I toiled for two months to paint my Tyranids from Warhammer 40,000: Here is the result

MeinMMO editor Caro couldn’t resist a certain tabletop miniature from Warhammer 40,000 two months ago. After 2 months, she finally managed to finish painting her favorite, documenting her work with pictures.

Just recently, I reported about my “love at first sight” moment with my new Tyranid son, a Norn Emissary, whom I gave the wonderfully creative name Norm. Norm and I spent a whole two months together, as I put in much patience, frustration, and moments of joy to help him achieve his current splendor.

Now my Tyranid swarm host is finally finished – and so am I. I had never painted such a large miniature before. Especially not with the level of detail and effort that I now not only challenge myself with but also demand.

In this article, I will show you the entire process that I documented with pictures for you, and at the end, the result as well. Promised.

Building

Immediately after I bought the swarm host, I wanted to at least peek into the box… and then promptly started assembling it.

This is what the entire contents looked like: the plastic plates with the components, a quite large base, and an instruction manual.

The individual body parts are first assembled before connecting them to a body. I liked the legs the best and I love the pose they took, waiting on the edge of the box.

The torso, the tail, and the two legs were connected first, making the majority of the body already complete. Then came the two large blades as well as the head, and boom – there stood a fully equipped swarm host in front of me. Still very light gray, but it was there.

I had to celebrate this together with my cat, although the Tyranid looks significantly more excited.

Finally, I glued the guy onto his base, which had to be assembled just like the body, and now he no longer had to lean on his tail to stand upright.

Painting

For the painting, I obviously needed a primer first, so that the paint would cling to the miniature at all. This time I did not use the reliable gray primer for brushing, because I was far too lazy for that. Instead, I got a black spray primer that can be applied faster, more uniformly, and evenly.

Warning: It’s best to use a spray primer from a can outdoors and with distance from other people, furniture, and cars… and preferably with the wind direction. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures here, but I placed the Tyranid in an old box, sprayed it, and let it dry outside before I could continue working with it.

Here you see how it looked before priming (left) and after priming (right), from light gray to black:

I started with something that quickly added a bit of color to the pitch-black Tyranid: some pink-red brains, because he has a lot of those.

After the brains, I was so motivated that I wanted to tackle a spot that can either ruin a miniature or make it endearing – namely the face. For the swarm host, the face mainly means: teeth and eyes. And I’m glad that I managed to hit the small areas quite well. Here I used the nail art brushes that I have already raved about.

With the colors, I wanted to use a different scheme than what is typical for Tyranids. I thought about trying the “girlypop pastel style” like Bubblegum Angels does, whom I have already interviewed:

Instead, I preferred to choose a color scheme that appeals to me. Although I am not a big fan of purple, I wanted to give the Tyranid a vibe similar to the monster “Khanivore” from the first season of the animated series Love, Death and Robots. The skin is grayish-purple, while the plates are rather light, almost white. A bit like an inverted Tyranid, if you look closely.

I also tried this directly after the face with some larger areas on his skin and armor.

Based on this Tyranid pose, I was sure: Yes. Yes, I find this cool. So I stuck to my idea. I then worked my way along the whole swarm host, from head to toe, until Norm finally took shape:

Details

Even though I liked the color scheme, I knew: He definitely needed more color. Any colors that would give him really nice eye-catchers. Especially at the blades, this was perfectly suitable.

I wanted to create a bit of warmth, even for a precision killer machine like the Norn Emissary. But anyone who still thinks at this point in the article that I regard him as a monster and not as a cute thing, I probably can’t win back anymore.

I decided on a red, similar to the brains, which, however, is supposed to create a nice gradient the thinner the blade or armor gets.

When I first painted the blades red on the otherwise so white head armor, my first thought was: Damn. I ruined it. The red just looked really painted on, not natural or sharp at all. However, when I then adorned the sharp sides with a lighter color and tried a kind of gradient with many thin layers, I was actually very satisfied. Lucky me.

The brains also deserved a bit more love. With a similar technique, I added some highlights, and with a dark red wash, I was able to emphasize the small brain folds to give them more depth. Here you can see the difference:

Base

Not only Norm, but also the base he stands on needed to look good. That’s why I started to apply the base colors similarly to the Tyranid.

Rather unspectacular, I know. But to make it fancier, I used the dry brushing technique for highlights and tried to catch as much of the tiny, fleshy structure with red paint as possible.

Dry brushing is also the basis for the Slap Chop, with which my colleague Benedict painted his first figure.

Together with the fleshy areas at the edge of the base, even the ground beneath the feet of the swarm host looked cool.

The Result

After I painted his entire body and the base and sealed it with a coat, he was finally finished. After 2 months and many small evening sessions, I could finally breathe a sigh of relief: Norm is alive! And I am quite proud of the result.

My Conclusion

I had a really great time building the Tyranid and enjoyed every step as it looked better and better. Would I immediately tackle another big chunk like this? I can’t say yes so enthusiastically yet.

I think I have truly fallen in love with Tyranids, especially the larger ones. But I have realized how much I appreciate the calm of the small figures. While painting the small miniatures like my D&D characters feels calming to me, working on the Tyranid really turned into… Well – work.

While I can take my time with the details in my 1–2 hour evening painting sessions for smaller minis, I felt that I would never finish at the same pace with the large miniature.

With small miniatures, I can take more time on the details, highlight better, and set beautiful accents with every smallest point and line.

Even though I love Norm – and I really do, he is probably the prettiest and coolest miniature I own – I long for the relaxation I experience through painting small miniatures. My hobby shouldn’t feel like a job just because I want to finish at last. That doesn’t do a beautiful miniature and a great hobby justice.

Have you had similar experiences with your miniatures? Did you dare to tackle a large miniature that really challenged you? Please let me know in the comments!

For my somewhat smaller miniatures, I finally found a place where they can really stand out better than in a plastic box. Unfortunately, there is no room for Norm, but he can stand next to them and still look great: An Ikea hack for 6 euros rescues my miniatures from the Tupperware box