Safety Armour Anyone?

Well in line with a previous post about the subtlety of Tyranids, the patrol has been given its yellow safety armour. No Tyranid will ever get lost on the battlefield ever again. :)

This was quite a process. The armour areas were first undercoated with a couple of washes of GW Bleached Bone. The armour base colour of GW Golden Yellow was then also painted on in thick-ish washes. At least two were required, as well as some touch ups.

The key effect is the red effect. A thin wash of GW Scab Red was carefully washed over the armour section at a time and then carefully wiped off (with a Mark I finger) going with the "grain". Some touch ups were required at the plate edges that had to be feathered into the next plate. Some wash was also required in a few places to repair overly enthusiastic wiping.

The area was carefully dry brushed with Golden Yellow to soften the effect and a really scruffy horsehair brush was used to but back some red streaks.

Included since the last stage is a black wash "knock-back" of the skin colour. Despite appearances it was a little lurid. The wash eased it back in intensity and as as result they look a lot less painted.

The claws, blades, hooves and guns were all recoated with black. I used a craft paint that has a satin finish, which enhanced the claws and blades. They were also highlighted with some light grey to fake up a glossy highlight.

Next is skin detail, head details and the guns.

Note with these photos (and the previous set) the colour reproduction isn't perfect. The colours are in real life a less saturated. I exposed these at -2/3 stop to compensate for the camera. I think I really need and incident light meter to do this well. Anyone? :) Still learning plenty about practical macro photography. Next time I'll include a photo of the "studio".

Skin tone

The Tyranid patrol has now been given its basic skin tone.

This consisted of two broad drybrushes of GW Scab Red. This was intentionally left coarse to expose some black undercoat on the painted areas and give the idea of texture. This stage was followed by a targetted drybrush of GW Red Gore. This was applied to all the visible surfaces as a highlight and to add depth. The final pass was of GW Blood Red which was applied to top surfaces, where an overhead light would normally fall.

The result has been a good level of skin texture and a lot of the fine detail has been picked out. This was pretty much the effect I was after, so I am pleased.

There is a bit of "over brushing" on all the models as a result of the dry brushing process. These will be cleaned up as I go along.

Next comes the armour plating.

Black is the new black

Some photos of the undercoated miniatures.

Not much to say really is there? Black makes a good undercoat for this size of model (amd is difficult to photograph).




Next will be the skin.