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Hi all,

Having recently started a tyranid army, I'm determined to do as much painting and modelling as I can with it and hoping that I'll improve my skills along the way. I figured a blog would be a good way to track my progress and motivate myself to keep painting, so here I am.

Picking a colour scheme for the army was tricky, as there's so much choice with tyranids. I knew I didn't want to use any of the canon hive fleet colours, and so eventually settled on a jungle-like theme, using various reptiles and amphibians as inspiration. I was also inspired by Necrotales' awesome tutorial on tyranid markings.

So, I've just finished painting the first of the gaunts as a colour test, and here he is (although, alas, still unbased). This is the third minature I've fully completed the paintwork on (the first two being high elf models that I'm not particularly happy with). Unfortunately, the flash on the camera made my little gaunt look a lot shinier than he actually is - I still need to work on my photography skills somewhat. He also has a bit of an icky mould line on his head - I filed off any mould lines that I could, but obviously didn't do that one properly. :(

Any feedback, comments or critique welcome, of course!

Mishi

I like the color choice and the white markings. I can't wait to see more.

Thanks!

The markings are actually a yellowish colour (GW's bubonic brown) with a little highlighting, but the photograph unfortunately washed them out a bit..

So, I didn't get any more painting done today unfortunately.

However, I did get some new shinies in the post today: a bunch of sprues containing 32 gaunts to be precise. They were a bargain on ebay, costing me around £12.50 total for the lot (biomorph/weapon sprues and bases were also included - just not shown in the photo below). I need to check out auctions more often.

This brings my total model count to:
24 termagaunts (16 unassembled, 8 currently being painted)
24 hormagaunts (16 unassembled, 8 mostly built)
8 genestealers (partly assembled)
3 warriors (unassembled)
1 carnifex (unassembled)
1 hive tyrant (unassembled)

I haven't yet fully assembled most of these, as the only units I'm sure of biomorph-wise are the spinegaunts. I need to get a more specific idea of what I want in my army list before I can prime and paint. However, that's a topic for another thread I think.

Hopefully, I'll be able to update with more painting progress soon!

Mishi

Painting is coming along a little more slowly than I had hoped - I guess I just need to get more practice before my speed will improve. So, no finished pieces today, but I do have a WIP picture of the rest of my current gaunt batch.

I still need to finish the markings, the claws/teeth, fleshy bits and eyes on these guys, but hopefully I'll have that done in the next couple of days. My plan is to base them properly after that before moving onto my next batch of models.

Very nice i like the color effect.

Beautiful carapace details, we need some aerial shots looking down

Thanks guys . I'm hoping to get some more painting work done later tonight - I'll be sure to get some top-down shots when I take more photos.

I *still* haven't finished these gaunts due to a busier weekend than expected, but I did complete all the carapace details. So, as requested, an aerial shot of the brood. (Apologies for the models at the back being a little blurry)

Almost there now - I only have a little left to paint on them before basing. Haven't decided what I'll work on after these guys - perhaps some genestealers. I'm most likely going to add feeder tendrils to the stealers, so it'll be time to get some practice with greenstuff before I do more painting.

Nice painting are you going to do anything with there bases?

Thanks. . I'm going for a jungle theme, so I'm going to try adding some small 'plants' from a fine-leaf plastic aquarium plant ball that I found at a local pet shop along with a little static grass, perhaps the odd twig here or there and some dried herbs for fallen leaves. Not sure how well it'll turn out, as I haven't done any figure basing before, but hopefully they'll look ok.