Possessed by Wrath

 A few weeks ago I painted this chap to fill my saturday afternoon.

I didn´t want to use the typical red Khorne color scheme, but for the longest time didn´t have an idea. 

In the end I decided to use the faces on the armor to make things more interesting and give the miniature a theme: A human possessed by demons bound to the suit of armor he wears.

As such, the demon faces on the armor needed to look like they come alive while still appearing as part of the suit.

All in all, an interesting and fun challenge to paint this figure!

 

The Wasting Warband

And so the warband gathers to plunder and kill, their presence announced far beyond the horizon by the gutwrenching stench they carrry.

I hope you enjoyed this little special week of Nurgle models.
If that was too much fantasy for your taste, I´ve got good news: I´ll be presenting some new 20mm figures soon.

If you liked all that Fantasy, I also got good news: More is on the way, I much enjoy painting these models and I´ve got more in the pipeline, with a slightly different focus. 

The Ironclad

Clad in corroding armor plates, some Champions contain their bodies to prevent guts and rot from spilling all around. They carry armor not just for the sake of protection - layers of rotten flesh and nurgles gift are providing resilience far beyond any conventional armor - but for mobility.  At a certain level of decay, armor becomes less encumbering than carrying none. 

Especially if demonic strength provides power and endurance of unimaginable plenty.

Legions of Decay

The endless Legions of foulness accompany the great plaguelords as they scour the lands. Their presence spreads terror, for their biggest weapon is invisible and deadly: Nurgles Gift.  Once contracted, you are given a terrible choice: Serve and replenish the unending legions or succumb to the terrible symptoms of the scourge.

The Legions are growing stronger. Soon, they will be among us. Steel yourself for the inevitable battle.

The Insatiable

Driven by insatiable hunger this Champion of Nurgle marches forth to slaughter and consume the mortals, with tentacles stuffing their bloody remains into his belly.

Wobble

As the minis look so much better on a dark background, I used the opportunity to take decent photos of the already finished Blightkings when I had the equipment all set up for the Plaguebearers.

Some of you might know them already, but I find it remarkable to see how a different backdrop and a good camera (with the right settings figured out thanks to some good tutorials online) makes all the difference.

So again from the Mist of the Chaos Wastes emerges the first Chosen of Nurgle to spread pestilence among the living:

Stay tuned for more of these improved shots  :)

Walking Rotbags

I´ve long been looking for a Fantasy Skirmish System that allows me to use the limited number and mixed factions of Fantasy Figures on my shelf - most of what I looked at so far was not to my taste, mostly because the forces involved where too big and I couldn´t muster a coherent force.

So, despite my concerns that it might be too simplistic, I decided to risk 7€ by buying the new release of the Warhammer AoS - Skirmish version, hoping to field a small warband of 3-5 Minitures in a Fantasy Skirmish Game.
As I wanted to bring my lovely Nurgle Blightkings I ordered a set of Plaguebeareres with the rules and added some cheap infantry choice to supplement the heavier Lord/Heavy Infantry style Blightkings.

Of course this also offered the opportunity to practice some more speed and batch-painting using airbrush techniques and faster painting methods than I use on the larger or more complex models, which can be very time consuming.

The Plaguebearers where simple and organic enough to use mostly airbrush, washes, drybrush and only a small amount of manual brushwork to work out the highlights.

And so I was able to produce the first batch in comparatively little time to a nice standard.

Three more are on my painting table still waiting for the detailling and highlighting after the washes :)

Fueled by Chaos

Time for another picture from my recent photography session.

This Bloodletter is a few months old - the idea was to try something different from the  usual blood red scheme you always see, so he got a somewhat tzeenchy look.
The big experiments on this guy was the effect on the hand, the blade and the OSL-look of the glowing eyes. 

 

Can you see how he fuels the sword with his daemonic powers, flowing from his arm into the blade?

 

Painting Pestilence - The Conclusion

Hi all,

I´ve done it again, the blog has gone silent for quite a while now as I didn´t have much motivation to post here. But rejoice, it got some cool stuff finished and in the pipeline for the blog that will appear shortly.

I´m starting today to finish something I left off back in december.
Remember my attempt to record a step by step documentation on painting a Blightking?  I never posted the second part - until now.

So I dug out the photos from december and prepped them for you.
First however, the final result to wet some appetite:

Well - too bad blogger doesn´t like transparency.  He was supposed to look like this

Last time, we left off when he still looked like this:

The next step was to paint the left armor. I chose to glaze them in a light purple towards the knee and upper leg, fading into a green towards the feet.
You can see on the palette that I´m not using pure purple - I believe the base color Hexed Lichen was modified with a bit of ivory to achieve a more pastel effect. The transition was achieved with a wet blend.

Like the armor on the torso, the trick was to apply thin layers and leave the pre-shading from the priming stage shining through to create shadows and highlights.

At this stage, I also painted the belt using different shades created with cork brown as a starting point.

Next, I added edge highlighting on all the armor parts - I went with a mix of orange, tan and ivory to create the light orange edge highlight and re-used my purple and green with added parts of ivory to highlight the leg armor.

The hood was painted in a  brown, not sure if I mixed it on the palette or took something straight from the pot -  again, the edge highligh was just base color + added parts of  tan/ivory.

As you can see, at this stage the hands and straps on the armor have also been painted in. The straps are using the same colors as the hood

Next I painted the armor on the arms in Dark Sea Blue and highlighted them using the same technique as above  - no pictures though.

That left me with just the antler - they were rather tricky, I finally settled for giving them a very suble glaze of browns to create a natural look. I think I used Agrax Earthsahde here. The rotten interior was shaded with green and re-established the shadows by brushing in some very dark brown.

Towards the end I also hit the blades with some rusty orange pigments that I watered down and slapped onto the blade to create the rust effects.

Last, I painted the base in a very swampy theme like the rest of my BlightKings and mounted the mini. So, here he is:

Painting Pestilence - Blightking WIP

Today I have something special for you.

Throughout the last weekend I worked on painting a Games Workshop Blightking that I converted a bit to make it even more unique than the standard options allow me.
He sat in the queue for a few months after I painted the other two blightkings 

I had him primed in Black and Grey using my Airbrush, but all of the following painting procedure was done solely using a brush..

On saturday I finally started and went into full painting mood. I picked a small detail to begin - the head he carried on the armor -  and worked my way outward.
 

 I thought that taking pictures of my palette would give you a good impression on the colors used. Bottom to top we have:

- Dark Sea Blue (VJ MC)

- Imperial Blue (VJ GA)

- Hexed Lichen (VJ GA)

- Dark Green (VJ GA)

- Armour Green (VJ MA)

- Hull Red (VJ MA)

- Black (VJ MC)

And from the left to the right edge:

- Cork Brown (VJ MC)

- Tan Yellow (VJ MC)

- Dark Flesh (VJ MC)

- Ivory (MC)

VJ = Vallejo

MC  = Model Color

GA = Game Air

MA = Model Air

Most of the intermediate colors where created by mixing these to different degre, as we will see when the palette changes as we go along.  I´m not even sure if I touched the Dark Flesh at all.

Next you can see how I started to build up the red armor. Before I did this I put in some edge highlights in white onto the black-grey gradient, hoping it would shine through and create some depth. In the end I added another edge highlight later on, so that was a bit of a waste. 

Apart from that, it was just several thin layers of Hull Red.

After that was done, I had a nice coat of red on the armor parts.

Next time, I´ll show you how I built up on that, so stay tuned to see the mini taking shape!

I you like this format and would like to see more like this, let me know in the comments.

Walking Pestilence

Hey all,

I´ve been silent again for quite a while, but by no means idle. I´m silently sculpting and painting more figures to show you soon, but not taking many photos - I guess I could work on that if you´re interested in seeing more WIP pictures?

Anyway, today I got a finished model after putting many hours of work into it: The Second Blight King has been completed!

I´ve been experimenting heavily with this guy, working back and forth on different areas until I achieved a look that I´m happy with. I started with an airbrushed base to establish the basic values and colors and worked up on that with many glazes and detail-brushwork to add depth to the figure.

The most challenging and also the most rewarding part was the experiment I did on the kneepad - the Non-metallic effect using a horizon line and reflections of the environment turned out quite nicely I believe.

Most room for improvement is still on the base. I put it together without considering the footprint of the mini, so most of the work on the swamp water is probably lost to the observer. A shame, as the base itself looked quite decent, but was covered up by the monstrous mini and just leaves the less impressive elements (rocks and tree) to be seen.

Apart from that, I probably could have added more shine to the helmet, shoulder blade and axe. My original intention was to make them  look dull, dusty and aged like they do, but the contrast to the kneepad makes it look a little odd.

I hope you enjoy this figure, painting it was a fun experience and I´m looking forward to starting the more heavily armored guy next: