The call of the Hive Mind

I have been really struggling recently to find time and motivation to post any of my most recently finished models to this blog, or indeed pick up a paint brush and finish any models.

Sometimes though, the hobby butterfly swoops down and sinks it’s teeth into you (should it be a hobby bat then?) and you cast aside your previously unfinished models and you start on something new.

With this newness comes hope. Hope that this is a project that you will see through to the end, this time it will be different!

While that’s probably a bit of a stretch, the good thing is, I’m painting again. And it is to the lure of the Hive Mind I find myself following.

Since the release of GW’s Contrast paints, I’ve been interested on giving them a go on an army of Tyranids. I remember reading how someone painted a whole Kraken army with contrast in something like 2 days (maybe less).

I’ve been looking at the contrast range as well as the different Hive Fleet colour schemes, and I’m a big fan of how GW have painted the Gargoyle in the colours of Hive Fleet Gorgon. For me, it has the added bonus of containing no red in the scheme. As I seem to use that colour a lot, I really want a paint scheme that avoids it as best as I can.

So while looking at the contrast range and realising that my local GW isn’t open today (on my day off no less) I looked at the paints I already had.

One of the questions I had with the contrast paints was which undercoat to use? Should it be grey seer or Waithbone? After a little Google I found a comparison of Grey Seer, Waithbone and Corax White.

The Grey Seer and Corax White looked quite similar, and after checking my supplies I found I have Corax White in spray and bottle form. Nice. That’s the undercoat sorted, so I dived straight in and undercoated 5 Genestealers.

Once the kids came home from school, no painting was gonna get done until they popped off to bed. I used this time to try and tidy my hobby space as I couldn’t get anywhere near the desk for the amount of junk that had found its way into the office.

While tidying, a thought occured to me. Long ago I had painted some Termagants following a GW painting guide. And that used Seripan Sepia for the bone colour. Perhaps I could use that instead of Skeleton Horde?

With that I dug out the GW painting guide and then things changed.

There is a picture in the painting guide with the whole Kraken army painted by Chris Peach on one page, and it looks amazing! Having the body of the Tyranids bone and the carapace in the Hive colour just looks brilliant. The only problem was that the carapaces are Red.

I therefore decided that I would stick with the bone colour for the bodies and try a different colour for the carapace.

The GW Colour app suggests using Death World Green for the green of Hive Fleet Gorgan, and while I have a pot of that I remembered that I received several pots of Death Guard Green via the Conquest magazine. I decided to give that a go.

As a tester model though, I decided that rather than waste one of my newly undercoated Genestealers, I would repaint the carapace on one of my initial Termagants. If this was the successful, I could repaint the rest and have another unit ready for my new Hive Fleet.

Speaking of Hive Fleets, as I’m taking the Kraken theme and changing it, in my mind this means that I can pick whatever Hive Fleet rules I like without feeling bad for not taking the one that matches the colour of my army.

Let’s just say that the test model was a success, so much so that I have plowed through a whole heap of Tryanid models!

So many weeks after beginning this post, I am now in a position to share my progress!

Here are the my original Termagants after a repaint: