Nurgle does not appear to be part of Necromunda yet, though his followers were recently added to Warcry. Those appear to be my three painting focuses in 2020. I’m slowly working on getting my Nurgle groove back, by painting Nurglings with contrast paints. I’m also painting old and new Night Goblins err Gloomspite Gitz to use in Warcry and after many many years my all metal Escher gang from the nineties will return to the table resplendent in their green and purple gang uniforms. If this sounds like your bag baby, then this could be the blog for you.
In the time of the Coronavirus I should perhaps be painting more, but I’m actually working from home, so I spend a lot of time at my desk, so the fact that I’m right back at my desk tonight to update this blog is a tribute to my commitment to #MiniatureMonday. I’ve actually put in a lot of time on basically four models, three green, purple, and brown stands of Nurglings and an OOP Escher ganger with a lasgun. All had Contrast Paints used on them, the Nurglings especially.
I’m still not a Contrast Paint master, I should probably thin them more often, and I should probably thin my washes more too. I wanted a dark purple but I think contrast paints work better in multiple thin coats rather than one coat right out of the pot and call it done. I always end up shading contrast paints, highlighting, using glazes etc. I think the contrast paints make a good glaze actually and I’ll have to experiment more with thinning them as my vintage Citadel glaze collection is incomplete and irreplaceable.
That last statement may not be true, some people like me still use paint they bought in the 90s others have discovered that companies other than Citadel including Coat d’Arms and Warcolors may have duplicated vintage Citadel paints. Other companies make paint too and you can blend any custom color. I do blend custom colors you can see this on the Escher ganger’s blue hair but doing a whole army, say 100 power armoured dudes in custom blends will take time. The appeal of Contrast was it supposedly saved time, but I’m on record as saying coloured primers in rattle cans or airbrushed basecoats with a wash is faster when your goal is a lot of models that look very similar.
This is a reason I’m pro-skirmish game. I’m a slow painter and I actually want all my models to look different. I don’t mind reusing purple, green and brown so the models look similar, and I had certain “go to” techniques and colors for painting skin, or power weapons, or plasma guns. Now a lot of those paints are solid, so matching the purples from the 90s or even the purples from the damn bolter pot era will take work. I’m actually tempted to not even try, but I want to make it so my seven squads of plague marines are all legal and if possible all unique.
That is a big project in the mean time I test out Contrast paints trying to determine if I’ll use them on my plague marines or stick to the tried and true techniques of the 90s and early 2000s. Nurglings don’t have to all look the same and neither do gangers. Even Nurgle models are unlikely to be in a dress parade any time soon, I do wish I’d painted the models the same color, it is easier to repaint squad markings than it is to repaint entire models.
If you’ve gotten this far and are disappointed, what can I say I’m tired. I only have one desk so I have to paint, then clean off my desk so I can work Monday morning. I should blog as I paint and some people think I should vlog. The main colors I used above are: Ork Flesh, Shyish Purple, and Gore-Grunta Fur. I had a lot of problems with base coating three stands of Nurgle. I’ll try again and next time I’ll likely thin the contrast paint with contrast medium and use a bigger brush.
Contrast Paints are a bit messy so you should paint the lightest color first they tell you, but I painted the Escher ganger’s hair blue after painting her skin and lets just say blue skin on Chaos Spacemarines is cool, on Escher gangers you don’t want any blue to bleed on to your carefully highlighted flesh.
I do like Contrast Paints as accents. I’m not sold on doing every model spray painted Wraithbone as a start. I think Night Goblins and probably my Plaguemarine will benefit from the black basecoat. You can get Wraithbone in a pot and it is probably the single pot of paint I’ve used the most in 2020. I am always touching up.
This batch of Nurglings I did a lot of details like guts and tongues early but eventually purple or green or brown paint got on them. If you really committed to speed, you have to be willing to dry brush. All the Nurglings have a token dry brush. You can make your highlights less harsh with a glaze. But if you use glazes straight out of the pot or too heavy you may fine they darken away most of your highlights. I will need to thin things more if I want to stay light and benefit the most from Contrast Paints.
As I alluded to above I was disappointed with the experience of base coating three Nurgling stands so doing 100 space marines or goblins in Contrast Paints seems like a recipe for frustration but the accent colors starting with Fresh Tearers Red which worked great for Nurgling guts, Magos Purple for Nurgling tongues, Aethermatic Blue is cool and served as a base for the Escher’s hair and Skeleton Horde is definitely a winner. In fact if someone dared me to do a loyalist army and I didn’t have so many models already I’d go Deathwing Terminators just like Owen did back at the dawn of third edition. An all or mostly terminator army is low model count and with Wraithbone spray cans, Skeleton Horde and drybrushing you should be able to crank out an army in short order, this is why skeletons or undead have always been an easy army to paint, they are drybrushable and you don’t have to be super neat painting the undead.
I tried Guilliman Flesh one coat out of the pot and it was too harsh for the Escher ganger. I miss my Foundary Paint Triad #5 Flesh. It needs replacing I think. I may order it again along with Charcoal Black. I need a new green, I was disappointed with the greens on the Escher ganger so I may order Woodland Green and few other classics. The Escher gang was going to be in the same colors as my Skaven Bloodbowl gang. I actually ended up using a bunch of Reaper Master Series flesh paints I was gifted, they are underrated, they make a lot of cool colors. Bloodstain Red is awesome it was featured on my Khorne models. However, if you’re going to paint a lot of flesh, keep it simple stupid, Contrast and a straight out of the pot triad sounds like a win over custom blending with a wet pallet.
If you have been following me on Instagram or hashtag #MiniatureMonday you would have seen some progress photos. I’ embed them above, but I took extra photos though maybe I should have taken more, I don’t have a photo station set up at the moment, that is another thing I may buy online, so you’ll have to make do with iPhone snaps with less than perfect lighting. I’m still waiting on some cables and adapters to improve that situation.
I spent a lot of time painting boils and pustules on Sunday. Here is my not terribly efficient but actually effective technique. You paint ochre, a dark reddish brown will also work. Then in the centre you paint orange, you can skip right over red because you put a red glaze over top. This looks good but then I put an extreme dollop of yellow on top of each pustule. I used my very goopy Badmoon Yellow pot which unlike my Swooping Hawk Turquoise is still at least liquid.
I think I can do a better job on turquoise blue hair. For the squigs I highlight with a more grey pallet, but fir the hair I used Deep Sky Blue from Vallejo gradually lightened with a Vallejo pure white. Then because I did it a bit too rush I used my old Turquoise Glaze, the ones with red lids and labels. This was a great set which I wish I had the entire collection of, but back in the day you had to use mail-order or take a ferry to get stuff, and once you got to Gastown there was no guarantee they had what you wanted in stock, my old ork armies suffered from random miniatures being the only miniatures available. Now GW is a corporate juggernaught or they were pre-Coronavirus and you can order anything, but you can’t order bitz, that is a service they used to offer, I still have many metal bits form my Grand Tournament appearances.
Not sure when I’ll enter a tournament, just painting regularly and trying to update social media tires me out. I’ve started playing video games again and of course I spend too much time on social media, so I think I must wrap this up. If you have questions of suggestions you can leave them below, stay safe.
Musk's Miniatures 
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