Nurgle Vindicator

I know some of you expected Chosen to be next in line, but I've recently bought a vindicator and just couldn't resist and ended up pushing it to the front of my schedule.

I was very excited to get this guy for a fair price along with those awesome forgeworld doors. They are really well detailed and liven up the dull side-hulls very well. If you were hesistating, I strongly recommend you get them.

This is actually the second vehicle that I used an airbrush to paint. The first one was the predator and although I think it turned out really well, I decided on a slightly different approach with this guy. The main reason for that, is that I wanted the green to be a bit darker than last time. Second fundamental difference that really helped with painting, was putting off all the details (tentacles, barrels, ornaments) until the very end. This allows for much easier drybrushing, getting to those hard to reach spots and basically provides much bigger comfort when painting.

I started off with a black undercoat followed by the first layer of catachan green. Second step was a new technique that my friend recommended and that is airbrushing a wash. I mixed devlan mud with thraka green and athonian camoshade and sprayed it all over. It's much easier and quicker than going with manual shading + it's way more even and sets things up nicely for the drybrushing. Then I went with a 50/50 catachan-camo green highlights followed by another layer of washes and yet another layer of highlights. Dunno if that was redundant but it worked :) Drybrushing was pretty straightforward catachan/camo green mix followed by pure camo and a very slight rotten flesh for the lines. All in all, I finally got a nice, dark green hue that I plan to stick with for all future nurgle vehicles.

The siege shield was a big dillemma. I knew that I wanted yellow stripes on a black background but for a long time, I couldn't decide how to deal with the outlining parts. I finally settled on rusty metal and I think it was a good choice. I did the stripes first. Lots of masking, this time with duct tape and it was time to paint the dreaded yellow. Initially, I've decided to go with the new averland sunset paint but no matter how much I dilluted it, it would still clog up my airbrush so in the end, I just went with many light coats of the old golden yellow followed by airbrushing gryphonne sepia to give it a darker tone.

Metal outline was my old method of scorched brown base, followed by stipples of scab red/blood red/blazing orange. Then I did some drybrushing and sponge application of boltgun metal. Badab black wash was the next step and finally some mithril silver sponge highlights. The weathering was just sponging black onto the yellow areas and metal on the blacks. Looks pretty cool.

As far as detailing goes, there weren't all that many to do. Doors, nurgle icon and the chaos symbol were straightforward averland sunset with sepia wash, bone stuff was my usual bone method and visors also very simple 3 way red blend with a white dot. I did some rust streaks with sepia/devlan wash, then put actual pigment rust on the rivets and finished them off with mithril silver. Next up were some scratches with boltgun metal. As the very last step, I did some airbrush "dusting" of scorched brown all around the bottom parts of the hull and at that point the tank was pretty much done.

I wouldn't be me though, if I didn't nurgle things up a bit and added my favorites - barrels and some tentacles/growth :) I did the barrels exactly the same as the siege shield metal but applied way more rust pigment. Tentacles, on the other hand, were the usual flesh route of black -> dark flesh -> dwarf flesh -> elf flesh with purple extensions done with warlock purple and leviathan purple wash. Pimples where a simple orange into yellow into white and I really like the way they turned out.

Final thing to do was to spray the whole thing with matt varnish and then add some gloss varnish on the tentacles and visors. Voila!

Since I'm on vacation at the moment, I have a lot of free time and I've already lined up a few projects for the upcomming 2 weeks so expect updates very soon. The next thing is going to be a big surprise, followed by another surprise, followed by some terrain, and then probably the new raptors!