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!

Typhus: Back On The Horse

I have not posted much since my blogger versus blogger game. I sort of fell out of the painting cycle, and was focusing on airbrushing Tau tank after Tau tank. I almost painted Typhus by accident. The white primer was working really well last night, and he was sitting near by. The tau Ethereal I was working on was drying, so I picked up Typhus and started painting. I painted him to match my plague marines, though I think he is a little better looking. I have one more glaze to put on him to tie in all of the edge highlighting.

Someday I may even field a Chaos army!

Warhammer 39,999

I met Rob from Warhammer 39,999 last Friday, and we got in a fun game in using the battle missions book. I learned quite a bit about Alaska, before getting thoroughly stomped by my Dark Angels. Rob schooled me using an army with funky old rules, a pts deficit, and with poor rules familiarity on both of our parts. I'll leave the battle report to him, since he has the play by play. Suffice to say, I had a great time, and look forward to a rematch in San Diego!

In other news, I'll need to post images of my Tau at some point. I have been painting gun drones by the bushelful, which is not particularly interesting, but does make the vehicles look much better. Next up is a small dark eldar force. Yes, I bit the bullet and added yet another army to my painting table. The new plastics were just too good to pass up.

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