How to paint a Nurgle Folk horror Villagers

 I'm no pro painter, I will never win awards for how I paint. Its quick, its dirty and it has attitude. For a long time, painting was my least favorite part of the hobby. I felt out of my zone and even with all my art training, lacked brush control on a small scale. I don't have a problem on large canvases, I actually enjoyed oil painting in college but knew that as an illustrator oil painting was not going to be my focus at all. I also loved sculpting but knew there was no way I would ever make money at that. 

Any way, painting models is difficult. There are people who just focus on painting and spend 50 plus hours on a single small little figure. I do not have that type of patience and probably never will. I prefer to focus on kitbashing and sculpting. So over time, I developed a painting system that works for me. As I got back into miniatures in 2022-2023, I had to develop a way to paint that didn't give me anxiety. At the time, really grim dark miniatures were popping up on my feed but I also didn't want to paint that way, I like color but I liked the way grim dark miniatures didn't need to stay in the lines like traditional miniature painting tends to do. 

Thats when I pulled out my color wheel and started painting in a triad. Pick 3 colors, one as the darkest, one as the midtone and one as the highlight. From there, I never worried about painting again. I like this method as it does not require alot of brush control and is quick.

To get started, first you need a model. This model was kitbashed to be a villager in my Nurgle folk horror army. It has a plague barrier body with a belly sculpted, some dryad arms, orc head and lots of flock. 

Since this model has flock on it and it was raining outside, I painted the model flat black. I just really hate gloss in any of my paints including the primer. Sorry Gloss fans!

Once the primer dried, it was time to pull the paints out. HIGHLY recommend to record the colors you use for a warband or army. If you ever want to add to it or need to fix something, you know exactly which bottles you need. Personally I have a terrible memory so writing this down is very important to me. 

Next you need to get a brush, it doesn't or shouldn't be your brand new perfect tip brush. Find a stiff brush that has seen better days. I also like to use a wet pallet, the paint being damp will really help when it comes to dry brushing. You don't want your paint drying out especially in warm weather (Thanks 109 F holiday weekend). The drier the paint, the more difficult this painting process will be. I also like to use a painting handle, but its not required. I just drop my models all the time and this helps me. 

Add some paint to your brush then using a towel, swipe it back and forth 3-4 times to get the majority off. This may seem wasteful, but when you do your second layer, you are going to drag your brush through the deposited paint on the towel. 

Slowly over two layers, build up your base green layer. You are going to want to cover the model for the most part but leave the deepest recesses black. The black helps build contrast but can be a pain to cover. If you feel like the color isn't covering the black enough, add more layers until you are satisfied. But be careful to not add layers of thick paint. Wait 10 minutes for the base layer to dry before moving onto the mid tone. This is a great time to clean off your brush and let it dry as well. You do not want your brush being wet when adding the next layer. 

Next grab your mid tone color which is a light green. Follow the same process to adding pigment to your brush. This time you want to cover less of the model. I usually start with painting the front and back of the model, leaving the right and left side the base color. Then hit the important parts like the face, hands and any object they might be holding. Since this color is lighter it may take a few thin layers to build up the saturation. I personally like my colors saturated so I have at least two layers on the model. 

Clean off your brush and let your model dry! Each layer needs to dry otherwise they will mix together (which I have done intentionally) but in this case we want each layer visible. This is a great time to get a snack and a coke zero while you wait. 

For the highlighting step, I prefer to use a smaller brush. This prevents me from covering all the other work I have already done, plus this stage is really for picking out specific areas. Here I am using a small squared off brush. Similar to before, follow the same steps for applying pigment to your brush.

Take your brush and only hit the important features like the face, legs, and fingers. This is really where your eye is going to be drawn to first. On the back I highlighted the shroud of grass too. Yellow is a difficult color since the coverage tends to vary. I usually get away with 2-3 thin layers of yellow to build up the saturation. Sometimes I'll add more if the yellow is ontop of much darker colors. 

After that just paint the base up, either in the same colors or something else! The whole proecess is about 15 minutes per model which seems longer then it should. But it has to be thin layers to keep the model from being cakey. 

Give this a go and show me what your models look like!