Plague Marine

It is finally finished. Every so often I get these strange random cravings to craft elaborate suits of armour. This is, I think, the third. These pics ultimately take on a life of their own and become overloaded with detail and form. The detail becomes so overdone that it is often hard to determine what is what and the pic demands a certain result from me rather than the other way round. Chaos really lends itself to this delicious problem, and here we are.

I've always liked Plague Marines, and viewed them as Space Marines who form a pact with Nurgle to save them from imminent death. I am not entirely sure on their canon fluff. Such pacts warp the Marine into a living totem of Nurgle's elements; perversion, rot, disease, parasitism. The walking giant super-zombie death soldiers are borne, spreading death, disease and pestilence where they go. Very fun to draw.

This guy took hours and hours and hours, I worked and reworked various elements of his design and equipment, trying to keep a theme of fungal infection and parasitism, the latter often overlooked in Nurgle aesthetics. I fear the picture is now 'too much', the detail too heavy and busy. Expect some simpler, cleaner works later in response to this.

But part of me loves it. Oh god I love the details. More more more. If I had my way I would try and render every bump, scratch, smudge and fray on every belt of every character I would ever draw.
Laziness and real life get in the way of course.
Here's one of the more extreme examples.

Minor edit; fixed some border issues and added a watermark of sorts