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Hello all,

Recently I've been working on my first crisis suit and I'm a bit stumped. I love how these models allow for so much flexibility, but with all these options, I have no idea how to paint mine. I've only gotten a basecoat down so far, but I'm really not sure if it's enough, or if I should be adding more to it. So I'm looking to the Dakka community to give me some input (and criticism) on it. I've also included a couple of pictures of my fire warriors for reference to my color scheme. So what do you think? Does it need more color? Or leave it as is and go on to the next step.

Add some highlights to the edges and perhaps fill in the details with something metallic (I personally am a big fan of boltgun metal) or the gold that you used on the fire warriors guns.

The engines (??) on the rear of the armour look a bit too clean - give them a drybrush of boltgun metal to give them a slightly more weathered look.

Try not to overdo it though, otherwise it could just come out looking like a rainbow. The basecoat is nice, it just needs a few touches added.

Rossko , i fully recommend this product to you:


It'll allow you to coat smoothly and easily since you'll be basing directly with the tau yellow , and not over a chaos black under coat.
And color in the armor lines , its easier then coloring book because you just stick the pen inside the groove and its done!

Tau 'suits really benefit from some smooth highlighting, or else they look too blocky - they're quite a challenge to paint, especially early on, because most of the simpler techniques don't look as good.

You would get some extra definition on that model straight away by hitting it with a watered down wash of Devlan Mud, then painting the upper edges of every plate with your original colour.

Kinda plain and clean..... If thats what you like its good...

Looks like a good base coat. Nice and clean. All it needs to be table top ready is a wash over the armor plates and some simple highlights.

On the pose:
Your pose is a little stiff. I'm assuming you'll place the weapons on the arms given their pose. That will probably make the suit look even more stiff, sort of a 'I give up - my hands are in the air' look.

In the future you may want to have your weapons pointed at something. That will make the suit look more dynamic.

On the painting:
Your colors are solid and crisp. However, they are very flat. Giving the tan a wash as unistoo says will give the suit a little more depth. You may also want to give the grey a wash with the black ink.

After you've washed the suit and let it dry I suggest a little highlighting, particularly on the tan areas. I personally don't like the extreme edge highlighting commonly found on space marines, but if you are just beginning, it would be a good way to gain experience. Lots of Tau players use that method as well. Don't overdo it on the crisis suits though because they are larger models and the edges will be higher contrast than say the fire warriors.

I suggest adding a little more color variation on the model. You can do this by adding some drybrushing or edge highlighting to the flat black areas. The ball joins in the legs in particular will probably see lots of use so scrapes and scruffs in that area make sense. It would be easy to overdo it though so maybe a dark grey would be best to see how it looks.

Other things to consider painting in different colors to add more visual appeal is the head antenna, the circular symbol area on the side of the jetpack and the lenses in the 'head'. Red, blue and green are common colors for lenses.

I'd use your red color in minimal areas as it is an attractor. Use it sparingly for things like rank indicators or the aforementioned circular jetpack area.

Using Luna Hound's micron pen is also a very smart move, especially for the grooves between the various armor pieces. Do that last.

I hope you find this info useful and not condescending or overwhelming.

Again, it is a good start and I look forward to seeing more.

I use a liner brush with brown ink on the panel lines. They will pop right out.

ZF-

As something completely unrelated to painting, you might want to look into magnetizing your weapons loadouts. Tau suits are amazingly versatile and tend to be very cost-effective for their points and you will likely not want to permanently stick your suits with a single weapon loadout.

To touch on what Kirbinator says above, it's also not too late to magnetize, since you haven't glued any weapons on. If you have questions, PM me. I've done well over 20 suits or so

Thanks for all the replies all. Please don't hold anything back, even if it might sound condecending. I made this post on my way to bed and suprised to see how many night owls are on here .

I do plan on doing a wash with a liquitex brown as I have already done with my fire warriors in the picture. Hadn't thought about using one of those pens on a battlesuit though. I used to have a few from my days of doing larger models, I'll have to dig them out and give them a try.

I think I might paint the antena on the head black and might do the circle symbol on the side of the jetpack, not sure if I should go with the red or stick with the green.

Also, on the pose. I was going for a look that he was laughing while having his weapons pointed in the air. Hopefully it will look better with the weapons on, but we'll see. Perhaps I should have exagerated the pose more, something to keep in mind for the next suit. Also, I decided not to go with magnets as I read from someone else here that they fit just fine in without any magnets, just don't glue them in so you can change them. I'm going to give it a try and if it doesn't work out, I'll have to look into magnetizing the next one. I also got some tyranid bits from my friend, so I'll be adding those to the base pretty soon, something for him to stand over while he's laughing .

Try using a white or light brown pencil to do the edging highlights.

I am not too familiar with edge highlights. Does anyone have a link to a tutorial or somewhere I could read up on it?

Use these techniques, but only on the edges of the model. It's like the outlining with crayons you probably did in grade school.

http://www.paintingclinic.com/clinic/newhighlight.htm

I feel that your fire warriors are a bit too busy and you should stick with one or two main colours, but on the subject of highlights I use a sort of heavy drybrush technique on all the sharp edges and watercolour pencil, as mentioned for the ones that dont stick out as much.
Hope this helps