dotting tools

Tyranid Hive Fleet Balaur color guide

I’m far enough along with my first Fire Team for Hive Fleet Balaur to need to take stock of my paint library, so it’s time for a color guide!

Hive Fleet Balaur Genestealers (April 24, 2022)

As always, this guide is drawn from a mix of GW material (White Dwarf #463 and a Warhammer TV video for the Leviathan scheme, Warhammer TV again for their classic Warriors video), YouTube tutorials (Doctor Faust and CatgutPainting for the mottling), and my own spin on things. Washes/shades are generally in italics, and my notation is base > shade > layer > layer for Citadel’s Parade Ready approach.

Bases

The main recipe comes from the White Dwarf Basing Cookbook.

Terrain: Armageddon Dust > Agrax Earthshade all-over wash > Tyrant Skull drybrush
Rocks: Pick one or mix in both:
- Dark grey: Mechanicus Standard Grey > Agrax Earthshade all-over wash > Celestra Grey drybrush
- Light grey: Grey Seer > Agrax Earthshade all-over wash > 50/50 Corax White/Grey Seer drybrush
Skulls: Corax White > Agrax Earthshade all-over wash > Corax White drybrush
Horns: Zandri Dust > Seraphim Sepia all-over wash > Ushabti Bone drybrush
Base rim: Baneblade Brown
Tufts: Army Painter swamp, winter, or both

I started out with a different base (Stirland Mud, Seraphim Sepia, Astorath Red), but decided it didn’t look naturalistic enough. If you see Genestealers on red-brown bases in older photos, those bases got clipped off and redone with the recipe above.

Models

My Tyranid Kill Team only has two units as of this writing, Genestealers and Tyranid Warriors, and Tyranids tend to be pretty similar faction-wide, so this is pretty much my guide for all Hive Fleet Balaur Tyranids. Balaur is a splinter fleet of Leviathan, so the studio scheme for Leviathan was my starting point.

Paint steps vary slightly from my usual approach because the full-body drybrush is messy, so it has to come before most of the other steps: Prime and base coat with Wraithbone spray, shade the skin, drybrush the skin, deepen the wash in the vents/joints; then finish the bases; and then do everything else.

Body/skin: Wraithbone spray > 1:4 Carroburg Crimson:Lahmian Medium all-over wash > Screaming Skull drybrush > light Pallid Wych Flesh drybrush > Carroburg Crimson wash in the vents/joints (to reestablish the color) > Pallid Wych Flesh on high points
Carapace: Finish the foundation steps, then dot it. Don’t dot the hooves.
- Foundation: Naggaroth Night > Druchii Violet all-over wash > Xereus Purple edge highlights > Genestealer Purple edge/point highlights
- Dots: This is a slow and steady process: Too much paint on the tool and you get a thick blob; too little and you don’t get a dot. Each dip of tool into paint is good for maybe 2-4 dots. Using a dotting tool, apply dots of Fire Dragon Bright, not too thin — each dot should be one and done — wherever it makes the most sense for a particular area of carapace, in an irregular, organic non-pattern.
  - Genestealers: Along the outside edges of the body portion and down the center of any head carapace bits.
  - Tyranid Warriors: Always avoid the center-line protrusions/spines.
    - Large plates (like their backs): Follow the outside edges and also run the dots into the middle along the bottom edges.
    - Tail plates: Just follow the outside edges.
    - Guns and leg plates: Just go down the center.
    - Heads: Follow the outside edges.
    - Flaring horns and boss shoulders: Just the leading/outside edge.
Claws and spikes: Incubi Darkness > Nuln Oil pin wash (skip if they have no recesses) > Warpstone Glow edge highlight > Sybarite Green point highlight
Weapons larger than claws (except lash whips): Three stages:
- Base coat and wash: Incubi Darkness > Nuln Oil pin wash
- Glaze: 1:6 Warpstone Glow:Lahmian Medium, 7-8 layers, starting with almost the entire weapon and covering a bit less area every time, working from the base towards the tip; the end should be pretty close to pure Warpstone Glow
  - On the guns with pink vents down the middle, only glaze the very tip of the gun — just avoid those vents as much as possible
- Highlights: The idea is to let the glaze be the star of the show. I originally highlighted the entire weapon in Warpstone, but it overwhelms the subtle glazed areas and doesn’t do anything on the full-strength glazed areas.
  - On the unglazed portion, edge highlight sparingly with Warpstone Glow, and then point highlight with Sybarite Green.
  - On the glazed portions, using a brush fresh enough to still have a defined shape (IE not a busted-ass drybrush), I do something between edge highlighting and drybrushing with Sybarite Green. The brush is about half as dry as a drybrush, and I paint at a 45′ angle to the edges of the brightest parts of the glazed sections, running the edge of the brush along just as if I were edge highlighting.
    - If I had the brush control for it, this could be done with plain old edge highlighting. But when I’ve tried that, I always sprawl into the glaze and overwhelm the effect. This is more subtle and more forgiving.
Fleshy bits and tongues: Bugman’s Glow > Reikland Fleshshade all-over wash > Kislev Flesh drybrush
Lash whips: As fleshy bits, but with green handle (no glazing). After drybrushing the fleshy portion, hit the spikes with Warpstone Glow.
Little blobby venom sacs and stuff: Moot Green > Athonian Camoshade all-over wash > Moot Green
Teeth: Screaming Skull > Agrax Earthshade all-over wash > Screaming Skull
Eyes: Averland Sunset > Flash Gitz Yellow
Eyes set into weapons: Averland Sunset > paint a vertical “slit” of Abaddon Black > Flash Gitz Yellow

What makes this scheme sing for me, especially on larger models, are the two show elements: the glazed weapons, with the contrast between the super deep green and the much brighter green; and the pop of orange dots on deep purple carapaces.

A WIP Genestealer from my first Fire Team (April 9, 2022)

Notes

I’m still pretty new to using Lahmian Medium, and my first attempt for the main body/flesh wash — 1:3 Screamer Pink:Lahmian Medium, my best guess at the ratio used in White Dwarf #463 — went on more like a base coat than a wash. So I switched to using my shade brush, Carroburg Crimson, and a 1:4 ratio, and that went much more smoothly.

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Testing Hive Fleet Balaur color schemes

After an evening of assembling Genestealers and thinking about paint schemes, I spent the rest of last night leafing through back issues of White Dwarf for Tyranid content.

My initial idea for Hive Fleet Balaur’s color scheme was the bi pride flag: pink, purple, blue. Along with the symbolism and the colors, I also like that it includes 2/3 of the classic Genestealer colors.

But the more pictures of gorgeously painted Tyranids I looked at, the more I found myself drawn to Hive Fleet Leviathan’s paint scheme: off-white body with unsettling pink undertones, like a snake’s belly; deep purple carapace; and dark red claws/weapons. No surprise from GW, but that is an outstanding color scheme with fantastic contrast and perfectly matched tones.

This gorgeous spin on Kronos on DakkaDakka gave me the idea to try green weapons/claws. A CatgutPainting video on patterned Tyranid paint schemes sold me on mottling, which I first saw on Javier Del Rio’s stunning Hive Tyrant in White Dwarf #463:

Miniature painted and photographed by Javier Del Rio, from *White Dwarf* #463

So I started pondering making Balaur a splinter fleet of Leviathan, and using Leviathan’s colors as my starting point. GW has done Leviathan at least two ways for their studio paint jobs, so I blended ideas from both of them for the body and decided to test Wraithbone base > 1:3 Screamer Pink:Lahmian Medium shade.

Still thinking about bright colors (something I haven’t yet done for 40k) and wanting to see how that would look next to a vibrant purple carapace (with pink dots/mottling still in my brain) and medium-to-bright green claws, I slapped some paint onto a piece of terrain. (I’ll be repainting this area whenever I circle back to terrain, and conveniently it’s already primed with Wraithbone spray.)

Here’s Wraithbone base coat, the Screamer/Lahmian wash, Xereus Purple, and Warpstone Glow.

And here it is with a quick and dirty Screaming Skull drybrush over the body color, bringing the body closer to Leviathan:

Getting closer to “snake’s underbelly” whitish-pink

Now to test out mottling the carapace. I did some research and found that some folks do this with a toothpick or a dotting tool; this Doctor Faust tutorial is a good demonstration of one approach. My kiddo has a stash of dotting tools, so I borrowed a few different sizes.

Here’s a Genestealer Purple base mottled with Genestealer Purple and then Fulgrim Pink, with purple done using the larger of the tools above and pink done with the smaller one:

Genestealer Purple isn’t much of a contrast (although for adding depth to mottling, that’s probably good), but Fulgrim Pink sure pops. It’s also clear I’m not good at this yet! But I do like the effect.

I threw Khorne Red into the mix and polled my wife and kiddo, and we all liked both options (red or green) but agreed they each give the model a different feel.

(optometrist voice) Green, or red? One, or two?

The more I look at the toxic green, the more I like it. The Leviathan lineage is clear from the identical body color and the mottled variation on the carapace color, the toxic green (coupled with the mottling) cements Balaur as its own thing, and the whole scheme should contrast nicely with my basing recipe: Stirland Mud texture paint, Reikland Fleshshade wash, Astorath Red drybrush (from the ever-amazing White Dwarf Basing Cookbook in the November 2016 issue).

Digging Yore? Check out my book!

The Unlucky Isles [affiliate link], the first system-neutral guidebook for my Godsbarrow fantasy campaign setting, is available in print and PDF.

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