Painting Tyranid Spinegaunts and Hormagants for Warhammer 40K

I picked up over 100 Tyranids from a series of E-Bay auctions. Add to that the 130+ Orks I have to paint and you'll realize that I have a ton of figures to work through. I'm looking to paint these as fast as humanly possible. Luckily, I found a way.

Also, I purchased these figures second hand, so the figures were already assembled and some were partially painted. There was only minor breakage.

Here's a progressive chart showing the work steps done.

Step-by-Step

1. Clean and assemble the model.
2. Prime Rustoleum High Heat Almond.

3. Basecoat carapace with Citadel Foundation Mechrite Red.
4. Use Citadel Red Gore to line where the carapace meets the body. I use Red Gore because it flows better than Mechrite Red and the slightly darker color gives it a nice edge.

5. Wash entire figure with Liquitex Raw Umber mixed with some water and Vallejo Glaze Medium (you can use Liquitex too, but I think I like the results from the Vallejo more).

6. Add a little bit of Citadel Bleached Bone to Citadel Skull White and use this to highlight/drybrush the body, being careful not to get any on the carapace.
7. Mix up some VMC Black mixed with VMC Glaze Medium in a 2:1 ratio and paint the claws and talons. It won't cover as completely as straight black and will leave a little bit of the brown showing through.
8. Paint the rim of the base and some of the surface in Chaos Black or whatever your preferred rim color is. If you wait until after the base has been sanded, you'll have patches of the base show through at the rims.
9. Base the figure with sand. If you are really in a hurry to get these figures on the tabletop, then you can do this stage before right after the wash.

10. Apply some of the same Citadel Badab Black wash to the mouth and eye sockets to give them some definition.
11. Edge the carapace using a flat brush and some Citadel Blazing Orange.
12. At this point, you probably want to do a QA pass and ensure the wash hit the entire figure. You'll want to mix up a bit of Raw Umber wash and apply a little where you missed and apply Bleached Bone on anything you want to cover up. You can also use the Devlan Mud wash to make some spot corrections.
13. Pick out the teeth using Skull White.
14. Use a fine brush and pick out the eye with Citadel Scorpion Green.
15. Use the Leviathan Purple wash to add some color to the various organic pieces on the body.
16. For the various biomorphs, I used the Thrakka Green wash on the venom sacs and Leviathan Purple on the andrenal glands. The almond basecoat has a bit of red in it, so a light purple wash ends up looking a little pinkish.

17. Paint the tongue with VMC Rose.
18. Break out your Scab Red again and lightly highlight the very tips of your scything talons, if you have them.
19. Base.

Post Mortem

The picture shows that I've missed the leg carapace, which is fixed now. You'll see that in the final pictures. I also based with sand and a green static grass and then painted the base rims black.

Notes

Last updated	12/8/08
Author	Michael Kan
Pre-requisites	None
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