Daemons – Musk's Miniatures

Painting a Plague Toad

It is actually almost finished. I have a bad habit of applying one more highlight then one more wash then of course one more highlight…

It is actually almost finished. I have a bad habit of applying one more highlight then one more wash then of course one more highlight. The only thing I might highlight more is the lone eyeball. I really want to it to pop.

If you tuned in last week or follow me on Instagram you would have seen earlier work-in-progress pics of this model. It is a Plague Toad of Nurgle made by Forge World but I plan to field it as a Chaos Spawn, as you must run them in units of two in the current rules for Warhammer 40,000. This model who I’ve dubbed the Fabulous Mister Toad will accompany Maceo the Mutated for all eternity or at least until they update the rules again.

I tested out some Monument Hobbies Pro Acryl paints on this model. And I know people complain about the pots, I don’t mind them that much, but one of the advantages of the flip tops if you just need a little dab of paint, you can get just one brush full from a traditional Citadel style pot. With Vallejo or Pro Acryl I tend to put more paint than I need on my palette. Maybe if I switch back to a wet palette this would be less an issue but I paint random colours and use a lot of washes so I like my hard plastic palette with little spots for washes.

The secret weapon to this colour scheme and it literally was manufactured by Secret Weapon which may be no more is Baby Poop. This was a formula developed by Les Burley. It is more viscous than some washes you may be used using but doesn’t separate as much as his AwesomePaintJob dot com ones. The closest thing to it in GW’s range is probably Mortarion Grime but Baby Poop is more yellow brown and Mortarion Grime is more greenish. I did use Mortarion Grime on the pustules and bone on the Plague Toad.

I liked the pustules better when they were a darker English Uniform Brown, but I highlighted up and even used a yellow, but then I toned that down with the aforementioned Mortarion Grime. The first time I used Baby Poop I put it on really thick as you can see in the banner but I did a second coat thinned with water. For Mortarion Grime I tend to paint straight from the pot.

Besides Pro Acryl and Vallejo and Citadel I used paints by Wargames Foundry and Reaper and maybe some others. I didn’t use a lot of technical paints but I plan to put varnish on this model then I may put some Blood for the Blood God on bits particularly the tongue.

Plague Toad of Nurgle — The Fabulous Mister Toad

I took even more WIP pictures. I think I shared them to Bill‘s Discord server, no one said anything. I assume I will play him again soon in Warhammer 40,000 as he always likes to kill the freshest Chaos Spawn. We’ll see how my spray sealant likes the below zero weather we have in Calgary. Worst case scenario I go seal it in one of the two parking spots I own.

If you have thoughts on paint, painting, Nurgle, Forge World models or how Fabulous Mister Toad looks you can leave a comment below.

Painted Today

It wasn’t much, but I did put several coats of new paint on my counts as Chaos Spawn…

It wasn’t much, but I did put several coats of new paint on my counts as Chaos Spawn. I’m using this model to try out some of the new paints I’ve bought but also just to paint something dark and dirty and slimy looking as my first two Chaos Spawn were bright and multi-colored.

Stumpy Spawn of Chaos — Stumpy, Spawn of Chaos

Maceo the Mutated was also an experiment as I dry brushed him. This model is from Forge World and I decided I wasn’t going to use dry brushing on the Plague Toad of Nurgle but rather switch back to black primer and try out some paints I got from Monument Hobbies. I also got even more paints from them and other companies via a game store in Edmonton.

Now even more fancy paints have been released and I’ll have to try them if they come in to the Sentry Box or perhaps in the new year I will place an order from somewhere online but so far I’ve just seen some videos about the latest greatest miracle paint.

I still have nostalgia for the old paints and I do paint from the pot or even a dry palette most of the time. I probably should thin my paint more and use better brushes and I definitely should remember to wear my magnifying headset because as it got dark today I decided to wrap things up, whereas in the olden days I used to paint late into the night.

I poured these old hex pots into droppers but they’ve gotten so thick.

Now I think it is time to have another beer. I generally don’t paint and drink, mainly because my painting desk is covered in stuff. At some point in the future I may get a bigger place and have more room for painting and gaming, but I’m just glad I slapped some fancy paint on fancy models and I’m confident that although Matt Cexwish’s “Brown Grey” dried way more grey than brown, I’ll make it work by highlighting with greens and browns and probably throwing “baby poop” over top because that is a secret weapon you can learn about online for painting Nurgle.

In the banner hopefully you can see I painted Grey Seer over parts I want to be lighter, I may even use Contrast Paint over it. I used a new GW brown base paint on the portions that I’ll eventually become browny bone. I also did order a bunch of paint before Halloween and none of them have been used yet, so I’ll bust open at least the two yellow greens.

The newest paints I’m going to try real soon now.

Some of the paints very much were recommend by Vince Venturella including his beloved Intense Wood. Hopefully he gets around to updating his recommended paint video. I don’t watch a lot of YouTube painting videos, I kinda know how to paint, but as I ranted about recently, Google very much sends you to their other website YouTube or websites that will sell you stuff rather than an informative blog post on say why you should use a Landraider Redeemer in 10th Edition Warhammer 40,000.

Bill and I did not play 40K this weekend, perhaps he is still recovering from our beer tasting. I’m tasting some more advent calendar craft beer as I type this and in the new year I am planning a trip to Scotland where I may do some serious damage to my liver by going to some distilleries. I have one follower in Edinburgh on Instagram not sure if he reads my miniature painting blog.

I know there are not that many work-in-progress photos in this post. Perhaps I’ll take another one now that things have dried and I can even use my lightbox. But until you put on some some highlights and perhaps some shading via a wash, the model isn’t very exciting. I blocked in the base colors so it meets GW’s old standards for battle readiness, but I have not glued the Plague Toad to the base as I want to get some details on the bottom of the toad in case it breaks off mid-game.

See I did get up and put it together and in the light box, take that Instagram!

I actually wanted to drybrush the skulls, that is why the model isn’t on the base yet, I’ll put at least a little bit more paint on the toad itself, though I seem to be rubbing off some off, including my Vallejo Model Color brown violet (70887) which thanks to that “paint mixer” I bought is finally more usable, so expect to see some dark greeny browns used on some pox walkers perhaps but what I really need to paint in 2024 is some vehicles so I can kill other vehicles without running over to them and stabbing them with rusty knifes or having my Nurglings use their diseased claws and teeth.

I have a lot of paint I ordered online from my brief foray into painting accurate WW1 Canadian Infantry but a lot of them have proven useful in painting Nurgle models of Chaos Cultists. Painting more cultists is definitely on my to do list but probably after some more Blightlords. I will eventually switch to using the Chaos Codex as I’m not really a Death Guard player, I’m more of a Nurgle Renegades kinds guy, after all they are the Diseased Sons not the Death Guard.

This post turned out plenty long and although it doesn’t have the greatest pictures, it does have some plus links and even embedded video clips! So if you have thoughts on old paints, new paints, unreleased paints or social media influencers you can leave a comment below. My posts seem to be getting a couple comments and likes, but people in the Death Guard Facebook group remain blissfully ignorant thanks to Mark’s walled garden.

I can’t believe it is Slapchop

Believe it fanboys! Of course after my slopchopping I then carefully or at least quickly painted on one or more highlights…

Believe it fanboys! Of course after my slopchopping I then carefully or at least quickly painted on one or more highlights on each Nurgling then I may or may not have put a wash over top. And of course I used not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, not six, well it might have been six, but I meant to use seven different rust effects.

It was another busy week at work, stuff may have even gone wrong, but that didn’t stop us form partying and going to a Stampeders game on Friday, after all the markets were closed. All this combined with my determination to at least try to lose weight meant I basically painted Sunday. I didn’t even paint that hard, but I finished three stands of Nurglings.

Hockey season also started but I may have lost in my head-to-head league but last I looked I was winning in my keeper pool. Go guys I drafted. These are the same Nurglings I blogged about last week and as planned, I highlighted overtop of the slapchop. So the paints I used are not important but they were a mix of OOP Citadel paints, Reaper, Nostalgia ’88, Vallejo, Secret Weapon, and Wargames Foundry. I did use some Two Thin Coats but honestly they don’t impress me and they have the worst pot design since the original screw top bolter shell.

I’m going to re-watch it someday soon, but I’m giving a shoutout to Vince Ventrulla. I’ve followed him for a while and I’m not a hardcore fanboy or miniature painter. But if I had to recommend one of those YouTube guys I’d recommend Vince, so his paint recommendations are probably more well thought out than mine and he’s probably not drinking while he types.

Other painters and bloggers I like are the Polish. I also follow an obvious French blog, but when I upgraded my MacBook Pro to the latest MacOS recently, I lost all my RSS feeds again. I will rebuild from 2018 again if I have to, but in the mean time, check out Vince and Stahly. They get my Sunday night shoutout. Some famous miniature painter followed me on Instagram yesterday, so you should probably follow me over there too. Apparently I am big in Germany and the Scandinavian countries.

I may require a third beer to finish this blog post, but I’m also listening to one of my latest playlists, this one is called “Mmm, Chicken” and let me tell you beer and music are integral to my painting methodology. Actually I probably paint better without beer, but after a hard day painting, I enjoy a cold beer or three and update the blogosphere about my exploits.

But I didn’t come here to blog about beer or even music, I came here to blog about painting rust or rust effects. I was going to use seven different rust effect paints on the weapons the Nurglings are crawling around, but then I think I ended up using six, but if you count silver or Army Painter Strong Tone as part of the rust effect then I used eight!

Newsflash Nurglings, you don’t need to use seven different rust effect paints. Even three rust effect paints is probably overkill. I know everyone loves Dirty Down but I get better results from some Vallejo stuff I bought and actual rust coloured pigments, particularly the set I bought off of AwesomePaintJob dot come which is apparently no more. I’m still experimenting with which order I should apply the rust effects and like I said at the top of the paragraph three rust effects may be enough for the average miniature painter.

So I decided to consult the wayback machine because not everyone commits to the hobby for twenty plus years like me. AwesomePaintJob dot come seems to have peaked in 2019, but I likely ordered from Lester Burley sooner. His website started in 2009. He last posted a video to YouTube four years ago. Life is hard. One of my oldest gaming buddies died this week, my oldest gaming buddy died many years ago. Don’t put off living forever.

Now I’m sad or at least melancholic. I don’t have infinite sadness. I already made a token post in tribute to Angus. And I definitely haven’t forgotten Kev but yeah some of my old gaming buddies are still alive, I saw Owen this year and I’ll have to try to see some more of them next time I’m on the Island around Christmas time.

One of my big accomplishments this week was upgrading my home office, so I can now edit pictures on a new bigger monitor. Despite some goading I haven’t played any video games on my latest video gaming monitor. I’m just not a hardcore gamer anymore, if I ever was. I guess I was back in the early to mid 90s. Anyway, maybe I will play a video game again, but I’m trying to focus on painting and trying to make time to go to the gym and read books.

If you have thoughts on melancholy, infinite sadness or painting rust effects you can leave a comment below.

Slapchopping Nurglings

Before it became trendy, I wanted to field a sea of Nurglings…

Before it became trendy, I wanted to field a sea of Nurglings. Now all over the Internet people are doing the math to figure out how many stands you can field in a Death Guard army. The answer may be twenty seven, but before you can do that you need to buy and paint all those little beady eyeballs yellow.

I’d already tried Contrast Paints on some Nurglings and of course I tried dry brushing or painting Contrast Paints over a black primed model pre-highlighted with grey, but now drybrushing and shading quickly is called #Slapchop or the slapchop method. People have tried to improve on it, so of course I did too, basically I painted on quick highlights and then threw a wash overtop of the Nurgling skin.

I already posted a finished Nurgling stand to Instagram because it is #MiniatureMonday, but it is also the Thanksgiving holiday Monday here in Canada so I had extra time to paint, go to the gym, and yes blog. My test Nurgling came out well enough especially since I used more than just Contrast Paints. I used Army Painter Speed Paint 2.0 too which some like better, but some don’t, but I also used my lifetime collection of random paints and I stuck to colours I have experience painting such as green and purple.

Of course I used the incredibly difficult to spell Aethermatic Blue, but for the next three Nurgling stands I switched from Dark Angels Green to Ork Flesh, so I can get some Orktober practice in I guess. I painted pretty quickly but besides actual highlights and washes other things I did that may not be pure slapchop was paint pure Wraithbone on parts of the models. I also painted metallics, a steel color made by Army Painter, on weapons. I didn’t leave them grey. I even painted some things Greyseer and Wraithbone that I wanted to look different like a zombie head or some guts on my second batch of three Nurgling stands.

The guts were painted Fleshtearer red which is one of my go to painting techniques. I didn’t give them a wash or anything on the test model, but the metallics got some thinned Army Painter Strong Tone, then some highlights with the new GW silver, whatever they are calling it now, “Stormhost”. My new mixer finally made it useable, so I gotta say get yourself a paint mixer, it will save you time and frustration. I tried the Dirty Down again but was not satisfied so I got out the poisonous bottle of mineral spirits I’ve had for years but never used and my AwesomePaintJobDotCome rust pigments and probably went a little overboard.

Then I was reminded that if you spray matte sealant over your rusted pigments they can reactivate and you end up with a different rust effect than you posted to Instagram. I don’t think Dirty Down reactivates with Citadel Matte spray sealant but it might. This is probably why I moved away from pigments, I want to seal and be done with a model.

Besides Nurglings I spent a lot of time cleaning and trying to fill in gaps on a Forgeworld Nurgle Plague Toad which I plan to use as a Chaos Spawn. You must field spawn in packs of two, because they are sold in boxes of two. But besides one lone Nurgling, I painted one lone Chaos Spawn for the Bolter and Chainsword painting challenge. Tenth edition has been out a while and I hunted down one of these models to be my fourth and likely final Chaos Spawn.

I probably spent too much time with gap filler and liquid greenstuff. I never used to use either. I also pinned the model as one of his legs didn’t fit very well, hence the extra large gap to fill. I also planned to pin him to a resin base, as that is what I like to do for basing models. I think this base is Polish. Hopefully I can get these Nurglings and Chaos Spawn done quickly as I plan to paint more strategically valuable models. I may even rebase some more old models and last of all I plan to paint a greenskin if I can find time this month, but we remain busy at work.

If you have thoughts on slapchop, or hashtags, or Contrast Paints or Speed Paints or Nurglings or excessive use of conjunctions you can leave a comment below.

Finished Beasts of Nurgle

Back in the 90s one piece of wargear you could get for your Chaos Space Marine army was a Beast of Nurgle…

Back in the 90s one piece of wargear you could get for your Chaos Space Marine army was a Beast of Nurgle. From there the legend of Sluggie was born. At some point I acquired two more of this era of Beasts of Nurgle and they were last used in a Warhammer Fantasy Battle campaign in Vancouver.

For that campaign I rebased them from their original cavalry bases to “monster bases” which were just pieces of balsa wood I cut to the right size. Somehow when the Chaos Daemon Codex came out and the rules suddenly changed so that I could have daemons in my Diseased Sons again, even if they wouldn’t be wargear cards, I quickly latched on to fielding Beasts. Of course I still want to field my sea of Nurglings or my horde of Plaguebearers but at 25% of the power, three Beasts of Nurgle will require at least a 48 power game and I think I must spend one command point to take them.

So I’ve been rebasing these models since September. I ended up doing a lot more than just slapping a round base on them. I had to cut the balsa wood and the plastic to fit. I had to fill in and round the hard edges, cover them with sand and skulls then paint that. I also used a variety of basing material I picked up over the years. During all that the models picked up a few nicks so rather than just leave it or touch it up with green or black, I got the idea to improve both the bones and the tentacles.

I did several highlights on parts of the green Beast of Nurgle, Sluggie. Esmeralda, the purple one, got the fanciest base. I tried out some new paint and ink on the runes but I actually think it looked better two coats of paint ago. She got the least new coats of paint on her tentacles. I also picked up some Blood for the Blood God paint recently and decided to try that on all the guts and sores. Finally Sluggie got Nurgle’s Rot gobbed on his tentacle tips.

Picked up recently at the Sentry Box was a tank, the Plagueburst Crawler. I don’t own one and the peanut gallery thought I needed one, I also bought a can of spray paint as no way that is getting done with tiny lines any time soon. In fact I don’t need any more models, but you get a discount on your birthday week so I should buy something.

Next up in the paint queue may be another old classic Diseased Sons model that I’ll spend less time on, but I think I thought the same about the Beasts of Nurgle, then I can see a primed and converted Chaos Spawn, the new Maceo, the Plague Surgeon and his objective marker and already on my painting table because I figured I’d be done lone ago are two plague marines that will finish the Burning Sores, but after a year of campaigning my thoughts on arming plague marines have changed.

Beasts Of Nurgle — Three Beasts of Nurgle

I also have two battle reports to type up and I think I have not even completed updating my campaign roster after my last game. I’ve been working a lot of hours and it has affected my sleep. Also I have not done a hobby blog retrospective or a post detailing my plans for next year, so that might happen before the battle reports, I’m not sure. I enjoyed reading several recently and I’m not sure the all battle reports all the time blogging style is maximizing likes.

After reading a thread about them, I ordered a set of magnifying lenses that go over my existing glasses. I’ve only tried the weakest ones, but it does make a difference. I’m not sure it has made me a better painter, but it does give me more confidence. Obviously having perfect vision is ideal, but I may never have had that, instead I need to try new techniques and options to speed up my painting. I doubt I’ll be doing freehand murals on tanks again any time soon, but who knows, I never thought I’d be painting a tank again so soon.

So if you have thoughts on what I should add to my Death Guard campaign army, or how either Arks of Omen or 10th Edition will affect the Siege of Vanithros’s Bastion you can leave a comment below. Even if you have idle speculation on what vintage model I’ll dust off next and bring back to the gaming tables thirty years later, fire away.