Alien bug colour scheme

I've been experimenting with how I would paint an army of bug like aliens. My inspiration came from terrestrial beetles. They come in some amazing iridescent colours. Metallic golds, greens, purples and blues. The common feature is that, for the most part, their undersides and limbs tend to be black. 

I've opted to go for blue for the hard carapace and black for the body and limbs. For any weapons and other details I'm going for a dark flesh, tongue like colour.

I painted my samples using three different techniques. As mentioned before to paint a lot of models, I want to use the most efficient technique.

In all cases they are primed in black. I've dry brushed over the entire thing in a very light grey. This could have been white.

The hard areas on their backs are glazed over in the base blue. Pulling from the middle out to the edges with several layers nearer the edges to get more colour there.

From here, I tried the several methods to emphasise the extremities.

Sample 1: I tried multiple individual lines, but despite trying a few times, I was not happy with the results, so I changed tack. I highlighted the ends in pale blue then glazed from the base blue to the pale blue using a 50:50 mix of those two colours.

Sample 2: The next model I simply edge highlighted. I didn't like that either, so I changed that to a glaze of pale blue for the tips.

Sample 3: Lastly I dry brushed the tips and some of the other edges with the pale blue.

All three results are acceptable, but the best value for the effort, as always for me, was the dry brushing. Quick and reliable results.

I tried a few variations for the weapons and other details. I've settled on a dark red flesh colour with a black wash over the top.

For the brains and orbs in, what I am calling, the floating mines, I've used a base of bone colour with a wash of dark flesh colour.

I finished them with a matt clear coat, but I deliberately used a type that from my previous tests tended towards a satin, more than matt, finish. That gives a little sheen to the end result. 

This is a very quick to apply paint scheme, which is exactly what I want to get another army on the table soon.

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