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Been wandering around the internet for help on painting my tyranids. I have a few models that I can start to experiment with.

I would like my models to have a scheme like the one used by ThirdEyeNuke, a grey/white flesh,glossy black carapace and pink/red maws/gun openings. Check out his Flickr page to see his work, its fantastic.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/71627366@N04/

My models obviously won't be at the standard of his but I would like to begin with a scheme like the one he has used.
Unsure where to start and what colours to use. If someone could help with a basic method for painting the models that would be awesome.


Thanks, emer.

A limited palette of colours can indeed look great, as ThirdEyeNuke's work proves.

The pink/red spot colour looks like it's simply a red-ish wash over white base coat - not a problem.

The white is much harder, as it's always a difficult colour to shade (while still looking white instead of grey) or highlight (coz there ain't no lighter shade of white ). Definitely worth some experiments on gaunts, using multiple dilute black washes over white, then adding further white highlights if necessary.

The gloss on the black is a great 'cheat', bringing out surface texture for little effort. But some of those gradations between solid white and solid black look airbrushed to me.

The thing about black and white is that they are both colors that can look quite poor if not properly shaded and highlighted; especially when it's covering a large area such as an entire skin/carapace section. Definitely drop some cash on some test-models to try out your scheme and try and get the hang of painting them. They're both pretty tricky colors but luckily there's tons of tutorials on how to do them right.

Black/white are the two most extreme colors that require additional work. Most colors can be cheated by painting the carapace solid brown (example) and then hit with a heavy coat of agrax earthshade. Then if you really want you could go over with a lighter brown and drybrush it to give it a little shine.

Cant do it that simply with white or black. Black hides the wash, so you cant even use it, and white gets stained by it, so you almost have to paint it in 3-4 different stages each one with multiple layers to get a good coating and no transparent gaps.

My Tau are purple/green but they also have white spots that are there for contrast reasons. I paint all the white AFTER everything else, including the wash and the cracks between armor sections, and i usually have to do 2-3 layers before it stops looking like i used stained water instead of paint lol. On top of that, im moving very slow so i dont goof up and paint outside my edges.

Black isnt anywhere near as difficult, but its still annoying if you arent good at drybrushing/edging, since thats all you can do to make it have depth.