Plague marine painting process

Inspired by The Imperfect Modeller, I decided to document my Plague Marine painting process step by step. The bell ringer was my model for this process, which goes 15 steps.

step 1

Step 1 is to assemble the model, undercoat with the Wraithbone spray, and then touch up any parts with Wraithbone paint as needed.

step 2

Step 2 is to get out the Typhus Corrosion and decide which parts of the model and base will feature rust.

step 3

Step 3 is simply going over the Typhus Corrosion areas with Ryza Rust to get the rust effect. I love this combination of paints.

step 4

Now it’s time to complete the base. Often for me this is the final step, but with these models it made more sense at this stage.

step 5

Runefang Steel both finishes the base and picks out the high points of the rusted areas to look like fresh metal reveals by recent chips.

step 6

Does this count as a step? Tidying up time, as I don’t want the paints used so far to interfere with the rest of the model.

step 7

More contrast paint in step 7 as I pick out a few areas in Black Templar.

step 8

In step 8 I take out my venerable pot of Brazen Brass paint and go over some of the Black Templar areas with this metal. Here I went with the shoulder edges and the metallic halo.

step 9

In step 9 I take the shine out of the brass by using Nilakh Oxide. I let it pool in some areas to increase the grime look of the model.

step 10

Finally I get to the armour! Two contrast paints are used here; Snakebite Leather and Militarum Green. Snakebite Leather is painted into the recesses, and then I go over the rest of the model with the Militarum Green, letting the colours bleed into each other.

step 11

This model as areas that look more like wood than horns to me, so I have used Cygor brown to pick those out, and highlighted by adding a small amount of Wraithbone.

step 12

Now it’s time to paint his robe, and Shysh Purple is used here. This time I highlighted with an artist acrylic called Liquitex heavy Body. You can see the tube on the right of this image. I’ve used a lot of paints already, but the Titanium White creats bright highlights.

step 13

Skeleton Horde is the next contrast paint to come down, as it’s great for picking out bone pieces on models.

step 14

Plaguebearer Flesh is used for the nurgling. Almost there!

step 15

Step 15 is really about 4 steps, but you have to stop taking photos eventually. The main finish here was adding Nazdreg Yellow to complete the plasma gun and highlight parts of the nurgling. I then did some general tidying up on the model, and used a Vallejo blue paint to pick out the nurgling’s eye. Some fleshy parts of the model were picked out but you can’t see them from the front.

and that completes the model!

My usual paint schemes do not run this long, typically I’m done in 8 or 9 steps. With the plague marines I don’t mind the extra steps as I think it pays off in terms of the finish.