Nagash arrives (and he is gigantic)

Last Christmas I gave you my heart and the very next day Nagash arrived. Oh dear its February and I'm still stuck with that horrible Christmas earworm. On the plus side, I did actually build and paint Nagash over the Holidays. I just never got around to properly photographing him. The model is absolutely massive. Lets put him at the Flugelhöfen gatehouse and put Krell en Kemmler in frame with him for scale.

Ha! Two maniacal undead monsters in one summoning Kemmler cackled...seconds later Nagash relieved him of command.

For those of you wondering where the rather large amounts of posts are coming from, I've finally found some time over the weekends to blog again. I'm just setting these for automatic publication so I can keep painting new stuff without having too much finished work slip through the 'aw shucks too many subjects'-crack. Anyway, back to Nagash, I bought this model in 2016 when I decided to expand my Undead army. From then on I promised myself every year to assemble and paint him to celebrate 'Deadcember'. Come January the Nagash box would still be sitting on the plastic heap, looking at me with angry pro-painted box-eyes until I quickly closed the cabinet door.

I actually modelled Nagash holding his staff first, but I made a mistake with the fingers holding the staff and had to fall back to using the sword. 

This year I had a video chat paint session with some friends and decided it was a) Deadcember and b) about time. I reverently took the Nagash sprues out of the box, assembled the model and set to work painting (don't worry I ate, slept and took care of the family in between these steps). I decided to paint the cloak of Nagash in the same style as my Nighthaunt mortarch. The lord of Death itself is basically made to practice edge highlighting and I took this opportunity. Every armor plate gives you another chance to improve you linework. 

I stole this river of souls idea of someone else on the internet, but I can't seem to find a proper link to the picture in question. Sorry internet inspiration person.

One of the things I wanted to give extra attention was the base. Friends pointed me towards a very nice looking base on the internet and I basically ripped that idea off. The only tricky part of this was that I had to get Nagash fixed to it halfway through painting. I needed to use Vallejo water effect gel to fill the gaps between Nagash's ectoplasmic tendrils and the base. 

All you need to make a properly impressive base: small rocks, Vallejo Dark Earth paste, PVA and Citadel Skulls.

Here's a WIP picture of the base. I cut the backs of quite a collection of Citadel Skulls (still the best kit GW offers at the moment) to add to the 'river of souls' effect. 

I dit not enjoy painting the books of Nagash stuck to the ectoplasmic whirlwind. I should've left them separate until painted.

After giving the skulls and Nagash's ectoplasmic floaty bottom a basic paint job I fixed the two together. I mixed in a small amount of white paint with the water effects gel to get a more opaque effect. This was slightly worrying as I had no idea if that would dry up properly. In the end it dried up well enough. I finished it all of with some light glazes of color for effect.  

I used the GW Warhammer TV tutorial to get the dead skin effect right. I love the wonderful age of online tutorials we live in. As to the sword, I ran out of ideas and just winged it power sword style (minus the lightning bolt effect).

I'm very happy to finally finish this model and stick it in the display case. Nagash in game is insanely overpowered and I don't really expect to ever field him. But as a display piece in my expanding undead horde he is quite the eyecatcher. He's bigger than a Warhammer 40K Imperial Knight and he positively towers over everything else I have in my fantasy collection. As is proper for the god of Death of course. Now to find one of the original metal ones at a price I can afford...