, wicking it away with a dry paint brush. Once it was fully dry, I realised that I had perhaps thinned the wash a little too much as it hadn’t quite produced the effect I had wanted, the recesses were not quite as dark as they could have been. Not the end of the world however as the benefit of using thinned paints is that you can just apply a second coat. With that in mind, I mixed up a new batch, albeit with slightly less Lahmian Medium, and applied this to the wing, torso and skulls. With this second coat, I achieved the effect that I was looking for. The recesses were sufficiently darkened to stand out from the raised areas. To further bring out the texture, the next step would be to brighten the raised areas, thus maximising the contrast between the darkest and brightest areas. To do this I gave the statue and skull areas a drybrush of Tyrant Skull followed by a lighter drybrush of Archive-X Reefer White. To increase the visual interest, I was tempted to pick out a couple of details on the statue in different colours, such as the Iron Halo in gold or bronze perhaps, or maybe paint the fire to make it look like it is fire rather than stone. In the end I was happy with how it looked and moved onto the base plinth.

The first step was to tidy up any areas that I had over sprayed with Vallejo Khaki using Two Thin Coats Dungeon Stone to return them to the default grey. With that done I then base coated the candles with Army Painter Skeleton Bone before giving them a wash of Seraphim Sepia. The wash had made the candles a little to orangey-yellow so to brighten them up again I gave them a quick highlight on the rivulets of wax with Army Painter Skeleton Bone. For the flames, I painted them first with Army Painter Matt White and then with Imperial Fist contrast paint. Next, I picked out the fleur-de-lis and the recessed statuettes with a couple thin coats of Scale75 Dwarven Gold. The latter I washed with Reikland Fleshshade to give them a rosy gold appearance. The former I washed with undiluted Army Painter Strong Tone. And while I had it out, I used Strong Tone to shade the rivets and recesses on the plinth. Finally, I used Two Thin Coats Carcharodon Grey to pick out the rivets and do some quick edge highlights around the plinth just to make things pop a little more.

And with that my glorious statue was complete, ready to inspire my Imperial forces to ever greater acts of zealotry.