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Some of you may have seen this chat post where my friend Sierra painted one of her Zoanthropes in my colour scheme. She then challenged me to paint a Tyranid in her scheme, not wanting to let her down I agreed but not before kicking up a fuss though. Read on to find out more.


I have to say it, I prefer Sierra’s scheme to my tired old red scheme. I’ve had to highlight the black skin and the black carapace differently so they look like different organic materials. One with a dull bluey grey area highlight, and one with a brighter grey edge highlight so it looks darker and richer. The gore was painted using this technique. I also introduced a fleshy pink which is absent on Sierra’s scheme, but I like it because it helps reinforce the organic nature of the creature.

Here are Sierra’s thoughts on my paint job.

A interesting take on my scheme, and interesting to see Garfy paint something that is a bit out of the ordinary as he does tend to keep to quite traditional schemes. The scheme he used now is close enough to mine without being just a lazy copy, and it proves it is a nice scheme when painted properly. Makes me wonder how he would handle some of the more interesting Chaos or Eldar themes out there.

This was actually a refreshing approach to painting. I’ve taken inspiration from someone else’s work and honoured their ideas with my own paint job. I’ve painted over 15,000pts of Tyranids and they’re all red. My scheme has evolved over the years. It started off with heavy uses of yellow and green and I slowly phased out the green completely for purples and pinks and the yellow patterning has been reduced to small clusters of spots. I constantly tweak my scheme because I’m not happy and I want to perfect it.

If I treat my scheme like a software update, then I think I’ve gone from 1.0 to 1.9 and the only thing left to do is start from the ground up with Tyranid scheme 2.0. This is where Sierra’s scheme comes in. If I take her scheme and switch the purple/pink chest/face for a red blend I think I might have a more menacing scheme which is still red, black and pink.

The only thing left to do is post the Lictor to Sierra as a thank you gift for challenging me to try something new.

Has anyone taken inspiration from any of the work you’ve seen on Tale of Painters?

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Garfy's Get a Grip - now available on ebay