Tau Paint Scheme

"The Fire Caste warriors of the Sa'cea sept are known for being mighty and honorable warriors, but also for having great armor."

Having finished my first unit of Fire Warriors and spent the day today clearing my desk and preparing my workstation to get to work on starting my first Tyranid unit, I realized this would be an ideal opportunity to discuss my color scheme, process and paints used, and anything I found which I want to improve on for next time. No photos sadly, but I will take progress pictures but I will do this next time.

- Undercoat with Skull White Spray
- Basecoat armor: Caledor Sky
- Basecoat everything else: Fenrisian Grey
- Second coat on all the cloth for a nice solid color

- Layer on metals: Warplock Bronze
- Layer on armor: Teclis Blue, (Painted on armor plates but not in the gaps)
- Layer on armor: Lothern Blue, (Painted on armor plates but not in the gaps)
- Drybrush cloth: Ulthuan Grey
- Go over the metals again in Warplock Bronze
- Drybrush metals: Sycorax Bronze
- Second coating of Lothern Blue on armor for solid color and to go over any scuffs from the drybrushing.
- Layer Sept symbol and antenna tips: White Scar
- Layer over the white parts: Troll Slayer Orange (Repeat this 3 or 4 times for a nice strong color)
- Shade: Drakenhof Nightshade, watered down

- Basecoat hoofs: Rhinox Hide
- Layer hoofs: XV-88
- Basecoat skin: The Fang
- Paint eyes: White Scar, followed by dot of Teclis Blue
- Layer skin: Russ Grey/Caledor Sky mix, watered down
- Shade skin: Druchi Violet, heavily watered down.
- Drybrush skin: Fenrisian Grey/ Lothern Blue mix
- Paint hair: Blood Red, Red Ink
- Detail lights on visor/ gunsight/ gauntlets: White Scar, Xereus Purple, Genestealer Purple, highlight with Genestealer Purple/ White Scar mix


And, here is the result!



I'm pleased with the result but the process felt somewhat inefficient. Thoughts to improve for next time:
- Skip the Caledor Sky basecoat and use Teclis Blue basecoat instead then go right into layering with Lothern Blue. It will save me so much time and look just the same, probably with a smoother coat.
- Paint hoofs after skin. That little patch of the skin on the feet took a long time to do without messing everything else up, it would be much easier and faster to do it before the things around it.
- Shading the body with Drakenhof Nightshade before the final armor layer and cloth drybrushing. I don't like how it made the
- The paints I used for the hair were very old and seemed a little off-color. I have new ones though so hopefully the next time I paint hair it will be better.
- The purple lights need to be WAY more vibrant - especially in the helmet.
- Generally change the order of painting some things - I feel like I should make the process more efficient, it took far too long.

I would like to learn and practice object source lighting for the purple lights in the helmets and the leader's gun to make them look like they are glowing. I tried but it came out rubbish.
After painting the skin, I nearly wrote down the mix ratios I used for it, but decided against it. Not everyone has the same flesh color, so as a personal touch to my army I'm allowing for the mixes to be slightly different each time, giving the impression of regional/ national variations in skin color, as well as degrees of tanning (assuming blue-blooded creatures have melanin in their skin...).

I also tried giving the leader some purple freckles on top of his head but it didn't look very good so I covered over them. I like the idea though so I will try again with new ideas on the next one. I think that's everything though, the sept markings won't be done until a large portion of the army is ready so I can properly over-think marking them realistically and make it all consistent, and it's pretty much the same deal for the bases only I'm saving that for when I've done a portion of Tau and Tyranid armies as well as have made my own realm of battle tiles so all of these can be consistent and matching with each other too.

Anyway, if anyone reads this I hope you have enjoyed it or found it interesting, I would love to hear from anyone out there who has anything to say about my scheme whether you like it or have suggestions on how I can improve it please comment and share your thoughts!

My first unit finished!

Last night I finally finished my first unit of Fire Warriors.

This was nicely timed, as I recently bought a digital camera off a friend and that also arrived yesterday too!

So anyway, it's been a good new year so far. I've been very slow in working on my models but that's fine because I don't want to burn myself out. I consider these models complete, but have intentionally neglected to paint on Sept markings or do the bases as I'm waiting to have a large army and lot of models to do that all at once with, for experimentation reasons.

I've been playing battles regularly with my housemate, twice a week when we could fit it in, sort of for a best of three type thing and each weekend we make a new list for the next week. So far I've won every game like a boss! Mostly this has been 500-750 points, as he hasn't got a large amount of models yet and plays Space Marines (Bah, humans!)

I was very excited about the new Tyranid, and pre-ordered a bunch of those to get started on too, I want to work on the armies simultaneously and will do one unit from each at a time, this will be fun for me to see them grow together. I'll get more into that subject in another post when I make a page or blog for the Tyranid side of things.

Anyway, here are some pictures of the models I recently finished! If anyone out there sees this blog and my models I'd love to hear from you and know what you think of them as my first time properly painting models and finishing a unit, as well as any tips for making them look better.