Test Painting Tyranid

"Red on yellow, kills a fellow. Red on black, it's got jack."

This week I've been working on coming up with my own design and paint scheme for my Tyranid, and tweaking ideas for their name and backstory to make everything fit snugly.

These are Hive Fleet Basilisk. A fleet of survivors from Hive Fleet Gorgon returning to Tau space to finish what they started and clashed with a wandering tendril of Hive Fleet Behemoth. The two merged and became a new fleet, more powerful than either and with semblances to both, Basilisk now looms over Tau space and is currently shadowing over outer ice worlds of the Sa'cea sept.

The name comes from having mythological connections to the other fleets. Gorgons come from Greek mythology and the most well known ones are three sisters- but we usually only hear about one of them, her name is Medusa. The powers of Gorgons were stone/ death vision and they are often represented as or related to serpentine creatures. It fits rather perfectly then when my fleet is an offspring of this creature to name it after one which also has the same power - a glare causing death and stoneform - but is so much more horrendous, said to be the ugliest thing of all creation, venomous and evil and large and powerful, a behemoth in it's own right! I really can't get over how well this works!

I know I overthink things too much, blame the OCD. But it makes me happy and I like being able to have armies with stories of my own creation but which fit nicely into the canonical fluff.

Continuing in this serpentine theme I am basing the colors of my Tyranid on those of the Coral Snake. It is brightly colored, and is recognized worldwide as "This will kill me" and "Danger! Danger!" The colors are red, black and yellow, similar to those of the Behemoth fleet which also fits nicely to make my Tyranid visually an offspring of that fleet.

I bought a lot of new paints for these guys including my first colored basecoat spray which I was looking forward to trying out, and have test painted three prototype models each in slightly differing ways to try out ideas.

Each begins with a different basecoat, all Games Workshop basecoat sprays:
1- Sprayed black chitin, sprayed red underside.
2- Sprayed white chitin, sprayed red underside.
3- Sprayed red all over.

First step, painting the yellow. Same process for all three.
Paint a White Scar strip down the back of each as a base for the yellows followed by: Averland Sunset, Yriel Yellow, Flash Gitz Yellow
This was also done on their tongues, and on the scythes from White Scar to FGY

Second step, painting the flesh. These are prototypes so I wasn't too concerned about detail and looking amazing I just tried to get a general idea for things. Painted all three the same for this step too.
Wash all flesh Carroburg Crimson, go over most all surface with Mephiston Red, then most upper surfaces with Evil Sunz Scarlet, then highlighting the tops of all flesh with Wild Rider Red.
Also painted a thin line of Evil Sunz Scarlet down the center of the yellow strip of chitin.

Third step, painting the rest of the models. I painted the remaining chitin, talons and hoofs all over in Abbadon Black apart from over the yellow strip. From here each model differs.
1- Stegadon Scale Green, then Sotek Green. I mainly followed the standard manner of feathering the edges of the chitin, and also edge highlighted the rest of the models as well as weathering the scythes and highlighting the talons.

2- Stegadon Scale Green, then The Fang. This color mix was to maintain a small degree of color but maintain a mainly dull grey feel. The chitin on this model was mainly a thick border all around as well as on the hoofs instead of feathering, and soft edge highlighting on scythes.

3- The Fang, then Fenrisian Grey. This mix was to go for a brighter light on the edges and make each plate stand out more and to lose all the bluey greens of the previous ones to see how that looks. I did one side of the model in the standard ragged, weathered feathering style and the other side with thick bordering on all edges of each plate. I did the same for the hoofs, some soft highlighting on the talons/ scythes and weathered one scythe to see the differences for that too.

Having now finished these, I showed them to my housemates as a focus group to be evaluated and ask their thoughts and opinions on these to help me decide which is best. They weren't painted neatly because they are just prototypes, but here are photos for you all to see.

To any readers I hopefully have, what do you think of these ideas and models? Which of the three do you prefer, or do you dislike the scheme entirely?