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I did a quick n dirty for the basing. I'll probably ink or soak the base in black, dry brush with greys, add some foliage. This I know I can fix and have a done a decent job in the past on bases. I'm just not sure what I should do to make the paint job better. Offhand On the larger mini I might add more red along the helmet, perhaps a red stripe down the center of the torso. Take the multiport weapon on the left side of the torso, paint the inside of the tubes a white/grey, the exterior black, and trim it in red or more of the flourscent green. Gloss coat, re-ink, and dull coat. Maybe I just made poor color selections?

I'll get better at painting as I go. (my first gen Tau and 2nd gen Tau are wildly different.)

The lower pic is what I was using to try to copy. I've got a long way to go. I'm not even sure which colors I should be using to try to get to that photo's colors.

First and foremost I'd say you need a wash to get the detail showing. Right now it looks like a roughly mech-shaped green thing but give it a simple wash and it'll start to look a lot better. After that I'd start adding your red and white.

There's also some extreme edge higlighting on on your inspiration picture that you didn't duplicate.

Right now the big thing you're lacking is any sort of shading or highlighting. That makes a world of difference at this scale.

I'm going to disagree slightly with the previous posters. It looks like you've clearly used a wash on these figures. The biggest difference between your mechs and your inspiration image is highlighting - if you go back and clean up the panels that have been stained a bit by the wash and add some lighter edge highlighting, the shape of the mech will pop a lot more.

The other big thing I can notice is the canopies and other small details. I would add in more small areas of contrasting color (such as the gold and silver details) that would help break up the larger flat areas of green.

All that said, this doesn't look like too bad a start to me. A little bit more work and these could be some really nice looking mechs.