ok, old school stuff coming here.
When I was younger, I had this game. That game was:
As you can see, there's a genestealer over there
Years later, I started my tyranid collection. Mind you, this was still in the later stages of tyranids looking like a collection of bright candy on the tabletop. But I really, really liked that 2nd edition hive tyrant model, and I bought it, and it was the start of an obsession I still have to this day.
I decided to paint it up like the box art for space crusade - however, with only very limited paint and limited funds available, I had to make do. Hence the purple being a LOT darker than on the box art (for those who still now it, I started using imperial purple), and the claws a lot brighter. By the time paints were taken out of production I decided to try and keep teh same colors anyway, because I didn't feel capable of painting things again without messing up. And by the time I did feel like I might have that skill, I no longer felt the need to as the army already was so big by then...
So there you have it.
a friend of mine commented that the 4 options for type of tyranid paint shown in the 3rd ed codex were all in my painting scheme: natural colors, bright colors, dark colors, contrasting colors. And I still like it