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Hi. I've been playing Warhammer 40,000 with a friend's army for a while now, really meaning to jump in and make my own someday. I made the decision to try collecting a Tau army and recently ordered a Tau Megaforce, but got the dissapointing news from my local comic book store that that pack's no longer available for order, so now I'm trying to more expensively piece-mail a force together. So far I've gotten two Fire Warrior packs, a Commander battle suit, a single Crisis suit, and that one pack that contains two Hammerheads and a Skyray (though, if it's physically possible, can/should I turn the Skyray into a Devilfish maybe?). I've tried scouring the net a lot for advice and beginner level techniques to try and employ, and have had a chance to see a lot of different color schemes and effects with Tau figures. I'm also planning on picking up a Stealth team, a broad side, and 1-2 more Crisis suits.

I think I've settled on a color scheme of my own that I've seen a little of online: a sort of storm trooper-ish theme of bright white armor with black cloth and swatches of red (like say for a Shas'ui shoulder pad or standard Shas'el accents). But this being my first time painting a figure, it still feels a bit daunting given the many things I've read that I don't quite understand the full effects of. I'm not even sure if I should prime it white or black, even though the majority will probably be white. I'd greatly appreciate any friendly advice or tips to help me start off in the right direction!

This is the proposed Shas'ui:

Fire Warrior painter of my proposed scheme

The only difference would be probably less red on the pulse rifle, maybe making one of those tiny segments on the leg plates red, and maybe the Tau symbol on the shoulder in gold.

From what I've been gathering this is a rough step-by-step I think I'll try on the first model, with questions I think I'll have at each point. Again, I really appreciate any advice or help you can give!

1. After having them fully assembled, spray it down with a white primer. I've read as much to do it in short quick bursts to try and get a a full yet thin layer of coverage over the whole model.

2?a. At this point, what's the difference between the primed white model and a white base coat if the goal is to achieve a white model? Should I maybe ink/wash it in a heavily diluted chaos black (or diluted black ink maybe, I do have a GW pot of that handy) at this point just to get the nooks and crevices? Or would using a detail brush to get those be more efficient? Also, would a black wash at this stage be what I would want to do if I wanted a sort of "dirty" white look, and if so and I didn't want this look, would I just paint over again with a bone white?

2?b. or instead, should I hite up the white armor with a normal layer of one of the brighter grays, and then either layer or drybrush ontop of that white and maybe THEN ink-wash or detail drevices? I'm really a little lost here.

3. if there's Tau skin showing I suppose I'd hit them up with one of the darker grays at this point as well for a base coat, than drybrush for highlights once dry with a lighter gray? I suppose I'd also be hitting up all the cloth with a thick coat of chaos black, dry, and then drybrush with a medium or dark tone gray, again as the highlighting step?

4. Paint the red piece of armor (shoulder a Shas'ui, maybe a leg segment on a Shas'el) straight over the white prime, or should I put a basecoat of white on first for some reason...? And again, would there be any probable need to further accent this color once on there, maybe with another dark wash if I was going for the dirty look?

5. At this point I imagine it'd just be details left. Put a dab of red on the lenses, pick marking color and freepaint those on and just lightly fill in the Tau shoulder symbol, things like that? I had seen some really impressive looking lenses that had me completely fooled thinking they were real glass of translucent plastic!

6. Take a wide brush and get the whole unit (roughly) covered in a glossy varnish? Especially if I want that sort of glossy star wars storm trooper sheen?

I'm fairly uncertain about most of it, so I suppose the first poor brave Fire Warrior to test his fate will be a learning experience. But I'm still more than willing to hear your opinions on that process! It seems like all I'd need is a skull white paint, black ink, maybe chaos black paint, blood red (maybe along with a darker red...? I don't know why), and maybe codex and/or space wolf gray for Tau flesh, plus whatever misc. color to just put on the Tau symbol or gun. This seem about right?

One last question: I've seen comments and suggestions to "layer" up to a white. I'm not really familiar with painting yet, so I'm not sure what this does or why to do it, as opposed to just using the the end color you want? I've seen from different sources that white especially is such a color that needs layering.

You can take a look at my site for an intro for newbies

http://www.kan.org/michael/mkp

As well as an article I wrote, Painting for the First Time

http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/Painting_for_the_first_time

First piece of advice. Pick up a couple of throw away figures to test on. In the beginning, you'll make tons of mistakes or simply try too hard. Test minis will save you a ton of work and headache later.

To some of your questions, if you prime white, some people like to wash with a light grey to pick up edges and then paint a layer of white over the armor plates again.

Try this:

1. Prime white
2. Wash entire figure with a light grey, cracks, etc. You don't necessarily have to hit the large plate armor sections.
3. Paint your blacks
4. Paint your reds
5. Paint lenses green
6. Use the Badab Black wash to over the black and red areas
7. Use white to hit the sections of armor plate again.

If you are going for white armor, definately prime white. White is a tricky color to paint onto a dark surface and most often needs several layers of white on top of another light color. I don't have any experience with the new foundation paints, but you might want to check them out because they allow you to paint colors such as white without as many layers as normal.

By layering your paint, or "building up" to white, it gives you a solid base for the end result, which is a pure bright white, which is impossible to acheive if you just paint white over black or any other dark color. If you paint the entire model skull white, it is going to be impossible to highlight it. But, by building up your colors, white will end up acting as a highlight to the darker tones of a grey/white combo. you could start at 50/50 then 40/60, 30/70, 20/80, 10/90 until you are "built up" to skull white and then you can use it to highlight.

You might want to try using your wash to reach the crevices and then come again with the white paint to clean up and edge the armor.

As far as lenses go, its better to practice on larger windows or view ports than on firewarriors. When painting a lense you continuously highlight a flat surface at an angle building up to white as you go across the surface. For example, you start with DA green, then moving towards the bottom right corner, you keeping adding white until you have reached a near white green. To finish you add a small dot of white in both the upper left corner (where the paint is darkest) and the bottom right corner (where the paint is lightest). This effect can be achieved with just a few layers of color on smaller surfaces, but larger surfaces require 10 or more color changes to flow smoothly.

Thanks for the really helpful advice! And the site was probably one of the most helpful reads I've had yet for just beginning.

Just a few more questions:

What purpose would a wash over a black part of the figure serve, and should it be complimented by a dark gray drybrush to hit the fabric folds? I can imagine I will just have to see the effect once I get there, but as far as that last application of white you were talking about Ifurita, do you think one coat of just white-on-primed white will be enough, or should it be followed or layered in any manner most likely?

Again, really thanks for the replies, they were both very helpful in giving me a more solid idea of what to look for and do up ahead

Personally, I'm a little lazy so when I basecoat black, I potentially miss the little cracks and crevices. The wash gets those areas.

White on primed white is probably fine. Again, this is a great area where a test mini will help you figure out what you want.

Wow. Just wow. I started trying to paint on my test Jimmy tonight, and even with all the advice in mind, I completely underestimated how difficult working with the white was going to be. Test Jimmy came out pretty fugly. Lots of details ended up getting covered, took a base coat of space wolves gray to try and layer up the white and it took far more coats of white than I was imagining to finally get a cleaner white look. I also drybrushged the black cloth really quickly in a light gray, next time it'll probably be a dark gray. But it certainly turned out a pretty big blah, definitely lacking some kind of depth or detail to it in the end. I'll be back at it tomorrow night, but not entiretly sure what to change this go around on the new test model.

Post a pic. If I had to hazard a guess, you're actually using too much paint, trying to cover in one shot.

I'll have to snap one tonight, but you're probably right. But I'm not terribly sure what the alternative is when it seems to take multiple layers to build up a white? The white paint as it was seemed to already be fairly watery by comparison to all the others, would it still require dilution?

ADD: Also, another action I wasn't too terribly sure of, when I painted I tried really hard to paint each "plate" persay on the armor individually, really attempting to not get any paint in those little tiny detail cracks. In some places this seemed outright impossible and looked to gunk up the detail, and in others it didn't seem to help or really add anything. Am I going about this the right way?

You can also look for the White foundation paint by Citadel. That would provide better coverage or start off with a base coat of light grey, then white

Cool, maybe I'll look for that on my way back from work. Would that solve my issue of having the paint too thick that it eats some of the details though? I've been trying to paint around the details and between them, as opposed to lopping it over a whole area that's suppose to be white, and I'm not too sure which one was the right approach yet.

white is a brutal color to work with in general and really hard to highlight well.

if you're a beginner painter I'd honestly suggest a different color. greys, reds, blues, greens are all way easier to work with.

you could use like astronomicon grey which is almost white, then do highlights with white and get a similiar effect.

coolminiornot.com has a ton of good painting tutorials

NaZ

yeah, I kind of regret my white decision, but I feel already committed to make it work now. I did see a fairly good white tutorial there, pretty much expanding on the idea that i need to base a gray coat before I paint white. I was just kind of hoping to cut out a layer or two on tonight's test model. I also had used a probably too thick brown wash instead of a gray on the first one, for some reason believing that was my intention (it wasn't...) so maybe a REALLY thin gray wash before the base dark gray would be a good idea this time...?

Should I be applying those layers of paint sort of indiscriminately to the whole area that will have its color, or being very meticulous to not get paint over detail lines, painting really tiny little section individually?

If I was doing white armor I would go with white primer or white gloss spray paint. Use the new GW washes to shade the white armor bits, being careful to line the areas rather than washing the white completely. Then I would spray the model with testors dullcote. This will give the white paint a little "bite" that will allow you to paint other colors like the undersuit and squad markings. This may seem like a lot of steps, but it goes quickly when you're doing whole squads or armies. The white finish is much more consistent, and you shouldn't end up going back and forth cleaning details and redoing the white.

Another option is to prime with a grey primer

Heh, I just came across this site today, including this article: http://www.tauonline.org/Article/232/DalythSept/

And a pic of pretty much exactly what I'm looking for:
http://www.tauonline.org/Articles/Tau_PaintScheme_DalYthSept_3.jpg

Tonight's attempt should be interesting...

also look up the new 'hoe to paint miniatures' book from gw - i've been painting now for over 20 years and still picked it up -

http://uk.games-workshop.com/storefront/store.uk?do=Individual&code=60049999100&orignav=9

also take a gander at the new inks set. at first, when i tried them in the shop, i wasn't that impressed but now i'm completely sold - it makes everything so much easier to get good results -

http://uk.games-workshop.com/painting/washes/1/
http://uk.games-workshop.com/storefront/store.uk?do=Individual&code=99179999007&orignav=9

another product i'm looking to get (after trying wood stain with some mixed results) is the army painter system -

http://www.thearmypainter.com/

Yeah, it seems like my single greatest issue is capturing the details. Any normal coat of paint is too strong and covers them up, and any wash (that isn't white) just sort of stains the white and makes it look splotchy. I can't seem to find a middle ground between them and don't really know much of any other way to get into those tiny, tiny little crevices...