Nurgle Rhino APC [Completed]

During this long and fairly arduous weathering project, what essentially kept me going was that it afforded me the chance to expand my painting/modelling skill set. Sadly, it has been a while since I felt any enthusiasm painting W40K stuff. On the bright side what I've left in my collection are Orks and Chaos armies so that means plenty of weathering practice opportunities. So here's the completed Nurgle Rhino transport or armoured personnel carrier (APC) in all its weathered glory. 

Nurgle Rhino Armoured Personnel Carrier [Completed]

While the Nurgle Rhino might not be a masterpiece, I've learned a lot from completing it. Sometimes it's necessary to call a project done before you can start analyzing how things could've been done better. Parts of the APC definitely has an unfinished look to it. For example the open hatch on the upper hull (the searchlight wasn't a good fit ... more on that later), the two tiny headlights on the upper left/right corners of the front hull, and the general lack of Nurgle pus and gore all over the vehicle. All of which had good reasons, chief among them is that it was time to move on and let go.  

Weathering effects on the Nurgle Rhino include chipped paint ...

... rust stains, streaks and pools; rusted metal parts as well as some dirt/dust deposits

Weathering on this project was more of a traditional military armoured fighting vehicle (AFV) wear-and-tear style rather than the W40K sci-fi blood-and-gore. That explains the lack of pus and gore usually associated with Nurgle vehicles. On a personal note, I felt that if I were to include pus and gore into the weathering process the whole thing might've been a bit much akin to adding sugar to a regular Coke drink. Not your regular hobby-related analogy but I'm sure you catch my drift.

Weathering style was a more traditional AFV wear-and-tear rather than W40K Sci-Fi blood-and-gore

My favourite weathering effect was the rust streaks-chipped paint combo

The umber-like rusted tracks and metal parts provided a welcome contrast to the greyish-green hull

In addition, there are two small headlights on the upper left and right corners of the front hull which remain in greyish-green tones except for the rusted metal-wire-cage encasing them. I had left them in similar hues to the hull as is the case for some real-life tanks with a monochromatic colour palette i.e. the headlights/searchlight painted in similar hues to the hull. A real world example of this would be the Russian T-90A Main Battle Tank (please click here for a scale model representation).  

In the end, I never bothered with any blood-and-gore effects around Lucy's head

Could the Nurgle Rhino have used more weathering? Debatable but I was happy with the results as is

If you've been following my past posts you might be wondering what happened to the searchlight. Well, as you can see from the photos below, the searchlight had two strikes against it which caused me to leave it out in the final completed shots above. One, the searchlight was just too big and felt wrong in terms of scale size. And two, the bright yellow lights I painted in seemed out of sorts with the rest of the colour scheme. Both are sore points and enough to tip the scale against including it.

Nurgle Rhino Armoured Personnel Carrier with a searchlight added to its upper hull

Personally I found the searchlight to be too big in terms of scale ...

...  and its bright yellow hue makes the Rhino look goofy which is why I prefer to leave it out in a display

Going forward, I'll be working on two scale model kit projects at the same time while hopefully finishing a long neglected Game of Thrones proxy miniature painting project. The former involves Bandai Star Wars Snowspeeder (painted up as a Wedge Antilles/Wes Janson version) alternating with an old Tamiya AFV model kit i.e. a Russian T-55A Medium Tank. Meanwhile, the latter will involve finishing a proxy for Bronn the sellsword using a Nocturna Models miniature. But for now though, I'll just wallow in the satisfaction of being able to finish the Nurgle Rhino. Just for this week anyway.