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

More Painting With Washes...and a Photo Booth

I painted this tank commander a while back as a potential color scheme for my Death Korps of Krieg army. I think I am going to make my own washes for the army instead of using sepia. The miniature was fun to paint though, and will probably find service in some tank from my cadian force.

I used my new light box to take the photos. I think the problem is that I was lacking a good source of frontal light.

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.

FW Krieg Tank Bits on New LR Kit

I've been buying DKOK stuff for a while now, and am only now getting started building it. My first task was to build the single LR chassis that will be part of my 1500 pt force. I am going mainly with centaurs, but want one LR. The old FW kits do not fit on the new model without some work. The good news is that it is not particularly difficult. The engine filter requires a portion of the back engine cover to be sawed off. The trench rails simply do not fit. It turns out the FW full kit has a resin engine area. The tank gunner works, just not with the cool FW hatch because the new LR kit has the turret modeled on. I am luke warm about losing the more interesting turret, since it has more detail, and helps make the tank look more interesting. In any case, I am happy I bought the upgrades. I think they add a lot of character to the tank.

My plan is to run this as a regular old LR with battle cannon, hull las cannon, and bolter sponsons. It will support a static line of 2 teams of 3 heavy stubbers. Grenadier squads in centaurs, hq in centaurs, and quartermaster in centaurs work as my ultra fast open topped gun platforms. A single squad of engineers and death riders bulks out the army. Most of the army is made up of AP3 weapons, so it should be pretty fun to play SM. The centaurs have a built in gun mount so the heavy weapon from the squads embarked can fire. That gives me 2 heavy stubbers per centaur.

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

Ruined Centaur Pt2

I tried out wet weathering powders on this centaur, and quickly discovered that mixing the powders with thinner was a bad idea. I skipped a crucial step in the FW master class book. It is really important to seal the model before moving onto further steps in the weathering process. I managed to get away without too much paint damage, but it could have been a lot worse. The dark metal panels in the floor took the brunt of the thinner, and it shows. I think I may try to make the tank more minty colored. I am beginning to think that my DKOK should be on desert bases, which would contrast really well with a darker color scheme. Imagine this tank with dust sprayed around the tracks, and the right side of the centaur embedded in a sand dune.

DKOK Ruined Centaur Objective Marker

I took a break from my tau to paint up an objective marker for my DKOK army. I have all of the miniatures now, and am just working our color schemes. To that end, I present my mint green and bone colored ruined centaur assault vehicle. The right side of the vehicle will be buried in mud. I haven't put the weathering powders on yet, but I am already pleased. I think scab red is going to be a really good accent color on these.

My army has 6 Centaurs, and I am considering making ruined versions of all of them. The centaur itself is just an amazing vehicle. Open topped, a heavy stubber, and a weapon mount for the squads heavy weapons. My company and platoon command squads in addition to 2 engineer squads, commissar general, and quarter master all get them.