Painting the Lord of Contagion

Introduction

I was asked in my local Game Workshop whether I would be interested in getting a miniature of the new Warhammer 40.000 box before release to paint it and maybe write a little step by step about it. It was not hard for me to say yes - especially as it meant getting my hand on one of the new Nurgle models.
The amount of detail on them is staggering and the Lord of Contagion is probably the "worst" of them. It was a lot of fun and required quite a bit patience to paint this one.

My goal with this miniature was to have a "typical" Nurgle miniature + a lot more colors. I used a number of reference pictures from the web but mostly referred to pictures of shipwrecks. Those are probably the best example of very colorful rot.

Preparation

I primed the miniature in black and added zenithal highlighting from the top with white. I did use an airbrush for this. The miniature is very complicated and the lower picture shows the separate pieces I had for painting it. Especially this miniature would be a lot harder to paint when fully assembled. As you can see I am using miniature holders which is a big help and makes painting just a lot more comfortable. For the black + white priming I bluetacked the mini together.

The armor

I started with a basecolor of Scale75 - Field Gray. It has a nice greenish tint and is dark enough to allow nice contrast to the highlights and shadows. As I wanted to give the mini more colors then the "classic" Nurgle Scheme I wet blended into P3 Rucksack Tan on the feet and SC75 - Anthares Red on the upper Torso.

The next step was sketching in the first lights and shadows using a mix of White + Rucksack Tan and Vallejo Armor Brown + Rucksack Tan. 

After that I glazed the base color over that to smooth things out. Then I reintroduced shadows and lights and strengthened them with ever stronger mixes towards White and Armor Brown - using glazes of the base color to smooth over. You can get an idea of the approach in my face painting tutorial here: http://miniatures-nechromus.blogspot.de/2017/05/painting-face-with-sketching.html. The picture above shows the result of me testing the approach on the left foot.

The mid section was done in a very similar way. I used Vallejo - Dark Sea Blue for the shadows and white again for the high lights. I also added rust stains and holes already to get a better feel for the overall decay of the armor. Later I glazed over the mid section with Rucksack Tan to getter a better connection to the lower part.

As I have painted so many red miniature by now red is something I am very used to. This time I used Dark Sea Blue and later a bit of Armor Brown for the shadows. Highlighting red is a bit special. I use various shades of pink to do that which I then glaze over with the base color to reduce the "pinkishness" a bit. I find it important to put the final highlights in almost white (still a bit of red in it) as this makes things pop properly in the end. If things look too bright or too pink I use glazes to reduce the effect. I also tried adding some veins in purple to the upper part of the armor but I think in the end that did not work out so well. They are still visible in the final mini but did not give me quite the effect I was hoping for.

I painted the belly using my skin tone technique (http://miniatures-nechromus.blogspot.de/2017/05/painting-face-with-sketching.html). I wanted a very alive look for the skin to make the whole thing contrast with decay of the armor and also simply to make it look more gross.

The intestines where painted in grey and purple and highlighted rather sharply to give them a wet look. The skull (I love painting skulls) was done using black, white and SC 75 - Brown Leather. I mixed a greyish brown as my base color and used the sketching technique to get highlights and shadows smoothed out. I decided to go for the bright green to set a point of strong contrast in the area and also have something to discover when looking at the miniature. I also painted all the metal parts in a dark brown (GW - Rhinox Hide) to get a better understanding of the color and brightness setup.

The metallics where a bit of a challenge as I wanted to have the bright reflexes of metal as a contrast in the mini but also wanted them to follow the decay idea of the rest. I painted the highlights over the dark brown foundation with a mix of Valejo - Black Metal and brown. I did the shadows with glazes of army painter Matt Black + brown. I like the effect of the matt black on metallics as it allows to control the reflectiveness of the surface very well. By placing it right I can remove the shine of the metallic color where I want to. Edges where highlighted by dabbing Vallejo - Chrome. I tried to avoid strait lines here to give the metal a more broken feel. The final step was introducing the rust by multiple targeted washes of orange. I also painted on rust streaks on the surrounding armor by glazing in orange + brown mixes.

I decided for a garish pink for the tentacle. It will be somewhat hidden by the cloak later on and I wanted to make sure that it still would stand out enough. The backside of it was painted with purple. To give the tentacles more structure I exagerrated the backside and added the white spots on the side. This is a good example to adding additional detail by painting it on.

The head

Originally I had the intention of painting the head in white or bone color (similar to the one on the feet). Once I had the armor done I felt I wanted to continue the idea of the red of the upper third.

I used a similar pink to the one I used for the tentacles. I wanted the view to be drawn to the head. This miniature has so much detail that I felt I needed a very clear target for the viewer. The metal of the horn was done exactly like I had done it on the armor.

The Arms

I replicated the rucksack tan - to green fade I used on the legs on the arms.

The axe-blade was done by blending from purple-metal on the lower tip to a green-metal in the middle and a turquoise-metal in the upper corner. I wanted to give the blade a bit of sickly looking oily feeling.
The leather strapping was done by using GW - Rhinox Hide as a base color and then highlight up with mixes of Rhinox Hide and Vallejo Elven Flesh. I have used that approach before and the Elven Flesh gives a nice natural looking highlight to the reddish Rhinox Hide.

The Cloak

Initially I had tried to paint the cloak by simply using Army Painter Strong Tone in multiple layers directly over the black+white primer but at the end I felt that it had gotten too dark. So I decided to "restart" the cloak by applying Vallejo - Bone White with the airbrush directly over it. You can see the result below.

The armor parts I had painted with Field Grey and added the Anthares Red to mirror the upper part of the armor.

By glazing with SC - Brown Leather I pushed the shadows and tinted the surface as a whole. After that I reestablished the highlights by glazing with Bone White. The dirt at the lower end was stippled with SC - Brown Leather and Orange. I also splattered the cloak with drops of brown leather and orange.

I blocked out the metals in black and got the rusty feeling by using different mixes of Orange + SC -Brown Leather.

I struggled a bit with finalizing the armor pieces. With soft color transition it all looked very boring. When I started to add even more heavy scratches then the ones modeled into the miniature the whole thing started to feel right.

The big horn was done by first wet blending from Vallejo - Armor Brown to P3 - Rucksack Tan. Then I painted a lot of fine lines in pure Armor Brown, Rucksack Tan and Rucksack Tan + White mix. After that I glazed over it with Rucksack Tan and Armor Brown. That way I wanted to achieve a rather natural look of living piece of horn.

I did the metals in "classic" TMM style. I used the metals very sparingly and highlighted up to a Vallejo - Chrome + Vallejo - Blackmetal mix to leave the pure Chrome for the edge highlights. I softy applied metal colors to the chainmail pieces. I used it only very sparingly to not ruin the nicely rusted and weathered effect. Then I applied orange wash to simulate rust where it made sense.

The actual nurgle symbol I did with bronce colors (I do not remember which colors exactly). 

The heads in the Nurgle Symbol used colors schemes I had used elsewhere on the mini: the pink of the tentacle and head, the skull was done the same way as the one hanging down on the armor. The Nurgling was done using Vallejo - Darksea Blue. I planned to do one of the Nurglings the mini stands on with that color.

Getting the smoke working was a bit painful. I used Vallejo - Turquoise. But it took multiple tries and layers to get to the final result. I cannot say that I am completely happy with the final result of the smoke but I simply ran out of time. ;-)

The final result

I am quite happy with the final result. I feel I managed to break up the monotone Nurgle green with colors and still retain the overall greenish appeal. He seems properly disgusting.