Thursday 16 January 2014

230: Tau paint scheme

I've managed to snatch the odd half-hour here and there recently, and as well as finishing building my Riptide, I also sat down last night and painted up two Tau Firewarriors to test out my colour scheme.  I'll go through it step by step here so that its always there as a reference should I need it in the future.

Base coat is Fortress Grey, applied in two thin coats to get a good smooth coverage.

Next I block in colours.  Codex Grey for the cloth of their fatigues, Boltgun Metal for parts that I think should be metallic, and Ultramarines blue for armour plates that I want to be blue to give some colour to the scheme.

Next up is an all over wash with my own recipe "Soft Body Black" wash.  It consists of equal parts Badab Black wash and Water (distilled if you have it (I don't), or tap water that has sat for a day or two), and the 1/10th of that volume of washing-up liquid.  The washing-up liquid helps to reduce the surface tension of the water so that the wash flows more easily, its a poor mans version of Flow-Aid or Lahmian Medium.  Be careful not to shake it too much, or be too vigorous applying it as otherwise it'll froth up ruining the finish.

Cover most of the armour plates with a 50:50 mix of Fortress Grey and Skull White, this is just below white to allow for a final level highlight.

Final highlights, Skull White and Enchanted Blue edge highlighting of all the armour plates.  Not pictured here is also an edge highlight of the metallic areas with Mithril Silver.

I used a sponge technique to apply some battle damage with Boltgun Metal

I used the same Calthan Brown and Yellow as my Marines to paint the bases.  At the same time as painting the bases, I use a very watered down Calthan Brown to apply a little weathering to the lower parts of the models, and then when drybrushing the Yellow, I deliberately get it on their lower legs to make it seem as if they are muddy and dusty (oops, took the photo before that stage, but I'm sure you can imagine it).


That's my first painting points of 2014, and its only 2 weeks old!

3 comments:

  1. Hurrah ! Off to a good start then. Which I appreciate is tough when you are away a lot of the time.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, hoping to perhaps get the squad done, and at least some base colours on the Riptide soon, trying to get in the odd 20 minutes of a morning before work to work through it all.

      Delete
  2. Nice solid colour scheme there, sir! Looking forward to seeing a full squad.

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