Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

These are a work in progress. I'm a big Dune book series fan and wanted to make my Tau army something that would fit in a desert world. Right now I just have the main colors painted with minor detailing. I wanted to get my entire army gametable suitable before I dive in to the details (highlighting the protruding points). I used bleached bone as the main khaki color, then bestial brown for the brown portions. For the dark non-painted-metal portions, i used chaos black with a codex grey dry brush to give it a sort of wind/sand worn look. I will add some decals and then highlight the khaki areas with half white and half bleached bone. I want to highlight some of the bestial brown portions too but not quite sure what color would be best for that... any suggestions? comments are very welcome.

BTW for the magnetized stands I used a construction toy set call MAGZ (amazon sells them). They work GREAT and are much better than the GW clear stands that constantly broke.

Thats a pretty cool idea with the wooden dowels/magnets for the flight stands, I might just have to steal that.

As for your bestial brown issue, either go up to vermin brown or just do a 50/50 mix of bone and bestial brown.

Looking pretty sharp.

Were you planning on dusting them up a bit, or were you going to leave them factory fresh?

Hmmm I tend to like the factory fresh look for Tau (not so much for Marines etc). But, do you know of any techniques or picture resources for a dusted up look? I may be open to it...

A very light dusting of appropriately coloured weathering powder? Using a really, really soft make-up sponge? Or a small little puffer blower thing? (a rubber bulb with a nozzle to blow the powder over the model).

Then very gently spray with mat sealer.

Concentrate on leading edges, surfaces which are parallel to the ground, and anywhere that there are recesses or nobbly bits where dust naturally collects.

That should leave it looking pretty new (as you are not weathering any battle damage, scratches from use etc), but will tie it in a little more to the theme and just push it up to the next level.

Nice clean paint job.
I'd give the gold a wash of ogryn flesh just to give it a bit of texture. It's a bit bright aas is

Looks very nice but I think it could use a wash.

I like the scheme, and it is very clean. There is something to be said for a clean smooth finish.

As for the bestial brown sections I would mix in a bit of bone as suggested earlier or maybe even a bit of elf flesh or similar to lighten it. You probably want to stay clear of white whatever you do.

Lovely crisp paintjob- the cream is particularly impressive, as I'd imagine thats hard to get uniform.

ajefferism wrote:Hmmm I tend to like the factory fresh look for Tau (not so much for Marines etc). But, do you know of any techniques or picture resources for a dusted up look? I may be open to it...

What might look good if you just made the tanks look like they skimmed over the sand so you got a bit of dust on the underside but not much on top

Looks great, I like the highlighting on the drones.

I'm not too sold on the gold bubble on the devilfish. I painted mine in a non intrusive color, but that's me

Thanks everyone for the comments, I think I may try the dust on the underside so parts of it are still pretty clean.

As far as the gold goes, anything that I thought would be "sensor" related i made gold. I figured that bulge had some sort of purpose so i was like... hmmm maybe thats some sort of futuristic radar/tracking thing. who knows...

I think im gonna try that ogryn flesh wash onthe gold and maybe a mithril silver highlight on the edges... we'll see how that looks.