Termagant (Hive Fleet Leviathan)

(Tyra)Nidrick the Termagant.

Starting off the year with a resolution: to paint and sell some Tyranids from the Deathstorm boxed set. Termagants aren't in that set, but they are in most Tyranid armies and so I bought some to test out how to paint the little buggers.

This is the start of a tabletop quality (or is that battle ready now?) army painting project. I'm not intending to go all out on the models, because the whole idea is reduce the plastic mountain I have stashed away. There is a chance that I'll become too attached to the paint job and won't want to sell the models - but then at least I'll have experience with more than just Space Marines.

I'm using contrast paints, and broadly following some online tutorials from WarhammerTV. I want something a little better quality to sell, so I've made a few tweaks to the formulae, but given the organic nature of 'nids, contrast paints seem the way to go.

So the first step on Nidrick the Termagant was a black primer spray. This isn't for colour purposes so much as that spray being an awesome primer. Over the top of that was a spray of Corax White. Only a single coat, which lets some of the black peek through in recessed areas. This helps give depth to the model later on.
Final base step was a coat of Wraithbone. I used the base paint for this, but future models I'll just grab the spray and use that instead. The time savings of using the spray will be well worth it, especially for batched painting.

Then the fun with contrast paints begins. I've put the Contrast Medium and Volupus Pink into dropper bottles to accurately remix the ratios in future.

• 4:1 ratio of Contrast Medium / Volupus Pink, applied over the whole model. This was somewhat stronger than I originally intended, but ended up in my favour.
• Wraithbone drybrushed all over the model. This tones down the strength of the first contrast coat, adds extra highlighting, and gives more of an organic texture to the 'nid.
• Wraithbone directly painted onto the eye areas (Nidrick and his weapon's eye). They will be coloured differently later, but I didn't want the pink to show through.
• Volupus Pink directly in joints, or flexible points between the exoskeleton. Also added around the mouth. Any brush with a fine point is suitable to keep it neat.
• Shyish Purple contrast liberally applied to the carapace. I had a concern it would be too dark, or too blotchy, but for this sized model (or rather, for the carapace segment sizes) it works nearly flawless. The few blotchy areas actually give the carapace a more natural feel, without being overly obvious. Very impressed by the result with that.
• Iyanden Yellow contrast applied to the eyes. Fine brush tip helps.
• Guilliman Flesh contrast applied to weapon ribbing, and to Nidrick's teeth.
• Wraithbone used to pick out the teeth. As this is only tabletop quality, I'm not willing to go much beyond that.
• Seraphim Sepia wash over the weapon "ammo". This was just to differentiate it from everything else.
• Bloodletter glaze over the weapon. Two or three layers were applied to give it enough red. This step was to make the weapon a different organism: bonded to the termagant, but not the same creature. Bloodletter because red is the typical Hive Fleet Leviathan colour for weapons. I had considered a dark red, but ultimately I thought that didn't reflect how closely the weapon is bonded to the termagant. Considering that Bloodletter is no longer available, my next choice would be incredibly thinned Blood Angels Red contrast.
• Xereus Purple applied in fast stripe motions to the carapace edges.
• Genestealer Purple applied in fast stripe motions again, covering about half of the previous step. More important models may have additional carapace highlighting with an edge paint, but considering the numbers of termagants I'll have to paint up, I didn't think it was worth it in this case.

The model isn't quite finished. I'll add an iris to the weapon's eye, and I've yet to do the claws and hooves. Need to grab an extra paint from the local Warhammer store, or else I'd have this model completed within a single day. Which is awesome.

To be honest, I'm not sure I could do a better job with more traditional methods of painting Tyranids. The same result, sure, but using the contrast paints has most definitely sped up the process dramatically while maintaining a high standard.

-- silly painter.