Games Workshop very kindly sent me a box of the new Dawnbringers “Phulgoth’s Shudderhood” box set, which contains the brand new plastic Harbinger of Nurgle as well as 5 Putrid Blightkinds and 2 Pusgoyle Blightlords.
With time being at a premium thanks to a busy commission period for me and the house move, I wanted to get my Harbinger painted to a good standard but quickly enough that I could get it added into my army ASAP! In this short article I’ll show you how I did it! This won’t be a full step-by-step tutorial, although I am hoping to bring you more of those soon.
I began with a full spray coat of Death Guard Green from a rattle can. This gave a nice unhealthy sickly colour to the whole model to start with. Next I moved onto the base colours.
In order to move quickly, I focused on just getting base colours down for each area first. The cloth areas were painted over with Death Guard Green from the pot, the horse’s raggly hair and the raven were painted with Corvus Black.
The wood & leathers were painted with Mournfang Brown and Thondia Brown, the armour with Incubi Darkness, silver areas with Leadbelcher, bronze with Screaming Bell, sore areas with Pink Horror, boils with Screaming Skull, and the horse fur with Rakarth Flesh.
I also made a thin 50:50 mix of Corvus Black and Rakarth flesh to make a transitionary colour for the hair around the horse’s feet. I picked out the base with Mechanicus Standard grey for the rocks, Thondia Brown for the signpost, and Warboss Green for the slimy bitz.
With all the base colours down, I moved onto an all-over Agrax Earthshade wash.
This wash tied all the previous colours together and shaded them nicely. This would already be plenty nice for a tabletop gaming standard, but I decided to do some highlights to just bring out the details a little more and make the model feel more finished.
Whilst this next step looks like a lot has happened, it’s actually surprisingly quick and simple to get to this level.
I started with a drybrush over all the corvus black areas with Mechanicus Standard Grey, then a lighter drybrush with Dawnstone.
The cloth areas got a highlight of 50:50 Death Guard Green and Krieg Khaki, before a few highlights of pure Krieg Khaki.
The wood and leathers were highlighted by mixing Zandri Dust into the base colours and drybrushing and edge highlighting subtly with that mix.
The silver areas got a quick highlight of Stormhost Silver, and I used thinned down Skrag Brown to add areas of rust.
The armour was highlighted with Sotek Green. I also mixed a little more Warboss Green into Sotek and made a thin wash to apply over the bronze areas as verdigris.
The sore areas got a quick layer of Berserker Bloodshade. I mixed a little Rakarth Flesh into this wash to make a sore color which I painted around the 3 big boils on the horses neck in a few thin layers.
I overbrushed the front of the signpost with grey seer to make it look like it had been painted, then used Abaddon Black to write a town name on the signpost.Â
The rocky base got the same drybrush treatment as the horse hair.
FInally I picked out a few extra details like the mushrooms on the base using Blood Angels Red contrast paint. I splodged a bit of Nurgles Rot onto the base and on the end of his scythe. And in the end, I was left with this result:
I am very pleased with how the model came out for what was essentially just a one day semi-speed-paint. I hope this article encourages you to paint your own Harbinger or other Nurgle minis – why not share yours with the PaintSlam community in the discord?
Thanks again to Games Workshop for sending me a free box of Dawnbringers: Phulgoth’s Shudderhood.
