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?

Another Tau Test:Blue

I am still trying out color schemes for tau. This guy was supposed to be my clean attempt, but between the iPhone photo and my painting skills it really does not look good. I think I may use grey and bolt gun stippled on the armor to see if that spices things up. As it stands I think I am going to use the legs from this model and the red armor from the previous model. Good thing I did not paint a whole squad at once right!

*EDIT my wife said add some battle damage, so I gave the the model the boltgun stipple and sepia treatment.

Battle Damaged Tau Fire Warrior

I am still not sure what color to paint my fire warriors, so I thought I would try another test mini. This guy got one of the city bases even though he is not painted terribly well. I am thinking of moving to orange all around, with none of the mottled dark red. I am not sure the the battle damage works on a mini this small. I plan to try the wash technique tomorrow, which might work well with these older plastic models.

How about red brick? HDR iPhone Photo

The new iPhone iOS came out today with HDR photos. I had a bunch of minis without bases. I happened to have a bunch of easy to cast molds. You can see where this is going. Basically I have been randomly basing all of the test minis I have. Since at some point I am going to paint up some space wolves, I thought I should find a base color that works with the cool tones of their armor. I am really pleased with the adobe red brick color, and think it might just stick. Add a little dead grass and I think it is a winner.

I am not sure about the quality of the HDR photos. I think my cannon XSI produces better images.

City Kroot

After making all of those stone roadway bases, I had to put them to use. Like most painters, a lonely unit of unbased models waited on my painting desk. In truth I have several units awaiting bases. I've got some Tyranids gaunts that have been partially completed for months now. Rather than waste my new cleaner bases on the kroot, I painted over the resin bases that I had used for color tests. Watered down chardon granite followed by astronomicon grey dry brushing worked out so well it is not one of my favorite painting recipes. Add a sepia wash over the top, followed by careful drybrushing of astro-grey once the wash is dry, and you'll have what I think is a pretty cool color scheme.

So now I have city kroot. I suppose this means I have decided on the basing for the tau army and I should start constructing it. I am pretty excited about this prospect, except for the fact that I have a giant collection of FW stuff to paint. I keep squirreling it away, saving it for the day that I can really paint. It seems like such a waste to not jump feet first into pre-heresy given that I have 50+ pre heresy marines now. Or maybe I should put that titan together, or the death korps of krieg? Let's not forget the grey knight army that is primed and waiting to go, or the voystroyans I have been hording in a basket under my desk.

Perhaps I need to challenge myself by speed painting an army in a month. Maybe I need to finally unearth my unpainted striking scopions and paint some up. After all Path the Warrior was such a good book that I actually like Eldar again. (seriously, go read it!)