Paint Recipe: How to Paint Nagash, the Undying King

Today's post is a rather special model that has been sitting half finished for over a year in the corner of my hobby desk. I had started converting and painting Nagash at a time in my hobby where I wasn't as confident in my skills, leading me to eventually to take a break from working on him. And so he sat, headless, armless, bookless, and with unpainted ghosts. Eventually, I said enough, and here we are, a complete Nagash:

Now first things first; you may notice that my Nagash looks different from most Nagash(s?) that you've seen. I wanted him to wield both his staff and sword, so I clipped the sword from the left hand, glued it to the hand that holds an open book (sans book of course) and pinned the forearm at the elbow to the upper arm in the pose shown. Some green stuff was necessary to cover up seams and fill in details that were scraped away to make everything fit. 

My sculpting skills weren't the best at the time, so the appearance is a tad rough in places, but I'm happy with it and don't plan on going back to re-do it anytime soon. Apart from the sword arm, the rest of the model is standard. 

Well, I guess that paint job isn't exactly standard either. As much as I love the darker schemes that most people go with, I wanted to try something different and more in line with what I thought an Egyptian God of death would look like, in keeping with the Tomb Kings theme that Nagash has going on. 

I kept the rich purple robes to denote royalty. Start with a nice solid basecoat of Matt Black, and then repeatedly drybrush Alien Purple all over. Once color starts to build, focus only the raised parts of the robe. To get the purple to really pop, do one more selective drybrush of a 75/25 mix of Alien Purple and Matt White. 

His armor is a pale gold achieved with Liberator Gold washed with Dark Tone and drybrushed with Shining Silver. The breastplate got a little extra attention, with alternating bands of gold and turquoise. The turquoise is a representation of the mineral, not the color, and was achieved by building up layers of Nihilak Oxide and then an Ardcoat finish to give it some shine. 

The bone trim of the armor is a basecoat of Flayed One Flesh, a perennial favorite here at the Space Dinosaur Minis, washed with Agrax Earthshade. Another layer of Flayed One Flesh is used to bring back the vibrancy of the color. Finally, a 50/50 mix of Flayed One Flesh and Matt White is used to highlight the brightest points and edges. For bone I wanted to appear more ossified, I simple followed the steps above but then painted a layer of Skeleton Horde Contrast overtop. This is especially noticeable on the sword hilt. 

Nagash's body itself took a couple of steps. The basecoat is Necrotic Flesh, washed with Cassandora Yellow. Then paint another diluted layer of Necrotic Flesh on the ribs and other raised portions of the body. Repeat one more time, then wash with Green Tone. Once dry, highlight again with Necrotic Flesh. Now highlight with a 50/50 mix of Necrotic Flesh and Flayed One Flesh. Now again with a 25/75 mix. Then again with pure Flayed One Flesh. Then a 70/30 mix of Flayed One Flesh and Matt White. Finally, a very slight highlight of pure Matt White. 

The sword blade is a basecoat of Matt Black, with successive blends on the flames from dark green at the base to white at the tips. The initial green is Angel Green, followed by Greenskin Green, Goblin Green, Moot Green, 50/50 Moot Green/Matt White, and finally Matt White. A wash of Green Tone helps blend everything together. The hilt is Chaotic Red highlighted with Pure Red. 

The staff utilizes a lot of the steps already mentioned, so I will mostly cover the red wings of the styilzied head. Start with a basecoat of Dragon Red, then wash with red tone all over. Then wash with Dark Tone, but only in the joins between segments. Highlight the edges of the segments with Pure Red, then again with a 70/30 mix of Pure Red and Matt White. Do another wash of Red Tone to take the pink hue of the previous step back to red. Then highlight with Matt White on the very tips and some edges of the segments.  

The little ghosts follow the same principles that I laid out in my how to paint Nighthaunt blog post, so I won't belabor that here. Just know that you have to blend the green into the grey of the cloak, and you do this by diluting the Gauss Blaster Green with water and layering slowly to get a smooth blend.

 The sword scabbard (and several of the books) are basecoated with Kislev Flesh then washed with Reikland Flesh Shade to give the tanned skin look. For the rest of the books, just go wild with what you think would look nice on the model.  

The base is made of cork board broken up to look like the tendrils of spirts are pulling up bodies from the earth. Then I drybrushed white and Gauss Blaster Green to create the glow effect. And that covers the major parts of Nagash, some other details include: the skull jars on his belt (basecoat black, drybrush Shining Silver) and the jewels around the model (Shining Silver basecoat and a Spiritstone Green layer). 

Here's one last close up before I sign off on this post.