Tyranids!

Here’s a quick and simple way for painting your Tyranid swarm to what I believe to be a CMON 6.

First of all a list of things I will be using...

1 Mini Pin-Vice Paint Brushes (standard and fine detail) Flesh Wash Reaper Olive Green Reaper Volcano Brown Reaper Ruddy Flesh Reaper Orc Flesh Sawdust (flock) Hobby Knife Clear Coat Spray Mini Files super glue

After collecting your mini begin cleaning any mold lines and flash (extra metal or plastic not supposed to be there) After cleaning your model if the base permits (IE not a slot base for troops with the long slot that the minis snaps into but the round ones with no holes in them) It would be a good idea to make the base before putting the model on it. Also you may want to cut a small section of sprue slightly smaller then the foot and the same height as the flocking will be. The resin for this is the model will sit on top of the flock instead of in the flock. Once your model is cleaned and assembled you should have something looking kind of like this.




After you have gotten to this stage your want to prime your mini. For metal models I prefer self etching as it will clean the metal slightly and make a super smooth coat and bond strongly. This primer however is not recommended for plastics although can be used if extremely carefully. I prefer also to use a grey primer as it works well with bright and dark tones. After priming your model you want to basecoat all bone parts with Volcano brown and all skin parts with olive green. You may want to use vice grips if it’s a mini that has a bar for a slot base or pin vice if it has the pegged foot so you don’t have to touch the mini, also simply gluing it to the base will work as well. Also at this point I like to give all muscle areas, and joints a flesh wash. This will make them more apparent and give an over all nice look in the end. Once this is done your mini will begin to look like this.



After you finish your base coats you want to begin highlighting your bone armour. In order to do this make a medium tone between your darkest and lightest shades (volcano brown - ruddy flesh) by mixing the 2 together. You want to then make sure you have a sharp point on your brush and begin to "stripe" the paint onto the bone parts. For your middle layer you want to go almost all the way to where the plate begins. For your lightest colour you want to go about a third of the way down. You want to make sure you don’t have a solid line and that it is well broken up. To make a carapace crack simply don’t paint ether of the 2 highlights in the spot you want the crack to be. When this is done your carapace should look something like below.



After this is done you can begin highlighting the skin. In order to do this simply paint your lightest shade onto the raised areas. In this case I will be using orc flesh. Once this is done it will look something like this.



After this the final step to highlight the skin is to make a mix of your highest colour and darkest colour (orc flesh and olive green) to make a shade in the middle. Simply water down the medium to about the same consistency as an ink. Simply apply this where the dark and light shades meet. This will eliminate the line between the 2 shades and make a nice smooth blend! This is also the point where you should do any touchups and add details such as eyes.



Once this is done clear coat the model and you’re done!



I hope you have enjoyed this article and find it helpful. These simple techniques can not only be used on tyranids, but on many other models such as dragons and anything else with scales!

Always remember keep your brush in the paint and the troops alive!

copywrite 2006, Mike (Wolffang) Kovosi, all rights reserved.