Tyranids, Both Old and New

 Ron from ++From the Warp++ recently asked for people to forward entries related to Tyranids for an upcoming collaborative post from the community (which I'll link to when it happens - he's dependable like that). I realized that I don't really have a lot of older material on my site that I refer to, or have so much as linked to since changing the news item entry format of my painting website from old-fashioned manual HTML editing of every single update to a newer, fancier layout using a Blogger blog as the "centerpiece."

 A short while after I got back into miniature painting again as a hobby, Games Workshop released their Battle for Macragge set, with a force of Space Marines and an opposing force of Tyranids (along with some excellent scenery and introductory rules for playing 4th Edition 40K so straightforward that even I could follow along - it's been a year or two now, but I went back and got everything out and actually played through the first few missions with our then-4-year-old daughter, even). At the time, I was considering the Tyranids as a choice of army to play the game with regularly - in hindsight, it's probably just as well I settled on something else, because if I had stuck with them and continued painting them in the style and color scheme I had chosen, I probably would've given up on army painting in no time flat. As it is, I'm still working on getting 500 points of something finished and playable, but I've done a lot of display-quality painting since that time and still haven't been scared away from the game.

 What I did do, though, was write up a number of tutorials as I worked my way through some of the Battle for Macragge figures. They're still valid and linked to on my Tutorials page, even though I've moved on quite a bit painting-wise since then. I wrote one up for both a Tyranid Infestation Marker and an Exploding Spore Mine, and even went so far as to try out a few (minorly) different color schemes for the exposed fleshy areas:

 I'd actually been thinking about revising my old Tyranid color scheme recently, even before Ron put out a request. After sorting through my bitz collection for the sake of gathering up parts to use for my Chaos Warband, I found that other than the Tyranid pieces that came with the Macragge set, I actually have enough to assemble what appears to be one of the larger Monstrous Creatures (a Warrior, maybe?) and then there's a metal Brood Lord someone gave me! The recent White Dwarf cover was the clincher, though (or should I say "the artwork for the new Tyranid Codex"?) in that it's got everything I had ever originally envisaged for a unique flesh tone-based color scheme but didn't have the experience to paint back in '05. Pallid veiny flesh, mottled carapace in a mixture of bruise-like colors, and one of my favorite contrast colors: glowing, sickly yellow-green; What's not to like?

 I'm going to take a stab at speed painting a "new and improved" 'Nid color scheme for an in-progress painting competition over on the RelicNews Painting & Modeling Forum with an airbrush that's been gathering dust in our basement since my birthday in August. I've never used an airbrush before, but ideally I'll end up with this skin color...

 

 ...looking something like this skin color by the competition due date:

 

Here's hoping!