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Hey everyone!

Recently purchased the Tyranid Battleforce (16 Termagants, 16 Hormagaunts, 3 Warriors, and 8 Genestealers), and got about 9 Citadel paints with them. It's only been a week since purchasing the Battleforce, and I'm up to over 25 different paints now (some are washes). I just can't seem to pick a color scheme I like, nor can I get the hang of washes and layering. I've basically gone out every 2 days to purcahse a few more paints because I keep experimenting to how I want to do the bulk of my army.

I've painted about 10 models in total now, and they're all totally different. I have a fairly steady hand and can do the details okay. But I just can't seem to pick out a good Prime (white or black??), a good Wash to follow it up with, and than what to drybrush over the wash, if anything. Once it gets to doing awseome little highlights on the carapace, teeth, eyes, etc, I don't think I'm doing to shabby for a first-time painter. But the overall models look quite sloppy because I have no idea how I'm supposed to prime, drybrush, layer, etc. I can't figure out what colors go with what, an order for all the different steps (drybrush then wash, or wash then drybrush for example), and how much paint to use for each step.

I'm more and more liking the idea of a fairly vibrant colored army (black wash, bright green drybrush overtop, black carapace, bright pink highlights, and blue weapons), but I just can't seem to accomplish the image that I have in my mind :(

Any tips at all for painting Tyranids?

Thanks well in advance

Bite the bullet and pick a scheme and hope that 50 gaunts later you don't regret it I think I have a reasonably good scheme with my 'nids, but I hate it just because I've spent so long painting it.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/images-59981-27272_Tyranids.html

I think green, pink and blue could look a bit odd, but I've never been good at picking colour schemes, so whatever, lol. The way I'd do it is paint the flesh a mid to dark green, black wash, then pick out the raised areas of the skin in a lighter green.

For the black/pink carapace, paint it black, then do streaks of purple followed by streaks of pink (like I did with dark blue/blue/light blue on my nids, just use black/purple/pink instead).

Then for the blue weapons do a mid blue, wash dark blue (almost black but not quite, pure black tends to wash things out too much), go over with the mid blue leaving the darker blue wash in the crevices, then an edge highlight with a light blue.

this site has many great little how to's that will probably be better than general info posted as replies. Not to say that these forums wont give you good ideas or techniques, just that its often better to come here for the fine details or with images of problems so we can give better opinions.

http://fromthewarp.blogspot.co.uk/p/archives-and-tutorials.html

Look at techniques such as

layering

washes

priming

and what ever else takes your fancy

http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/Getting_to_Tabletop_Quality_Quickly
This is a dude with nids that glow in UV http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/510651.page#5350368

Take browse around the painting and modelling tutorials forum. Sure there will be articles in there. I don't play nids myself so cant give much more help.

@All Seeing Skink
Thanks so much! And your Nids loooking freaking amazing! I gotta ask the technique, order, and colors used to do the skin on your Termagants / Hormagants.
I can get my Carapace and face looking pretty decent, but it's the skin I can't get. If I do Prime -> Wash -> Drybrush, I usually just get all the little crevices filled in with the Drysbrush color and it doesn't "pop" very well. If I do Prime -> Drybrush -> Wash, it makes my Drybrush color look terrible and sloppy. If I do Prime -> Layer the Drybrush color -> Wash -> Drybrush, I just run into the same problem as the first time, where all the little crevices get filled in with the Drybrush color.
Overall, I think your Nids look amazing

@Solar Shock
Thanks so much for the link! I will definitely look into it

I used the standard Kraken scheme:
- Prime with Rustoleum hi heat almond
- Basecoat carapace with Mechrite Red
- Basecoat hooves, claws with black
- Wash entire figure with a brown wash
- Pick out details
- Highlight the edges of the carapaces with Blazing Orange
- Highlight the very edges of claws with Blood Red

If you like more natural colours, see my blog on how to paint these:

Bitcly wrote:
@All Seeing Skink
Thanks so much! And your Nids loooking freaking amazing! I gotta ask the technique, order, and colors used to do the skin on your Termagants / Hormagants.
I can get my Carapace and face looking pretty decent, but it's the skin I can't get. If I do Prime -> Wash -> Drybrush, I usually just get all the little crevices filled in with the Drysbrush color and it doesn't "pop" very well. If I do Prime -> Drybrush -> Wash, it makes my Drybrush color look terrible and sloppy. If I do Prime -> Layer the Drybrush color -> Wash -> Drybrush, I just run into the same problem as the first time, where all the little crevices get filled in with the Drybrush color.
Overall, I think your Nids look amazing

@Solar Shock
Thanks so much for the link! I will definitely look into it

I used a few different techniques for painting the skin depending on how much I cared about the model.

Some of the gaunts are simply white undercoat, a light Devlan Mud wash to give the bone colour, then carefully use Brown Ink (an old GW colour, but you can buy inks from other companies that do the same job) to paint directly in to the crevices and also on the exposed fleshy bits. This is really fast and you can get through a dozen gaunts in an hour or two.

For some of them, including the Genestealers, I used the same method, but before the Devlan Mud I used a heavily watered down (almost wash, but not quite) bone colour to give a bit more depth and tone (rather than just doing the Devlan Mud over white).

For the big important models like the Carnifex that I wanted to spend more time on (and a few of the gaunts as well to make it look like there's some natural skin tone variation across the army, rather than big models being randomly different) I used a slightly more involved method. I started with a white undercoat, gave the model a coat of watered down bone colour as previously mentioned, then a heavy coat of Brown Ink, then went over the model and picked out most of the skin with a bone colour, leaving the brown ink only in the crevices.

If I weren't lazy, I'd then give them a light bone colour (almost-white) highlight... but I am lazy so that's where I stopped

I tend to do 4 layers of drybrushing and then a wash to blend it all together and even it out. Then, if needed a *very* light brush of a light colour

I like my blue, green pinky/purple colour scheme but I agonised over it for a while. Did one termigant then a bunch of gaunts to see how it would look in a mob then a carifex to see it on a larger model before taking on zoans and a tervigon. I'm pretty happy with my colour scheme.
Next up: Trygon and Tyrants!

 Kroothawk wrote:
If you like more natural colours, see my blog on how to paint these:

Ooohh, very nice. Did you sharpen the talons or do they come like that?