yellow – pigment.apply

Tyranid Hive Guard 3

Posted on June 3, 2010

Last post on this guy, since I’m calling him done.

Since the last post I added:

A 1:3 mixture of Hawk Turqoise and Scaly Green to the top edges of his skin, and every opening.
Goblin Green base rim, and some flock on top of the grey gravel.

It’s funny…looking at the photos, the pink and the green highlight are really stark. But sitting at my desk, while I’m painting them, they are relatively calm.

I’m wondering if next time I should paint the HT+SG highlight directly over the original SG base, and then wash over that. I worry that the highlight will get muted by the wash, and also that the skin will be ridiculously shiny (it will be – just a question of whether it’s bad or good ridiculous).

Looking at it now, I’m pretty happy with the green rim. When I was painting it I was thinking “Oh god…goblin green rims…how old is this army anyway?” It’s been years since I painted with the goblin green. But I think it’s a nice colour to go with the yellow and green of the model itself.

I’m really happy with how his armour turned out. More of that in the future.

Links to the other two posts, for ease of reference:

My next 40k project is to finish the Deff Koptas! That will be another project where I start writing when I’m already 3/4s of the way through, but there’s still some work to be done.

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!