hive guard – pigment.apply

Tyranid Hive Guard 2

Posted on June 2, 2010

I worked on the Hive Guard weapon a little bit. I’m not 100% on it right now. It looks pretty good…but it’s too much…bone. Too plain. Probably good, but not my usual style :P.

Bleached Bone base coat.
Devlan Mud all over.
Bleached Bone effectively dry-brushed over raised areas. Protrusions on the left, all of the holes on the shaft of the gun. This is a really light coat, subtle is the name of the game.
Solid Bleached Bone on the “spears” that it shoots, followed by a very watery coat of Skull White. Watery mostly because my White is almost dry…but also so it’s more subtle. Looking at this photo…maybe to subtle.
Dwarf Flesh on the cables, followed by a light touch of Tentacle Pink. Interestingly, it’s a lot more of a “light touch” in reality than it is in this photo :P.

I also (not photographed) brought the Bubonic Brown further up on the top-most ridge of his back armour. I realized that it was silly to have a highlight that didn’t start at both ends of the scale. Looks a lot better now.

The skin is next and then it’s done! (oh, and a little work on the base…)

Work-in-progress

Tyranid Hive Guard 1

Posted on May 27, 2010

For my first post of this blog, I choose a model that I spent most of Sunday working on – sorry I can’t start with a blank slate!

This hive guard has been sitting on my desk for a couple months, assembled and beautiful. We played some Apocalypse on Saturday, and it got me really hyped up to paint some models. Unfortunately, I left my Orks (my current priority project) at my friends place, so I had to suffice with what was on my desk – a lot of random things.

Paint Scheme

Right now he (it?) has 3 colours:

Bubonic brown, washed with Devlan Mud. Highlight with Bubonic Brown, followed by Sunburst Yellow. I think this layer is done.
Scaly Green, washed with Badab Black. I think this colour went out of print some years ago. This guy belongs to a larger Tyranid army that I started maaaaany years ago, and I made sure to purchase the colours before they were discontinued. Thankfully it’s still liquid. My favourite part about this combination: he looks disgusting. Shiny dark green. Gross. I may end up highlighting to a combination of Hawk Turqoise (another OOP colour?) plus the Scaly Green. But not to much – I like the darkness.
Bleached Bone, washed with Devlan Mud. This combination went on his gun and every spike. I’m not certain what I’m going to do from here, but the gun definitely needs some attention to stop it from looking plain.
Base is a simple gravel/sand mix, with Codex Gray and Fortress Gray dry-brushed. Goes with the rest of the army. It’ll have some greenery on it at the end.

A few thoughts

I have no idea how I painted without washes before. It’s ridiculous how awesome they are. Like that gun – better looking after two sloppy coats of paint than a lot of models that I see regularly. This kind of tool can only make people feel good about their painting (thus they paint more?)
Hive guard == badass. All armoured and awesome. I need more of them.
In hindsight, another layer of a mix of Bubonic and Devlan would have been a better idea before heading straight to the Bubonic again. It’s a fairly stark transition.

Thanks for reading!