OOP Genestealer Patriarch/Broodlord WIP

[Tinweasel]

I\'m working on this guy for a competition and I don\'t really have a lot of experience in painting Tyranids, although I have been practicing with alternate skin tones and smooth color transitions lately.

Although he\'s an old Genestealer Patriarch figure I dug out of 15 years\' worth of storage, I figger he\'d make a nice Broodlord, since he fills essentially the same role fluff-wise, he\'s Tyranid, and he\'s got the appropriate number of arms.

I\'m painting him color-wise as a cross between the old school purple/blue Genestealer scheme of circa 1989 and the current Leviathan scheme.

Any suggestions or ideas would be appreciated. I\'ll be posting a few more pics of some of the work done as time permits.

 

[Dragonsreach]

The old school painting for this was Blue chitinous Armour with Purple Soft bits. Don\'t know how you feel about that though.

 

[Undave]

Don\'t forget the orange stripey bits down the middle of his forehead lol

 

[Talion]

Originally posted by Dragonsreach
The old school painting for this was Blue chitinous Armour with Purple Soft bits. Don\'t know how you feel about that though.

As DragonReach has said that was the original traditional colour for the Genestealers. Another old School but rarer seen colour was: Green chitinous armour with orange flesh bits.

 

[Tinweasel]

I\'ve always been partial to the blue and purple scheme - got a breakdown of how Ivan Bartleet did it old-school style in one of my old WD issues. I also have WD issue #306, which has a breakdown of painting steps for the color schemes of all the recent Hive Fleets.

At this point, I\'d like to have him end up with a pale, washed-out purple for his skin areas and a midnight blue/purple worked up to pale blue for the chitin armor, but I think I\'ve got quite a ways to go on both counts.

Here\'s where he\'s at as of the last picture taken:

Suggestions and comments would be greatly appreciated!

 

[blackbone]

Ooooh, oooh!

I really like where you are going with this! I find the current Broodlord to be a bore - yours looks so much more \'mature\' and dangerous.

Keep it up and keep updating.

Blackbone

 

[Tinweasel]

A little further along in the painting - folks have commented in a WIP thread elsewhere that the skin maybe doesn\'t look \"alien\" enough, so I added a little more in the way of highlights and a few glazes of color.

 

[Tinweasel]

A little further along on the chitin armor carapace and I added some shading of Liche Purple to the skin. I\'m having a difficult time working the chitin up to lighter blue/grey striations as I would like because it\'s all a puzzle-pattern patchwork of individual scales, so I\'m thinking maybe what I could do is extreme highlight all the raised edges in a blue-grey-white color and then line in all the scale crevices with more of a purple color - again, I was aiming for a cross between the purple/black Leviathan color scheme and the old school Ultramarine > Blue-white scheme.

As for the skin, I\'m thinking it\'s a little to purple right now and not as \"washed out\" and bleached as I\'d like it to be in order to have a mixture of old school straight-up Purple Ink > White and the Leviathan purple shading of Bleached Bone > White.

Any suggestions?

 

[Tinweasel]

I\'d appreciate any suggestions on how to handle the color of the claws and spines. This was one part of the color scheme I hadn\'t even considered in the planning stage, in trying to combine the old-school and the current Tyranid color schemes. Leviathan\'s scheme for the claws is Scab Red > Blood Red > Blazing Orange. The old-school scheme is just plain ol\' bone colored.

My problem (if it is one) with continuing with bone is that he\'s going to look primarily like the old-school scheme if I paint the claws and such up that way. Like I said, I\'m trying to combine the two schemes if I can...

I don\'t necessarily think using red will look bad, as red>orange is a complement of sorts to the current base colors, but I\'m iffy about it as I\'m doing this for a competition and I don\'t want to have to strip anything if I can help it.

 

[DaN]

I just wanna say - those crytals are VERY realistic...!!!

When I scrolled down to the bottom, I had to scroll back up again to see if they were transparent to being with!!

 

[WingZ]

yeah the crystals are outstanding.. for the claws i do them black or bone..

 

[Tinweasel]

As for the claws, I don\'t think lighter Bleached Bone stands out in a good way against the rest of the figure, so I\'m thinking of going dark red maybe painted out to a dark bone/greyish color w/ striations - I\'ve just got a darker basecoat down now.


I\'d appreciate any suggestions/comments on the chitin/armor areas, as I\'m thinking I\'m about finished with those. I\'m going to go with a darker indigo color with lighter blue highlights as opposed to lighter blue across the board, primarily because I\'m not digging on the darker purple skin right now and ideally want it a much lighter shade.

 

[Jericho]

I say black claws man! Mix in bleached bone for the hilights and keep them streaky looking they\'ll be fine.

Anyway this guy looks pretty rad, I\'d advise doing a few more glazes on the skin though for sure. Mix things up a bit and do some SUPER thin green around the eyes and mouth, stuff like that for a bit of variety.

If you have any old Pallid Flesh I think it would be about the right color for the skin you seem to want.

 

[Tinweasel]

Somebody over on another forum asked for a picture from a different angle:

Still looking for constructive feedback - I think this shows a bit more of the figure, especially the chitin/carapace. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

@ Jericho - sounds about right. I guess going too grey or pale on the claws would kinda defeat the purpose of darkening \'em down, and I think there\'s enough reddish hue in the rest of the figure what with purple mixed in throughout everything thus far. (Well, except for the painted crystals...)

 

[Larre]

the stones that stic out from the ground looks cool.

// Larre

 

[Talion]

The crystals look great.

The chitin carapace looks good too kinda got a mottled effect.

but for me the purple flesh areas, need a lot more shading.

go with the idea for the claws goring from grey white at the very tips and streaked going back, keep to mostly very dark greys though, so you don\'t lose the darkness of the claws.

 

[emopainterguy]

I\'d have to say the balck/dark claws would look killer. Chitin looks great, love the colours, but the fleshy parts still need a little something to make them pop I think. Keep up the great work.

 

[Tinweasel]

@ emopainterguy - I built up from the black/red base of the claws with various brown/grey striations and kept it overall dark. I\'d agree in that the dark claws look best, I\'m glad I steered away from straight-up bone. Between these pics and the last ones, I added a few more steps of lightening the skin, which I think added to the overall definition. I also repainted the tongue in GW Titillating Pink w/ white highlights, so I think between that and the bright orange eyes it\'s overall not as gloomy a figure any more. I was worried it\'d be too dark.

@ Talion - Thanks! Yeah, rather than shading the purple (since I was trying to get away a bit from the old-school dark purple skin, I added extra highlights and worked in grey for a pallid, ashen purple shade. Went with something along the lines of your suggestion exactly - striations lightening outwards from the claw and spine bases and then darkened back in towards the body.

Anyhow, these are the pictures I submitted for entry into the competition:

Do you guys think he\'d be good enough as-is to submit into the 40K painting competitions that are being run this month through the US GW Hobby Centers, or can anyone suggest more work to be done?

 

[Bill]

Looks fantastic to me! Those crystals are amazing too... the only thing I can think of adding is perhaps a little more to the base, maybe some dead-looking plants, Tyranid sporey things, or something, just to break up the grey, so it doesn\'t look too tabletoppish!

 

[Tinweasel]

Well, I made a post of the competition-finished figure over in the rating section here: I\'d appreciate comments and votes, please!

So far as the base goes, I\'m kinda at a loss as to what to add. Some Tyranid spore things or dead alien plants sounds about right, but any suggestions as to appearance? I don\'t really know GW\'s Tyranid model line very well, and most of my miniature bitz odds \'n\' ends I could cut down for decoration are neither very alien nor very new.