Tyranid Trygon Base WIP

[General Mors]

Hello, I'm new to the forum and was hoping to get an honest critique on something I've been working on. I'm currently working on a base that will be used for a Tyranid Trygon that was an extra my friend didn't need and encouraged me to paint. I've been away from the entire miniature painting hobby for many years so I've forgotten much of what I knew even though I wasn't very good in the past. I've recently been trying to get back into it slowly at the prodding of the aforementioned friend and I've taken to reading guides, watching videos, etc. on different techniques. I've mostly been eyeing stuff like wet blending, two brush blending, glazing, etc. in an effort to learn how to create smooth transitions to get rid of the harsh lines you'll likely see on the metal bits in the picture. Please give me any feedback you're willing to provide no matter how harsh; I want to hear it.

Outside of the long intro there I'd like to point out a few things I'm looking to do with this base. In the second picture you can see the recessed swirly pattern surrounded by the metal. I wanted to make it look like the inner part of that was giving off a blue/purple glow and casting light to the nearby area. I also thought about doing something similar to that in the other large recessed circle (4th image) but I was worried making too many of these OSL would overpower the model that would go on top of it or make it look crowded. The small Tyranid (a Ripper?) was put on there because there was a rather random hole sculpted into the base that I didn't like at all and from what I understand Trygons and Rippers both burrow into the ground and come out of it so I thought it would be neat to have it seem like the large Tyranid was leading the smaller one. I put some of the texture paint around where he would come out of the ground and I plan to paint over that with the grey colors to blend it in to the rest of the stone if I can. I was also considering putting some moss around some of the areas like the broken pillars, but again I was worried it might make the base busy. I know OSL is probably too big of a jump for me to do but I do want to try it. I've taken to trying wet blending on little squares and I've gotten mixed results so far. I didn't try it on the metallics here because I wasn't comfortable trying it with that type of paint. I did try to feather the edges between each type of bronze/gold color, but I'm also quite new to feathering having just learned about it. The leaves were a bit darker as you can maybe see on a few of them but they didn't seem to stand out at all so I went with a touch brighter but I feel like it might be too bright after doing it. Thank you for any feedback or ideas you provide and I hope the images give enough clarity.

View attachment 73577
View attachment 73578
View attachment 73579
View attachment 73580
View attachment 73581

 

[Dragonsreach]

Sorry I missed seeing this post yesterday, I was kind of occupied tidying up the painting room (a very great rarity.)

Looking at the pictures you’ve shown I’m leaning towards suggesting no OSL at the moment, as that might be too much of a distraction from the figures.
In regards to the stone work, with it being all the same colour that’s going to make it look a little bland, I’d like to suggest you consider Chalk Pastels. Scrape the edge of the pastel with a blade to get a pile of coloured dust and with a ‘junk’ brush gently pick some up and scrub it around the intersection of uprights and the bases. Using green will suggest ‘algae’ growth, browns dusty soil, and reddish browns look like rust streaks. Seal with a light spray of Testors Dullcoate.

Under normal circumstances stones aren’t a 100% uniform colour with variations between tones of blue through to tones of brown and pale tan. Mixing a base gray with a touch of middle blue will help give an occasional stone a more random feel, ditto brown and tan.

Hope this helps.

 

[General Mors]

I see I didn't think of mixing grey with other colors to help break up the stone color. It has a brown wash underneath it but that's probably not enough. The pastels seem very interesting. Thanks for the suggestions.