Nurgle Hellbrute

I hereby present you yet another mischievous creature spawned at the everpumping Rotforge :) After having finished the cultists, I set myself a goal to paint this guy up within 3 evenings, to make deadline before Pandas hit tonight. It's nice to set and achieve goals. I should definitely do this more often to speed up my painting projects.

 

Approximately 20 hours later it's done. Oh man, I'm so happy about this guy. I honestly think this is, by far, the coolest model in my army. Ok so let's jump into the meat of it.

I'll start with a prologue, because with this guy it's actually quite important. Even before I started painting I had a big decision to make. Should I just throw green at him all the way or should I go with 2/3 flesh and 1/3 armor. It was tough to decide because on the one hand, the GW pics showed him painted all red with very little regard to flesh exposure and on the other, looking at the model, I saw flesh all over and could not figure out why they neglected it so much. In the end, I figured warped flesh is the way to go and will suit a Rotforge production much better :)

I started with a black primer. Unlike the cultists which were primed grey, I decided to go with black, because it makes for a better base for the dark, nurgly armor. Armor aside for now, the flesh was done first.

The first layer was dark flesh. One cannot simply use dwarf flesh on black primer. You need a darker tone first to get a more even coverage and be done with it in like 2 coats instead of a gazillion. Dwarf flesh was next however, followed by a generous ogryn flesh wash. Once that was dry I drybrushed elf flesh for some highlights and the new rakarth flesh to mute it down a bit and give it a tad of an undead look. Further muting was done with a devlan mud wash which was then, once again, followed by a slight rakarth flesh drybrush. I went with mostly the drybrush technique for the skin because there was so much of it and (especially on the back) in such large areas that I thought that painting would leave visible marks which wouldn't look to good.

While painting armor, I kinda went back to my orignal design. I started with catachan green, followed by a heavy wash of thrakka green and while it was still drying - devland mud. Once dry, I repainted catachan, leaving just the edges out. Then followed a series of 4-5 blends going from catachan to camo green. Lastly, I washed it all down again with thrakka green and the new asthonian camoshade. The few sharp edges on the front plates and around the horns were line highlighted with rotten flesh.

Those two steps took 2 evenings...Now for the brass/metal, details.

Brass was simple, tin bitz. Before washing it with badab black, I went ahead and did all the pipes/metal elements to then wash it all at once. At this time I left out the brass rim on the power fist. I then mixed some tin bitz and golden yellow to do highlights here and there and went with mithril silver for the metal parts. As I'm writing this, I just realized that I forgot to silver up the rivets but screw that for now :(

Powerfist and tongues. Here I decided to go for a win/fail risk and spice things up with funky colors. Although yellow fits nice with green, I was afraid it would stick out too much and not be at all nurgly but in the end I think it works plus it gives a really nice contrast to the muted green. Slaaneshy tongues also add some variety. In the end, I think those risks fit more into the win category :)

I had the yellow powerfist in mind way before I started painting and in anticipation of the horrors of putting yellow on black primer, I bought the new averland sunset yellow paint. Being a base paint, it's very rich with pigment + it's a slightly darker tone than golden yellow so it was a nice upgrade to my yellow pallette. It does cover black incredibly well and after just a few minutes I had a perfect yellow base. I washed it with gryphon sepia and highlighted with averland+white mix. The same treatment was done to the eyes. Base + wash + highlight streak accross + black iris through.

The tongues where first painted with genestealer purple, then washed with leviathan purple and highlighted with genestealer+codex grey.

Bones, fingernails and horns. Normally I would start off with komanndo khaki but the new rakarth flesh is way better. Just as the aveland sunset, it's a base paint so it's very rich in pigment and sticks to black flawlessly. The next step was devlan mud. It was one coat on everything but the horns. Here, I wanted to have a really dark base so it took like 2-3 coats of very heavy washing. It took a long while to dry and then I started drybrushing in 4 steps. First step was just rakarth then a mix with bleached bone, followed by pure bleached bone and finally a tint of white at the upmost edges. This makes for a perfect blend that I most certailny would've botched, had I done it with normal blending. It's very hard to paint evenly those 360' round horns.

With that complete I did the nurgle pimples. Small things but lots of work. Base was, once again, dark flesh, then dwarf flesh, ogryn flesh wash, elf flesh, and rakarth. I washed the bottom with leviathan purple. Then I did blazing orange drybrush of 90% of the pimple, then golden yellow to about half the height of it and finally some skull white finish on the very top.

Lastly some battle damage and pigments. Battle damage is scarce but I didn't want to overdoo it. It's just some black sponge dips on the fist for some awesome contrast and some stray shots on the armor plates. Black + mithril silver. Then it was just the decal placement and the standard dark+light rust pigment application.

The base is a separate project on it's own :) Normally, for my other monstrous creatures I would use cork to imitate a ruined urban setting but they all turn out dark. Here I wanted a light base to compliment a rather dark model. I used the same procedure as with the berzerkers so armageddon dust texture paint, followed by a devland mud wash and bleached bone drybrush. Barrels were primed with mechrite red, washed with badab black, layered with scab red and then it was a series of overbrushes of blood red, blazing orange and finally some heavy pigment application of dark and light rust. Concrete poles and stone recieved my standard urban treatment of chardon granite, through a mix with grey, then chainmail, mithril silver and white. Barbed wire is standard metal.

Epilogue would be army painter matt spray finish, followed by spot gloss varnish on the eyes.

And there you have it, an awesome nurgle hellbrute! Like I said earlier, it's good to set goals. Those 3 evenings were intense but the effect is very satysfying. Believe me, I had distractions but I clenched my teeth, sat down and devoted full attention to painting and I'm so glad I did!

On a sad note, Pandaria hits tonight so I might disappear again for a while like I did with Diablo 3 :(