Alex Dos Santos is not your typical artist.
He never trained professionally in drawing, painting or other visual arts. And nothing in his engineering background would hint at his passion for artistry.
But what’s even more unconventional is his medium: tabletop miniatures.
And though it doesn’t get the same attention as mainstream art forms, in his world, Dos Santos is recognized at the highest level.
Dos Santos was born in the French territory of New Caledonia in the South Pacific. And growing up, he and his friends had to use their imagination for their fun, which got them into Dungeons & Dragons and other role-playing games.
Dos Santos had his first taste of working with miniatures when the mother of a friend gifted the group a set of Warhammer figurines.
“I was 12 or 13,” Dos Santos says. “The first time I saw it, I was sold. Instead of just using pre-built characters, we could actually create our own characters from scratch.”
Dos Santos started treating his family’s annual trip to France as a kind of nerd pilgrimage and would buy figurines he couldn’t get back home. As he got older, though, and focused more on school and other activities, he had less time for miniature painting.
It wasn’t until much later, while living in Canada — where Dos Santos had gone to university and met his future wife — that he had an unexpected opportunity to return to his old hobby.
“During COVID, my brother bought me a 3D printer, and the first thing I thought about was printing miniatures,” he says. “It opened a whole new world.”
When Dos Santos showed his wife his first 3D-printed hand-painted miniature, she encouraged him to share it on Instagram. And that was where he discovered a thriving community.
“It was unbelievable, this international community of painters,” Dos Santos says. “I had no idea what things were possible. I was like, ‘Oh my God, I really want to do that. I want to create those miniature pieces of art.'”
From there, Dos Santos dove into online classes and tutorials, learning colour theory, light placement and other principles of visual art. He was inspired by professional painters like Erik Swinson, Andy Wardle and Richard Gray and would chat with them on social media.
One of those online friends directed Dos Santos to a small competition, and he wound up placing in the top five. Concentrating on a single project had proved so rewarding that he decided to go for the ultimate prize — a Golden Demon.
The Golden Demon was founded in 1987 and is the most prestigious and longest-running miniature-painting competition. The awards are presented at two annual gaming conventions: AdeptiCon, in the U.S., and Germany’s Spiel Essen. Dos Santos first entered in 2022 at AdeptiCon in the Chicago area.
“I was spending my nights painting that piece — even the two nights before the flight to Chicago,” Dos Santos says. “I did not sleep. And I remember when I arrived there, I had this huge doubt of faith. All this time, all this stress, just for this little toy soldier. I was like, ‘What am I doing?'”
But when the event started, the stress melted away. Dos Santos met Ian Paul Tallmadge — a fellow professional painter he had befriended online during the pandemic. And it showed him just how supportive the community could be.
“I was idolizing them, and I actually met them there and realized they’re super nice people,” Dos Santos says. “There was no ego. Everyone was very welcoming. And that changed everything.”
For his first Golden Demon, he took home bronze. In 2023, he took home two silvers. And last year, he entered his most ambitious project yet.
The Hollow King was inspired by vampire fiction and a play he’d seen in New York, which had used mirrors to create optical illusions. His idea was to create a model that showed a reflection, with different details on each side. According to the lore, vampires cast no reflection, so they were the perfect starting point.
Dos Santos credits his skills in photogrammetry — a method for creating a 3D structure using software that stitches together overlapping photographs — with helping him to build The Hollow King.
He scanned parts from the Warhammer range, as well as 3D-printed parts he created himself, manipulating them to create the reflection with an empty suit of armour and other spooky details.
At the conclusion of the 2024 Golden Demon, Dos Santos lifted the Slayer Sword — the highest honour of the show, representing the absolute best in miniature painting.
And the project had special meaning for him — it had taken him more than 300 hours to complete during a momentous time in his life.
“I started painting it when my first daughter was born,” Dos Santos says. “I had the baby monitor on the side. I was just painting four or five hours per day during her first three months. When I think about that piece, I think about my daughter.”
Other competition pieces of his can take 200 hours or more. His miniature of Éomer, from The Lord of the Rings, earned Dos Santos gold at this year’s Golden Demon.
Despite all his success, Dos Santos still believes people looking to get into miniature painting should do it for fun first, not for the glory.
“At the end of the day, you need to find pleasure in it,” Dos Santos says. “I think that a great way to improve is concentrate yourself on something specific — the skin tones, the ambience, the mood … Once it’s done, you can ask for feedback from other painters and see where your weak spots were.”
Dos Santos will compete next at the Nova Open convention in Washington at the end of August. His entry is a Thumbelina-like forest sprite, complete with grass and a frog — a miniature within a miniature in his tiny, wondrous and gorgeously painted world.
