Tutorial: How to paint Tyranids Hive Fleet Leviathan

This is the third and final tutorial in this series. How to paint Hive Fleet Leviathan which is the current eavy metal studio Tyranid scheme.  I’ve broken down their scheme and faithfully recreated here on Tale of Painters. Full guide after the jump.

This tutorial assumes you have a basic understanding of how to paint. For the beginners, I will explain the techniques as I go along. Each picture below shows four chronological steps. Underneath each picture are the corresponding instructions. Each step shows the paint I used during that step.

Paints you will need for this tutorial:

White Undercoat

Pink Horror (layer)

Ceramite White (base)

Druchii Violet (shade)

Abaddon Black (base)

Xereus Purple (layer)

Genestealer Purple (layer)

Bugman’s Glow (base)

Kislev Flesh (layer)

Bloodletter (glaze)

Zandri Dust (base)

Screaming Skull (layer)

Flash Gitz Yellow (layer)

Mephiston Red (base)

Evil Sunz Scarlet (layer)

Armageddon Dust (texture)

Steel Legion Drab (base)

In case you need to expand your paint collection, head over to Wayland Games or Slave to Painting, which both stock a huge selection of paints at competitive prices.

1. Undercoat the model white. You can do this by using a white undercoat spray or use Vallejo White Surface Primer and an airbrush. 

2. Create a wash by mixing Pink Horror (25%) with Lahmian Medium (75%). Wash all the skin areas with this mix. 

3. Highlight the skin with Ceramite White leaving the Pink Horror shading showing through on the darkest recesses. 

4. Use Druchii Violet to shade the join in the skin and any really dark recesses. 

5. Paint everything that isn’t skin with Abaddon Black. 

6. Paint 50% of each carapace plate with Xereus Purple. 

7. Highlight the carapace edge using Genestealer Purple. Small parallel lines alone the edge creates a ridged feather effect. Check out the close up above to see what I mean. 

8. Paint anything fleshy with Bugman’s Glow. This can be tongues, lash whips, feeder pipes, tendrils etc.  

9. Highlight the fleshy part with Kislev Flesh. 

10. Wash the fleshy part (never thought I’d write that on Tale of Painters) with Bloodletter Glaze.

11. Paint the teeth with Zandri Dust.

12. Highlight the teeth with Screaming Skull.

13. Paint the eye with Flash Gitz Yellow. Don’t forget the eyes on the weapon. 

14. Paint the bio-weapon’s body and any claws with Mephiston Red.

15. Add some highlights to the bio-weapon with Evil Sunz Scarlet.

Finally base the model in a way which fits in with your collection. I used Armageddon Dust texture paint highlighted with Screaming Skull and the base edge was painted with Steel Legion Drab.

That’s it for this series of Tyranid tutorials. If you missed them you can check out the Behemoth tutorial here and the Kraken tutorial here.

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