Painting: Swarmlord

Like the Ork Warboss, this model has been a long time coming. 

I had the Swarmlord nearly complete in time for our last Gaming Weekend at the end of April, but not enough to glue him together. Since then, I finished off the fine details, but he was still waiting on a base and final assembly because I painted him in pieces. 

Compared to my previous Tyranids I'd been painting, I wanted to do something to make old Swarmy stand out, while still keeping him in the same scheme and palette. The first step was some minor conversions. I attached a second tail as he is drawn in the Codex, and then I also decided to use the traditional bonesword to top the smaller bone sabres for his upper arms.

Once I got to painting, I started by deciding to make the contrast of dark and red on the carapace much more drastic. 

From there, I debated making the skin similarly almost entirely black, and I somewhat liked the look, but decided instead to make his skin slightly more green than previous  pieces, leaving less flat black. 

As I mentioned before, the biggest thing that held this guy up was his base. I came up with the idea of having fledgling Spore Chimneys sprouting up under his feet from the sheer power of his connection to the Hive Mind. I ended up taking some Crushing Claws and attaching some spare extended carapace pieces, then piling up the sand around them. 

Once I sprayed that, it was on to assembling the model itself and taking a few pictures: 

Let me know what you think. I might still touch up some of the chimneys and his feet (which got some superglue residue on them) as well as adding some dead static grass, but he's just about done.

EDIT - Additional Pictures: