Painting Tau

Since I haven't had computer access at home for a while, I've been doing a lot of painting.  I don't have any step by step pictures, but I figured it would be good to update the blog with the progress of this little pretty!  I picked him up a short time after the Tau update to 6th edition but haven't spent much time painting tau up until recently.  The yellow paint scheme came about from watching GW's main website where a person had posted some yellow Imperial Fists.  He used Averland Sunset base with a Seraphim Sepia wash, followed by another coat of Averland Sunset to pull it back to yellow.I loved the results so much that I had to try it on my Tau.

The whole model is base coated with Rhinox Hide, and I decided to trim the  yellow with Flash Gitz Yellow.  The blue itself was a discovery that came much later.  While working on my first riptide (seen in the background of the top image), I tried to find a good color that would stand out with the yellow.  Prior to this, I had used white and red on my Firewarriors, and decided to try the blue with the riptide.  I loved the results so much that I'm starting to convert all my yellow Tau stuff to have the Altorf Guard Blue stripes.

You start by laying down a layer of Celestra Grey.  Then, apply a few layers of Altorf Guard Blue.  The layer paint that makes up this particular shade of blue tends to not apply evenly, so you will have to lay a few layers down.  For this particular one, I tried both laying two layers of normal paint as well as a few thinned layers.  Both techniques will work just fine, so it's really a matter of preference.  The blue itself is then trimmed with Lothern Blue.

The metal parts are a fairly easy paint job.  Leadbelcher was applied to all the spots where I wanted the metal to be painted, and then I used Nulin Oil in order to shade the Leadbelcher darker as well as deepen the shadows of the crevices.  Finally, Runefang Steel was used on the servos and edges of the metal.

I hope you like the model.  I still need to finish the burst cannon and base it, so I'll post pictures of that when it's done.  I'm planning on using a spare crisis suit and a Firewarrior to finish off the base.  No spoilers, but I think it'll turn out fairly spectacular!

-Cj