The Grandfather's Tallymen - Plaguebearers of Nurgle

 Welcome, my fellow acolytes of the Unspeakable Powers, to this most Tainted of Thursdays. In fact, speaking of taint... can you smell that? And is that... chanting? Counting?

Yessssss, today we have pierced the veil and brought forth the Grandfather's most faithful servants. Plaguebearers of Nurgle have some of the coolest demon lore, they are Nurgle's tallymen, perpetually counting and ennumerating the many and manifold diseases that infest the galaxy. Their low, chanted ennumeration is their battlecry and their tough, rotted bodies are impervious to pain and difficult to kill. Plaguebearers are created by the souls of those dying of Nurgle's Rot. In the latter stages of the disease a rotting fruit begins to grow on a tree in the warp in the Grandfather's orchards. The fruit swells as the soul of the sufferer is leached into it. Upon the expiration of the afflicted, the Plaguebearer bursts from it's fruit-like egg sac and is born. Accompanied by capering Nurglings they stride from the warp to spread the love of the Grandfather. I love 'em. I've always had a soft spot for Nurgle (eww) and Slaanesh and so I was really, really looking forward to getting my painting fingers on these. 

(note the Ork head in the trio of shrunken heads, I'd never spotted it before!)

I've never liked the ultra-green Plaguebearer look. I get why G-dubs has to paint their box art in ways that don't make people vomit but I find that as much realism as possible makes demons more disturbing. Painting started with a Flat Earth basecoat across the entire model. I then started adding more and more Rakarth Flesh and doing layer upon layer of careful drybrushing. I think I did about 6 layers. I then tinted some of them with glazes of thinned Athonian Camoshade, Seraphim Sepia, and Agrax Earthshade. I then rehighlighted with another drybrush of Rakarth Flesh. This gave a nice subtle variety of skin tones across the unit.

I then started working on the various noisome diseases and open wounds on the Plaguebearers. Now, I did Biomedical Sciences back in the day so I've seen plenty of 'orrible pictures of various diseases and unfortunate injuries. Not trusting my memory I pulled up a bunch of reference images from the intertubes (strong stomachs only if you are googling "open sores" folks). Reference material in hand, I set to using lots and lots of gentle, thin wash layers to create the internal organs, inflamed areas, dark buboes and tumours and all those boils. I washed some Blood For The Blood God into the more ahem, "drippy", wounds but kept it subtle so as not to make them look like sick Bloodletters. 

The Nuglings that play among the Plaguebearers (love the one using intestines as a swing) were painted identically to the Plaguebearers except that I used neat wash to colour them. This gave them a more saturated, cartoony vibe which suits Nurglings down to the ground and contrasts the Plagebearers nicely. Horns and claws got darkened to German Camo Black-Brown, fading out the edges to make the colour blend in to the skin tone. 

The rust was all created using Ammo's range of rust acrylic paints. These were stippled on and washed into recesses where water would gather. Finally a careful drybrush of dark steel gave it that metallic sheen. I finished off the models with human eyes. Creepier than demon ones in plaguebearers considering how they're made. Top tip for making tired/ill looking eyes: Basecoat in Pallid Wych Flesh; wash with Carroburg Crimson. Repaint with Pallid Wych Flesh leaving a pinkish red rim around the outside. Dot in the pupil. Luvverly. 

And with that another Tainted Thursday drips, groans, and limps to a close. More to come next week! Until then, lovely people

TTFN