Hive fleet obsidian painting evolution

[garg]

Hi all,

So after looking at other people 's painting threads here I decided to give it a go myself. When I first played Nids in 2nd ed painting was mostly a chore, I took a long break and got back to 40k end of 2018. My aim to begin with was to do things on the cheap and quickly so I bought most of my army on ebay. For a colour scheme I wanted a kind of iridescent black carapace with mint / turquoise flesh, I started off using glossy black spray paint and cheap acrylics from the hobby shop. This combined with my lack of experience was a bad combination which you can see on the Neurothrope.

I have since moved on to vallejo paints and tried out some of theirs and Greenstufworld's multi colour paints.

Stage 1: glossy black spray and cheap acrylics:

[garg]

Stage 2: Vallejo with dry brushing:

[garg]

Stage 4: more controlled chitin dry brushing

[garg]

Stage 5: edge highlighting, wet blending and multi coloured paints:

[garg]

Below are some total army pictures. Since end of 2018 I have painted

1 Hive Tyrant
1 Swarmlord
1 Carifex
1 Broodlord
1 Malanthrope
1 Tyranid Prime

40 fleshborer termagants
12 devourer termagants
40 GS
6 ripper bases
9 Warriors

3 Venomthropes
8 Zoanthrope/Neurothrope
6 Hiveguard

1 Tyrannofex

[irondreddknight]

Great hive fleet name, thats a good pace ofr using traditional techniques. I'm interested in your converted prime and swarmlord. Can you post some pictures of swarmy please?

[garg]

Sure, I used one of the older metal models, kind of wish it was resin or plastic. I actually much prefer this generation of tyrants compard to the current one, I feel it looks more alien.

All I had to do was shop off a few sabres and massive bone swords off at the hilt and add some greenstuff at the shoulders to make them work in that pose. I'm not so happy with the carapace on him. I originally had it black with some highlights and shading on the shoulders then I did the HG like they are and though they looked cool so I did the same to SL.

[irondreddknight]

I too share the love for the 3rd edition tyrant head, it's a real shout out to the Alien films. You're swarmy has a great pose, it's a real devastating sweeping motion, looks like he's rolling all 6's and dealing mortal wounds. (Survive that Calgar)

[thepounder]

I think everyone loves the old Tyrant head!

You’ve put yours to good use.

[garg]

Here are the next set of warriors. I magnetized them so I could do try them with melee only, I have a set of DS and 3VCs for them painted up too.









I had fun with the Vallejo water texture on the bases, especially the one below:

[garg]

Finally got around to finishing what I was working on ( an Exocrine, Toxicrene, T-fex and Tyrant). I did some more controlled highlighting, experimenting all the time.

For the tyrants wings I tried a technique I saw on Squidmar miniatures. The way the model is posed (I bought second hand assembled) you can't really see it from a normal angle. The highlighting was a bit too bright.



Next up was the Exo, the highlighting was more what I was looking for in tone but the transitions were a little stark.



I was very pleased with the highlighting on the toxi / male. It took me a long time, I also added light edge purple on the chitin.



I spent less time on the T-fex and I was quite pleased with the result. Also the stronger purple edge on the chitin really makes it stand out.



imgur.com/gallery/uUO1tGH

[garg]

Since I plan on taking a break from painting the nids for a while (working on custodes and then maybe GSC) I decided to make updated army pictures.

imgur.com/gallery/p1XvpzR