today on the hobby grotto we're painting a blight king of nurgle
now i'm going to start with the metal bits using my usual mix of rhinox hide and iron
warriors to create a dark and dingy metallic look and i'm doing this first so i can do a
bit of dry brushing on some of the larger parts and not mess up the other base coats
you can make this more brown or silver depending on the look you're going for
i like to keep the metal nice and dark to create contrast with the brighter parts of the model.
doing a light dry brush now with silver will just save us time on all the metallics, once they get a
wash they'll only need minimal highlighting later. i like to get any dry brushing out of the way
early on because it's a hard thing to be precise with and you're going to splash over onto other
colors if you've got other stuff painted so this way you can use a nice big brush with no stress.
the skin is easily the largest part of the model and is a strong focal point this base layer of
cadian fleshtone has a bit of screamer pink mixed in to make it a bit more sickly and pinkish,
screamer pink is a very strong color so you only need a little bit you don't want to stray too much
from the vibe of cadian fleshtone here or it won't work without highlights later but i still like it
to have quite a pinkish quality to it and i paint all aspects of the skin with this, the boils, the
wounds, the organs, everything because once it's all highlighted i'm going to use glazes to create some
other effects and colors. i usually go two coats and keep it nice and thin with skin you don't
need to be crazy consistent because there'll be a bunch more layers over this initial base coat.
i decided to keep the inside of the chest cavity black to create more contrast and make
it look a bit more weird but this could just as easily be a dark red or something like that
i like to paint the armor in three different colours as seen here on some of my other Blight
Kings, predominantly dirty white with purple and green bits because they're
the classic nurgle colors. Starting with the dirty white which gets a base of XV-88
i like the idea of my blight kings having this original noble white armor that's slowly decaying
and being replaced with the green and purple colours of nurgle and using different colours
also gives it that more ramshackle look. The parallels with 40k's death guard are also there
and i just think off-white is a great colour to help build the contrast on nurgle models.
the green is loren forest and it's a bit more of a washed out green which i love for nurgle
it's almost like a bit mouldy looking and i like to concentrate this on the shoulder pauldrons
specifically in this color scheme. While i wanted to include green in the armor
it's a very common way to paint nurgle so i minimize it into a few key areas
and then i got the best of both worlds! There's only a little bit
on this particular blight king but i also like to paint random details green too.
i paint all the helmets purple to try and give this idea of an insect or bug style head
something about the little purple head makes me think that i don't know why but it's become my
theme, and the line cloths as well get a bit of purple so we get this nice distribution of the
three armor colors across the whole model. with minis that are very busy like this
it's really important to get the color composition and placement right so we get a nice contrast.
there are a couple of straps and details that i'm painting with rhinox hide we don't need any
more colors on this model so a nice neutral brown for the bits and pieces is perfect.
the reason i go brown over black for stuff like this generally is because leaving it black makes
it look a little bit unfinished so i just hit it with a nice bit of rhinox and then
it's pretty much done nobody's looking at this stuff anyway. I'm also giving the base a quick
dry brush with dawn stone so i can hit it with the wash that's just for my convenience i'll be
doing the bases later but uh you may definitely be doing your base in a different way to this.
washes work great for detailed models like this i like to put the Nuln Oil on heavy to
help with the black lining effect it just needs to be checked for pooling because there are
lots of little holes and things on nurgle minis where washes can collect in an undesirable way,
and black as a wash is going to work perfectly for all these colors
and then we're just going to build the highlights up over the top of it.
i'm going to tackle the skin first because it's the most time consuming part of the mini and
it's always good to work inside out to minimize mess. Because this is the base layer it's going
to show through the subsequent layers so you can adjust how pink you want the skin here with the
amount of screamer you add i like to have this pinkish hue in all the shading so i'm repainting
most of the surfaces here and only leaving the nuln oil shaded base in the deepest recesses.
the next layer up is pure cadian fleshtone and the good thing about this color is that it's not
a blend like the previous one so it's going to give all your different paint jobs some consistency
you don't even have to be too neat with these highlights any kind of messiness
works with the previous pinky tone and gives a splotchy effect that's perfect for nurgle but
just make sure it's nice and thin so it keeps translucency. But if you want to paint nurgle
minis they like to show some skin so you've got to get through a lot of these slabs and
they can be a bit grueling you know but it will level up your skin painting skills enormously!
the final highlight is to pick out all the lovely details on the skin
and i give all the boils and wounds this same highlight because i'm going to be
coloring them later with glazes sometimes i even like to add a pure white highlight
to the boils because it gets toned down a bit anyway with the glaze
as i always say it's really easy to get carried away with these final highlights so
i often like to just strategically place them on focal points rather than trying
to edge highlight everything. I'm going to be giving the skin a bit of a rest after
this and come back later for the glaze that's enough skin for the time being.
and i'm just reapplying the base coat first, i have to say nurgle models will forever be
some of my favorite minis to paint because they're so wacky and interesting looking
they really reward experimenting with painting and using a combination of different techniques
and you don't have to worry about being neat which is very liberating.
everyone should have a nurgle army in addition to their other stuff i'm telling you!
to make the blend to bone smoother i'm coming through and doing a layer of xv-88 and ushabti
a bit more sparingly than the the base remember we're highlighting here
but we still want to keep it kind of grungy because this is a light color
it's going to take a lot of coats so keep the paint nice and watered down
preferably on a wet palette i think it's the key for layering like this.
i'm edge highlighting everything with Ushabti Bone this will really brighten up the armor and
get us that nice dirty white look you can almost glaze this color onto some of the larger flat
surfaces of armor, again the beauty of nurgle is you don't have to be too neat with this stuff
if you go a little heavy on the highlighting it will just look like damage and marks and
you can even glaze over it later and reduce its intensity and it'll all just work with the style.
because the blight kings are such awesomely sculpted models i find they take really well to
final extreme highlights like little dots mainly concentrated on pointy bits but
i also stipple a bright highlight like this on areas such as damage
on the metal and pock marks to give it a bit more definition.
this shoulder pauldron really gives me koopa troopa vibes and i'm being careful to leave a bit
of shading around all the spikes to make them look a bit more pronounced but i really love this green
i have lots of greens and i usually like brighter greens but this here, this is my nurgle green!
to lighten it with highlights i just mix Ionrach Skin, ionrach skin is kind of like
a bone color but with a green tinge so it's perfect for a lot of highlight mixes like this.
final point highlights are with pure ionrach but if you find these
a little too harsh mix in a spot of loren forest to bring it back a bit.
now i have a bit of a confession i love the fact that pretty much all the nurgle blight
kings are wearing helmets or can be chosen to be built that way because not having to paint any
eyes and faces is truly wonderful. I also really like the design of the nurgle helmets themselves
they're almost more faceless masks sometimes and the facelessness adds a sinister element!
i pretty much only use these kinds of heads in my own army.
to blend up the highlights i'm mixing in Genestealer Purple
and i like to do quite a few layers of highlights with a purple like this
because it's such a dark color it really responds well to extreme highlights.
pure genestealer purple is added to accentuate the extreme highlights
particularly on the helmet details like the eye holes to make them stand out
otherwise the face can look a little bit boring.
i even take it one step further by mixing up a white and purple highlight for the final details
i like to paint a highlight like this on the bottom part of the eye
holes to make them stand out a bit more as well as on the points of the fabric.
before i get onto the glazes i'm going to finish a few more details a subtle highlight
on this wood because it has some nice texture just a quick mix of rhinox and XV-88 is all you
need for this kind of thing but if i want a paler wood i'll sometimes mix bone with rhinox instead.
and i'm also adding a few silver highlights here and there mainly on the rims of the bells
to make them pop a bit more if you hadn't noticed
this guy has a lot of bells i think i tried to use them all on this model
now i'm going to apply a series of glazes on the model starting with wyldwood contrast on
all the dings in the armor, well this is a bit more of a wash this one but the reason i use
contrast paints for glazes is because they're already at a handy consistency but any of these
colors can be made with traditional paints you know thinned down with medium.
contrast paints just save a bit of time and effort and make it more consistent
all the boils are going to get some plague bearer flesh and i should point out that
although contrast paints are already a good consistency for this kind of work
i do still like to dilute them with a touch of medium or water because
you want to make sure these are really thin and then you do multiple glaze coats to increase the
intensity of color you don't want it to go on too thick or ruin all the previous highlights
i like to use a combination of volupus pink and magos purple for all the wounds and tender flesh
and i paint this glaze in the wound itself as well as on the skin around it if you keep this nice and
thin you can build up a natural blend on the skin and make some parts look more red and pronounced
and more sore looking i actually uh i went a bit too far on the giant open chest wound and lost
some of the contrast in detail so actually came back later and applied a dark purple glaze to some
of the inner parts it's really easy to go over the top with glazing so just be careful and keep
it thin enough that you barely see anything going on you'll start to really see it after a few coats
i'm also applying magos purple to some of the deeper folds of skin
and areas like the tentacle to give a bit more definition and reinforce that sick bloated look
i was gonna glaze the tentacle green actually but uh i decided to keep it pink in the last
minute because it was reminding me of Krang, which is a good thing!
finally i'm giving all the pustules a dab or two
of creed camo just to make them look a bit more gross.
and then we have a Blight King of Nurgle, some of my all-time favorite gw models
and always a pleasure to paint because you can get crazy! Thanks for watching the video
don't forget to check out some of my other Nurgle stuff and we'll see you next time on the Hobby Grotto! :)