Psychic BOOM!!

As promised on Lucky 88th I've painted up the models I bought from Attack! 2010

I should have been painting up my Lucky 88th guard ready for the Borlingrav game this weekend, but I was too excited by the idea of painting up more gribblies, I got them finished very quickly.



As you can see, he fits right in with my colour scheme, with details being picked out in similar colours to my exising models.
For the base, I wasn't too enamoured with the "Tentacle" holding the Zoanthrope up. although removing it and finding a clear flying stand also didn't fill me with glee. So instead I decided to utilise the "spiky bits"thatI'd already removed from the Genestealer bases, and create a kind of "Magic Circle" of tentacles, giving the zoanthrope a more imposing presence, as if it's summoning the tyranid infection from the ground.
As mentioned above, I've built my genestealers, I didn't like the spiky bits on the base, they seemed too generic if they appeared on every genestealer's base.

anywaym this is the one I've painted up
I'm not too keen on the "armour" on the model, as a genestealer is supposed to have a 5+ save, and hormagaunts have a 6+, but the hormagaunts seem much more armoured.

so i set about giving the stealer a full carapace
And of course, scything talons were a no-brainer, these are the signature of Hive Splinter Borlin.
Cheers!

TSINI

Fizz Pop Rumble Rumble RARRRRR!!!

wandering into my local indipendant store, I find a trygon marked down to £20

a heartbeat later I'm sat looking at the box in the pub next door thinking "I already have a trygon, so which one should I build now? a trygon prime, or a mawloc?"

without further ado, I present:

Trygon Prime emerging from the ground and performing a "goalkeeper" leap. very world cup apropriate (it has been mentioned that I should magnetize a football to the base...)






He was great fun to build, I wanted to show the prime after having just burst from the ground and now picking his victims, thrashing around violently.

Firstly I tilted the body over, and cut the tail off at an angle, this makes him look as if he has burst from the ground, and snaked around in a U turn back on himself. the end of the tail was added because it carries the theme of the trygon prime and breaks up the wasted base space. I decided that after the prime had come from the ground, his tail would be eager to reach the surface and so simply smash its way upward through the ground.

Some base details: Broken Auspex, Lucky 88th Helmet and a pile of skulls...
The cracked floor was achieved by layering some plasticard on the base, cutting 2 holes for the body and the tail. Using scissors I cut a jagged route through from one "emergence hole" to the other. then I slid the 2 halves a few millimetres apart to create a jagged gap, and then bent the jagged edges upwards. I then trimmed the plasticard to the same size as the base.

the craters are made from layers of madium basing slate, filled with basing sand


Lots of extra spikes on the Prime, and the sculpted tail uderside.

A couple of close-ups of the face, you can see the blue details on the tongue and mandibles.
(this was achieved using a Skull White base with an Asurmen Blue wash over the top.

The Family Portrait...
And a Height comparison with the standard Trygon

Now I'm off to do some Imperial Guard stuff for the Lucky88th blog, as I havent updated that for ages!!

I'm not entirely sure what is in the pipeline for the nids, if i came into a ton fo money it would definately be a scythed heirodule next, as i had the pleasure of seeing a barbed heirodule recently and it made me very jealous!!

as this is very unlikely, we'll just have to see what I can get my hands on next.

Cheers for dropping by!!

TSINI

Hive Tyrant - Commanding RARRRR!!! And how to cheat in painting.

Look who's joined the party - my first hive tyrant


Today, i'm going to show you my painting process - how to paint tyranids without being able to paint...

But First, I've copied the small section from my Lucky88th blog showing the issues with the model.


I've sculpted a tongue for him, the mouth was a bit of a dodgy sculpt, and i didn't fancy the "Alien" tongue supplied, i figured something more in keeping with the other monsters would be more fitting.
I can't think what to do about the base. as far as i can remember, hive tyrants are normally on 60mm bases, but the base on this monster is already wider than that, so i could grind the resin base to 60mm, and build up a 60mm base to the same height with greenstuff, or make a nice wooden plinth stylebase and just make it 75mm the same width as the resin piece, or simply leave him as he is.

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Okay, onto the painting:

Firstly, I undercoat the model with Chaos black spray, making sure to spray in stages from different anlges to get into all the hard to reach areas, allowing it to dry each time.

Then, using a fairly large brush, I brush on a coat of Khemri Brown foundation, this paint is thick, sandy, and dries quickly, so speed is the key to push the paint around until it merely coats the model and doesnt clog up the details.


Then I paint the "skin" sections (everything apart from the armour) in Bleached Bone. I have to do this twice to get a nice smooth coverage.
this stage doesnt have to be neat, I tend to get it on the armour edges - making sure I fill all the details nicely.

Apologies here, I got a step ahead of myself. You can see where I've carefully applied Camo Green to the shoulder plate and where I've used Thraka Green to coat the head plates and leg/arm plates (after their coat of Camo Green had dried).
Coat all the armour plates in thraka green once the camo green is dry.

With the armour now done, you can tidy up the edges of the Skin with bleached bone, covering areas where you may have accidentally splodged some thraka green wash, or the wash may have run a little too far from the armour.

on this particular model, I tidied up the areas where the skin looked as if it was attached to the armour plates, knowing that this would eventually be washed brown making the joins "seamless"

Then I coated the large scythe blades with Skull White, using a large brush and switching to a small brush to do the same with all the smaller claws.


Again I jumped ahead of myself, painting the tongue in Elf flesh, then once dry, washing it with Baal Red.


Many stages happened here (I was on a roll)

Firstly, the scythe blades were washed with Gryphonne Sepia, with the aim of getting the wash to stay at the wider part of the scythe, and getting lighter towards the tips.


Now to wash the main body.
Washes tend to dry fairly quickly, so it's a good idea to split up larger models into small sections.

Using Devlan Mud, I washed the arms first, starting where the arm meets the scythe and stopping at the ball joint at the body. After the arms I did the legs, then the tail and lower body, then the upper body, then the head. You have to be carefull not to go too far onto the armour, the scythes, or the toungue, but you should meet them to give a nice dark border (the secret of this wash is to hide where one colour ends and another begins)


I then used skull white on any claws I had missed- the toes and the ones on the "cheeks" and carefully covering the teeth - then washed them in Gryphonne Sepia.

Using the Baal Red wash, I carefully filled the details in on the arms and legs, making the piping stand out.



So here he is, the Hive Tyrant of my "no guns" Tyranid army. Which incidentally I'll be using for the first time this weekend, John P has kindly offered me access to his VAST array of tyranid models to use as count as to fill out mine to 2000points.






Hope you enjoyed this run through of how I quickly achieve a detailed look with actually very little effort, no dry brushing, or layering of different paints, just a simple "painting by numbers" with the basic paints and complimentary washes to give the effect of depth and details.

Cheers, TSINI

RARR!!

I couldnt think of a more apt title for this post today. He really is a beasty.





I'm really happy with how the armour turned out, its difficult to get washes to lay (and dry) right on large surface areas, so I had to wash - drybrush - and wash again to get a nice coverage.

You'll notice i added some "pinkish" highlights in the "piping" on this monster, and have copied this on the hormagaunts too, it adds some subtle colour to the bone skin

A fair bit of detailing on the base, a lasgun and fuel can to tie the monster in with my Lucky 88th, this should make them look good opposing each other.
And a generic space marine helmet. I jokingly told Lee from 2screens I was going to paint it grey as an act of revenge for the amount of times his blasted drop pod army has ruined my guardsmen. luckily his sergeants helmets are red with a white stripe...

So there we have it, a small group of nids to get me started. I've still got 9 more hormagaunts to build and paint up, while I try to find some money for a forgeworld order :D

Cheers for dropping by.

TSINI