Mini tutorial how I paint one of my dear, wet and scary tyranids.
Carapace (and claws)
Paint using airbrush with mix of Charadon Granite and Black (80/20). Next add Ice Blue to piervious mix (30/70) and highlight carapace. At last add more Ice Blue to mix (80/20), but paint more watered down mixture with lower pressure (about 0,8 atm). Now you have great base for highlights! Use very accurate brush and paint sharp strings using watered down Ice Blue. Next paint again stronger strings with thicker paint and highlight edges of carapace. To finish use Space Wolves Grey using thicker paint to get more visible strings. Carapace is done! Remember to paint carapace with satin varnish to get more realistic look.
Painted carapace
Painted claw
Flesh
Flesh base is also done with airbrush. First layer is mix of Tallarn Flesh and Scorched brown (85/15). Next I highlight with pure Tallarn Flesh. I appiled watered down Ogryn Flesh on most recess areas. After first wash I decided to wash it again, but this time using watered down Brown Ink (Windsor&Newton).
After inking, I rehiglight edges with Tallarn Flesh and next Tallarn Flesh with Bleached Bone (20/80) up to pure Bleached Bone. Finally I add some White to Bleached Bone and I add white light reflections.
Flesh and bloody strings example
Tongue
First, base layer is Hormagaunt Purple. Next I highlight with Hormagaunt Purple with Bleached Bone (50/50). After this operation I washed whole tongue with Leviathan Purple. I do not care about smothness because it was just only the basic colors that will be covered with blood.
Teeth
Base is Dheneb Stone, washed with Devalan Mud and highlighted with Bleached Bone. I don’t care about smothness for the same reasons above :)
Blood and bloody strings
Here is tutorial how to paint blood.
Base
Base is primed black and white spray to get horizontal light. I don’t remember all colors that I used…. sorry :/
Shadows: Thornwood Green (P3), Scorched Brown, Battledress Green (P3), Black
Lights: Rotting Flesh, Bleached Bone
Nice job and thanks for the effort of putting all the details together into this article.
Soon I’ll show finished model and propably I add some new pics to this (base and more details :).
very cool, do you use a thinner on your paints for airbrushing? how do you get the gradient so smooth
I use water as thinner, but I also use a drop of Retarder Medium (vallejo) to avoid to fast drying paint in airbrush. Smoothness depends on number of layers of paint and consistency. I usually paint first deepest shadows, next I add midtones (sometime I use one more layer with mix of shadow and midtone color) and finally highlights.
You can paint also very smooth gradient black to white using only this two colors without any greys, but you have to paint a couple of very thinned layers of paint to get really smooth surface.
Usually consistency of paint is like 3,5% fat milk, thicker than water but not too much. Thicker paint causes grainy surface, too much watered down causes flowing down the paint.
Best way is practice on some old models ;)
I’m thinking of doing a mawloc now, are they the trygon talons?
yes, in box you’ll find parts for mawloc and trygon