I was a little concerned that taking a break from painting Gutrot Spume mid-project might cause me a few problems. Thankfully I’ve managed to get straight back into the swing of things and I’m still thoroughly enjoying myself with this mini!
The first parts to be painted on the lower body were Gutrot’s thighs. Although the sculpt suggests to me that this area is armoured, I wanted bare flesh here. The careful painting of a few creases and cracks was enough to transform armour plates into heavy sagging flesh.
The chainmail kilt was next and it proved to be fairly tricky. My ‘gut feeling’ was that the chainmail needed to be adjusted towards something much rustier looking than the crisp detail suggested. I’m O.K. with what I’ve done in this area, but feel that I probably need to re-visit it once the surrounding areas are painted.
I’d considered several options for Gutrot’s loin cloth/kilt ranging from intricate scroll work to free hand Nurgle icons and even tartan but in the end I decided on a worn leather effect. There’s already a lot going on with the paint job on this mini and I think extra free hand detail in this area would be too much. A leather effect would provide a ‘plain’ surface but still allow for some interesting texture work.
I briefly considered dark red leather but rejected it in favour of brown a colour more in keeping with a Nurgle colour patette. It would also match the leather straps I’d already painted.
Painting went well and I began to achieve a pleasing texture but the plain brown leather looked boring. I needed to introduce more colours into the leather to give it some life and interest. One option would be to work extra colour into the shadows. Instead I decided to graduate the colour of the leather, so that it went from brown at the top to green on it’s bottom edges. This came about by following my ‘gut instinct’ that green was the colour to introduce here. I decided to try and make the leather look as if it had been dragged through and stained by all manner of Nurgle-ish filth.
I used the combination of a stippled bright yellow green glazed over with a darker blue green. The combination of the two tones gives depth and richness to the green and adds visual interest to what is, after all, just a stain on the leather!
The 2014/15 painting year got off to a bit of a slow start. On top of that once I’d found my feet and settled into painting Gutrot Spume it was time to put him aside to concentrate on Mole. It’s clearly going to be a less productive year in terms of the number of minis I’ll get finished, so I’ve decided to concentrate on quality and enjoy myself by obsessing over Gutrot.
Instead of leaping straight back into painting Gutrot, I decided to paint something as a warm-up exercise to re-familiarise myself with my ‘Nautical Nurgle’ colour palate. It’s been a useful exercise as I’d become very focused on Mole’s palatte over the last few weeks and the palette for Gutrot is extremely different.
I picked one of the Kraken tentacles from Gutrot’s base for my warm up. I’ve probably spent far too much time and effort on this one tentacle than is entirely sane but it’s been a highly enjoyable little project. Spared the pressure of trying to get back up to speed on Gutrot himself I’ve been able to reacquaint myself with the palette while still contributing to the overall project. Now I’m back up to speed I can return to Gutrot with confidence.
Apart from using a wide range of colours from the palette I wanted to paint some texture onto the tentacle. The first step towards this was to sponge a blotchy pattern onto the skin. I used natural sponge for this rather than blister pack sponge. This resulted in a pattern of large soft splotches that were built up in several different shades of green. Over this I painted and highlighted a series of fine parallel lines to give the impression of a ribbed texture.
Another embellishment was the replacement of the sculpted slime drips with trails of dripping water. These were built up over shards of clear plastic using water effects and microbeads.
The final touch is several coats of gloss varnish. These tentacles are most definitely intended to look wet!
