For whom the bell tolls

It occurred to me that I've never shared photos of this guy despite him being the second Death Guard model I ever actually painted. He's actually one of the models which tempted me back to 40k in mid-2017. I liked that he was something other than a guy cuddling a gun. There was a peculiarly entertaining lack of heroism about the glum bell-wielder. I didn't know at the time that the Blightbringer would be among the first of the many bizarre and intriguing models other than glorious combatants looking all heroic and stuff.

He was also the first model who got the Synod of Suffering paint scheme in something like its final form. In my first attempt, it was more or less the same but the cloth was painted as ragged human skin. It looked a bit silly, to be honest. As you might have noticed if you've seen my work, one of my primary inspirations for my Nurgle is the idea of the slow dilapidation and corrosion of the manmade. This is because these are things which make me uneasy and spooked. I remember once when I was out walking, I came across what looked like an abandoned production facility of some sort, with crumbling sheds and a larger, maudlin building. And here's the thing: I've sat by myself high in the Alps, nobody for miles, only the wind sighing, and felt no sense of desolation. But in that corroded echo of human ambition, I felt unnerved, as if unseen presences were watching me from the dark, disintegrating buildings.

To bring this back to the cloth on Plague Marines, I decided to work in a way which would first create a simplistic version of the 'uncorrupted' colour scheme and then smear on the grime. I chose white as the colour for the cloth partly because of the implication of purity (and subsequent defilement) associated with that colour, and partly because the gross stains would be easiest to apply over white! I liked the effect, and thus my new army started in earnest.