Nearing the End... Tyranid Lictor

Very nearly finished the work on the Tyranid Lictor I am currently working on and thought I would pop up a quick post as I am unsure over a couple of things and was hoping someone, somewhere would have an idea for me!

Firstly the monsters eyes - currently a deep purple. Not sure it looks right, but don't know what else would look any better.

Second thing - I have a couple of skeleton warriors spare, I am thinking of chopping them up and leaving a mess of bloody skeleton on this guys base. Do I also add copious amounts of gore to the model as well?

Here are the rest of the pictures of the current state of the Lictor:

Hiding in the Bushes...

Just a quick post to show the progress I have made with painting up the one and only Tyranid model I own - the Lictor.

As I have no intentions of starting a Tyranid force I am only painting this guy up for fun. In fact, he's been in a draw for the last year!

Once it's complete, he will be looking for a new home somewhere he can see a bit of action. Anybody interested can give me a shout through the email address in the Contact Me section.

Anyway, see below for the remaining pictures, more to follow once he is finished (hopefully in the next few days or so!)

Astorath the Grim - Redeemer of the Lost

As any regular visitors will have noticed, I have currently done a series of posts on how I paint various aspects of my models, including faces, scrollwork, jump pack flames and power weapons and that it was from the same model that each of these were taken - Astorath the Grim, Redeemer of the Lost for the Blood Angels.

Now all those tutorials are complete, the model itself is also complete as well. In fact he even got used against me today (killed my Chaos Lord, got killed by my Daemon Prince).

Anyway, I loved painting this guy, even though the metal version that he is really did not like staying upright on that tiny 25mm base!

Enjoy the rest of the pictures folks, here they are:

How I Paint my Power Weapons

Today I am going to run through how I paint my power weapons.

Paints we will need are:

Night Blue (VGC), Magic Blue (VGC), Nuln Oil (GW), Ice Blue (GW) and Skull White (GW).

Fairly straightforward process, so lets have a look at how.

 Make sure the blade area of the power weapon is black before we start.

Next we put a layer of Night Blue over the whole blade.

Using the Nuln Oil wash over the entire face of the blade.

We will then create a lightning pattern on the blade with the Night Blue, going over this pattern again with a 1:1 mix of Night Blue and Magic Blue.

Over the above pattern we go with a pure Magic Blue layer, keeping inside the previous layers and starting to lighten up the edges of the weapon.

Again we are going inside what we have previously done, this time with pure Ice Blue, focussing on the edges especially.

Pure Skull White next, kept to random bright spots on the weapon face and along the edges. It is possible to leave it at this stage if you are happy with it.

The final step for me was to add a glaze of 3:1 water to Skull White over the entire blade to give it a kind of haze. With this dry, the weapon is complete to go about hacking up your 40k opponents.

How I Paint my Jump Pack Fire

I thought I would do a guide now on how I paint the fire in my jump packs, which could be transferred across to anything which uses a jet propulsion/engine type set up.

Firstly, we need to get our paints together. The picture shows what we need - Night Blue (VGC), Magic Blue (VGC), Ice Blue (GW), Fenrisian Blue (GW), Skull White (GW) and Drakenhof Nightshade (GW). With all that we can get cracking.

Taking your model, the jet area should already be painted in your general metal colour. Here I have used a mix of Leadbelcher Metal and Black, washed with Nuln Oil.

Using the Night Blue, paint all areas of the jet area, make sure you have covered all the metal that was showing there before.

Use the Magic Blue, keeping it inside the previous layer.

That's right, you are getting the idea now. Fenrisian Grey inside the previous layer.

A final spot of pure Skull White inside the previous layer. If you are happy enough with the finish at this stage you can leave it as it is, but I took it one last step just to tie things together a little more.

Wash the whole areas of the jets with Drakenhof Nightshade to finish off and you are all done. As another extra you could also think of drybrushing around the area of the jets with Scorched Brown (Rhinox Hide with the new paints) and Black to add in the heat effect the pack would be having on the pack.