This pictorial guide shows how I paint Tyranids reasonably quickly,
allowing me to both field a
painted Swarm in battle and
lead a seemingly normal life as well.
I make no claims to the artistic merits of the result, but it looks
good enough for casual gaming, in my opinion.
Start with spray-coating with Chaos Black. If the spraying is done throroughly, there should be no need to paint the model black afterwards.
Once dry, go over spots where the red paint pooled wrong - like on
the knees, or similar. It should be now be "reverse highlighted",
with a dark red hue brightening towards the recesses.
Paint in the face - Blood Red mouth, Skull White teeth, Sunburst
Yellow eyes, in that order. Dont worry (too much) about neatness at
this stage.
Paint in the carapace plates in Chaos Black, and the spiky bits
(including hooves) in Bleached Bone. At this stage, neatness
helps, since you're now painting up against areas that aren't going to
be painted again later.
While doing the carapace, trim the edges of the face parts -
particularly the eyes and teeth.
EDIT: At this point, wash the bone-colored areas in Flesh Wash.
Don't worry about splashing a little, it won't show on the dark parts
of the body. The following pictures show the dramatic difference it
makes.
While using the pot of gray anyway, paint the bases solid gray too.
Paint the top of the base with PVA glue, then dip the base in a jar
of beach sand (gritty sand with tiny fragments of dark seashells work
well). I looted a cup from the childrens sandbox :-)
Key to quick-painting is to work on reasonable large batches -
ideally, in the details stage, the first model should be dry by the
time you do the last one, so you can just switch color and start from
the top again.
I think this batch is a bit too large, though, in hindsight. I
got heartily sick of Hormagaunts by the time they were done...
EDIT: The whole batch, 24 Hormagaunts, 16 Spinegaunts and 2 Ripper
bases, all lined up for a photograph:
img_6167.jpg - img_6168.jpg
- img_6169.jpg - img_6170.jpg
