Tau Battle Suits

Since Tau can't function I thought I should add some highly weathered battle suits to my force. They match the color scheme for my veteran fire warriors (the ones that protect Etherial Jones). They started out with a careful air brushing of blues, creating a shaded effect. I then proceeded to spray on sepia wash to give them the aqua color you see here. I have a lot of additional weathering to do, in addition to decals. I am thinking about adding rust to the metal plates as well as going back and adding some edge highlighting. Basically my Tau force look like they have been through hell, so these guys will fit in nicely if I keep weathering them till they are right.

My real camera takes much better photos than my iphone, but at the moment I am having a little painters block, so I am keeping away from the big camera setup and focussing on finishing minis.

Tau Ethereal & Shadowsun

I know Tau Ethereals are supposed to be poor units, but I love the way this model looks, and am going to be hard pressed to not field him every time I get the chance. I have no idea why this model stands out to me so much, but it is a must have. Commander Shadowsun is so-so at the moment. I have her based, and am ready to start adding some more detail. I plan to add both blue and dark red to the model somehow, though I Have not figured out how yet.

Painting White

I started back on my tau after basing my Death Guard champion. My tau needed an HQ, so I decided to paint shadowsun. I don't paint white very often, but I think the white is turning out ok. It does not photograph very well, but in person it looks pretty clean. the trick seems to be two coats of a grey wash followed by white edge high lighting. She will stand out really well in the army. Some orange markings and battle damage are coming!

Tau Artillery

I had painters block for a while, hence no updates, but fortunately it has passed. My Tau are progressing along now, with my first heavy guns painted. I really liked the way the grey pre-shading turned out on the suit, so I decided to paint in some highlight colors. I think the suits will be darker like this. Once I can't decide if I should paint up the 3 other devilfish chassis assembly line style, or if I should pause, finish off all of these pieces and then move on.

While I was traveling my HQ choice arrived, and I think a clean white battle suit with orange and red shading will really make her stand out! ;)

Washed and Weathered: Beat Up Devilfish

Here is a quick update to the devilfish. right before this step I hard lined the blue and orange areas and was really pleased with how the thing was looking. Then I tried shooting sepia through my air brush. That did not work out so well, so I had to resort to a brush to finish off adding the wash. Post wash it was two quick spongings and voila!

I have the forge world tau transfers, so I think I will try to get them on tonight. The gun drones and turret will be a combination of red and orange, much like my red fire warriors a few posts ago.

I got my mojo back, and painted up two piranhas with my base color scheme since I first posted this. I went with a red body and green wings for these guys. I also finished off the devilfish by adding the turret and hatch thing.

Tau Devilfish Airbrush Only

I took the nozzle off of my airbrush today and experimented with finely controlled airbrushing. I have a lot of tau tanks to paint, and I wanted to get the base colors laid down quickly so I could focus on weathering, transfers, and all the little grit and grime that I think will make these tanks shine. This tank goes with my turquoise squad. My next devilfish will have the turquoise and the rust red swapped. I think the devilfish will help to tie the army color together even though they are not going to be painted identically.

It was a pretty good experiment. The lines are nowhere near as crisp as painting by brush, but I kind of dig the soft effect. I think the next step is to put some shading on the thing, and then add the transfers. Post transfers come chipping, followed by gryphon sepia wash.

5 Devilfish, 2 Piranha, 5 Battle Suits

My plan was to take this long holiday weekend and paint up all of my tau tanks. The goals was to push my tau force over the minimum pts limit so I could play a game.

I managed to build all of the kits, trim all of the flash, and prime the devilfish and piranha chassis, but it is 7:00 PM now and I am beat. So my new more managable goal is to paint up at least one of the vehicles tomorrow. A speed painting freak I am, but I bit off much more than I could chew this time around. I managed to make my hobby as fun as installing kitchen cabinets!

-john

Tau Color Scheme Photos Using a Light Box

I ordered a light box setup from Amazon a while back and decided to give it a spin today. For my tau I've decided to paint them in three different color schemes, blue, red, and black. The blue and the red squads have orange accents, while the black squad has purple and blue accents. I am considering a green and orange color scheme for my pathfinders. I love the way the two squads. are starting to look together, especially the gun drones. My goal with Tau was to create a super easy to paint set of recipes that I could use to quickly paint up and weather a force. You might have noticed that my tau are beat up. These are dirty tau, who have been on campaign for a long time, not the super clean tau normally seen. I hope my heavy handed weathering is serving to unify the the force.

Kroot Ape Riders & Water Effects

I don't know what the Kroot riders are really called, but the thing the kroot is riding does look a little like a gorrilla. I painted this guy with washes, and I think the style contrasts really well with the ruined centaur. I am not sure more different styles could coexist!

I mixed some thrakka wash into some water effects and painted the mixture over the broken pipes on my resin bases. It took a full day for the water effects to go from a milky green to clear green, but it is worth the wait. The bottle is large enough that I don't think I'll ever run out of it either!

Water effects = epic win

Tau Stealth Suits Painted With Washes

Last night while my wife watched the Sex and the City movie, I painted my first stealth suit team. Using the pure wash technique I learned painting the stealthy fire warrior, I was able to get these guys done extremely quickly. One slight alteration from my normal painting method, is to go back over some areas of the paint chipping with dots of sepia wash. This makes some of the paint chips look older than the rest. Overall I am really happy with how the tau are turning out. I plan to finish up the red fire warrior squad today, though my purchase of one of those Kroot gorilla looking horse things is providing a difficult temptation. I would love to paint up some vehicles or battle suites as well.

Tau Fire Warriors Painted With Washes

Since I was happy with the previous tau painting test, I thought, why not try one more painting test. This time I used the all wash method, much like the kroot. I think I may have found a way to paint my stealth suits. What do you think? Should I maybe paint my fire warriors this way anyway?

The recipe is dirt simple.

• Black wash for armor plates
• Purple wash for head
• Blue wash for cloth
• Boltgun metel stippled on afterwards.

Tau Test: 4 Red Tau

I grabbed my camera from the car, and painted up a few more variations of the red battle damaged tau. One of the things I learned this go around was to thin my sepia so it did not produce such dramatic changed in the color of the clothing. I kind of like these guys. I will definitely paint up 2 more of them so there is at lease a full squad.

If I go this route for troops, my vehicles will be chipped red and blue from the top, and a dirty chipped cream color underneath. I think that would look pretty good. I will use the orange for sept markings. Is this the scheme?

Tau Test:Green

I have green paint. I have seemingly unlimited numbers of tau fire warriors, so how about another tau-test! This time I used reaper master series paints, and sepia wash. I am going to have to extract my real camera from the car so I can take real photos again, but I think these probably do the mini justice. After three test minis in one night I am starting to notice a trend. Hard lining does not look good on tau. I think the minis with simple base coats and heavy washes look the best. These test minis all look over worked to me.

Should I battle damage this one as well? Which color scheme do you like the most?