Termagaunt scheme

I think it would look bizarre. What I'd do is paint a 'front line' of 10 or so gaunts to the high standard of the rest of your army (which is stunning, by the way), and speed the rest. even if the back lines look terrible by comparison, no one will notice (or notice as much, anyway) because the first row or two look great.

Nah not to distinguish squads, purely because of the time. I can't think of a way of painting my current scheme quicker that doesn't look terrible when placed next to my existing models (and I have tried). Normally speed painting is best when it consists mostly of washes, but because the contrast between shades and highlights is so high on the carapace and claws it takes a lot of time to produce with just washes and glazes to the point where it's no faster than highlighting it manually.

It's mostly the carapace and claws that take time, which is why I went from full blue carapace to just blue streaks on the Termagaunts, much faster to paint. The dark colour also means I can slop the paint on quickly and flaws aren't as noticeable. Also the joints in the armour take a bit of time as well, but not as much as the carapace and claws.

This army is already a few years old, bought the Gargoyles first, spent a month painting them, then the Trygon and Raveners took me another couple of months, then went in the cupboard for a year or so and pulled them out and it took me a few more months to paint the Hormagaunts, Genestealers, etc.

I envy people who have really nicely painted armies, not because of the quality but because it takes me far too long to paint. This Tyranid army has never seen battle because I can't get past painting them to actually play a game with them! lol

If you have a look at the thread I posted about basing them I've got some better close ups and you can see how they were painted a bit better...

thetyranidhive.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=painting&thread=38355&page=1

Basically, for most models, I just painted the carapace Necron Abyss, then highlighted with large thick streaks of enchanted blue (using a standard size brush, around number 1), then over that I did thinner more gentle streaks of Ice Blue* using a fine detail brush (I use a number 1 brush that I've cut off most the bristles), leaving some of the enchanted blue.

The slight variations on that are for the Trygon I took a bit more time and used 3 highlights instead of just enchanted blue -> ice blue* to get a smoother transition and for most of the large models I used a fine detail brush for all the streaking so it looks neater when viewed close up. And on small insignificant horde-like models I didn't bother "streaking" the enchanted blue on them, I just whacked it on with a big brush and only did the streaking with the ice blue*, which doesn't look quite as nice but saves time and you don't notice if you look at the models from more than a foot away.

*When I say Ice Blue, it wasn't pure Ice Blue, I mixed just a touch of enchanted blue to take the edge off it as I found pure Ice Blue was a bit too bright.

You could do purple the same, just swap Necron Abyss for dark purple (probably liche pruple mixed with black) Enchanted blue for medium purple (probably just liche purple) and the Ice Blue for a brighter more pinkish purple (probably Liche Purple mixed with tentacle pink or maybe the new "emporer's children" GW paint, I haven't tried any of the new layer paints yet to know).

That purple Tyrant looks good. If you want an effect similar to mine, you just need to paint longer streaks and use a middle colour between the darker purple and the pink.

If you look at a close up of my Hive Tyrant (sorry for the poor image quality, this is taken from an iPhone 3GS )...



You can see where I painted the enchanted blue (paint liche purple for a purple carapace)...



And where I painted the Ice Blue (paint light purple/pink for a purple carapace)


This Tyrant was actually a 2nd hand model that I repainted, so I didn't put a hell of a lot of effort into it, if you look at my Trygon (which I spent agggges painting) I went to a bit more trouble to hide the transitions and make the streaks slightly neater, though maybe you don't want to hide the transitions if you want a rougher, grainier, more natural and more textured look. If you look closely at the Tyrant you can see the wiggles and brush marks in the streaks, my Trygon is much neater... but from more than a few inches away you can barely tell the difference.

Haha, I start at the tip, usually just 1 brush stroke per streak, but sometimes you have to go over it depending on the colour (if you're using blood red it doesn't have very good coverage so you have to go over it multiple times).

So the brush is held with the tip of the brush at the tip of the streak and I press more of the "body" of the brush head into the model as I move downward to create the tapering.

Use a good brush that holds it shape well and is reasonably long and thin, rather than brushes that bulge in the center or are stubby and tapered (that's why I use a number 1 brush with most of the bristled removed rather than an actual fine detail brush).

Another tip is when you pick up the paint from your palette, roll the brush through the paint on to your palette and it'll create a nice tip ready to do the streaks.

A couple of models I really struggled painting nice looking streaks and then about half way through realised it was because I swapped to a different brush that was making life harder.

But it's really not all that difficult once you get used to it... but it is time consuming! Hence why I'm looking for a different scheme for my Termagaunts.

I can't really comment on your colour selection because I've never used any of those paints to know how they'd come out Looking at the new paint range, hmmm...

Naggaroth Night base coat -> Xereus Purple streaks -> Genestealer Purple streaks.

But that's just going off the images on the website, I haven't seen the colours in the flesh to know if that's a good progression. Another option for something slightly brighter might be

Naggaroth Night base coat -> genestealer purple streaks -> Emporer's Children streaks.

But yeah, I'd go to a GW store and ask if you can use the store paints to try it out before you actually buy anything. Based on the colours on the website, I'd be tempted to mix a bit of black into the naggaroth night, but in real life it might be dark enough, I don't really know.

I would keep them the way they are, it may take time if you get the results to show for it... they are stunning, by the way. Extremely well painted. You can really tell that you put alot of time and effort itno your swarm.

I'm going to be honest with you. The green Termagant looks horrible... The Hormagaunt however is such a beauty it is hard to describe. What's even harder is to believe that the two gaunts were painted by the same person.

I think what you need to do it is to just paint them the basic colour of your colour scheme. Don't go that much into details, but just paint the most basic like making the carapace blue and the skin white. Then as time goes, you might find some time to add those extra details on the Termagants. Might be far into the future, but at least the colours will fit perfectly with the rest of your army as they await for future Detailing.