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With some purchasing and luck with trading, I have now gathered about 1/2 of my new tau army. The army list and background of the army can be found here, http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/233369.page.

The primary colors of the army are shadow grey, liche purple, space wolves grey, chaos black, and burnished gold As a painter, I tend to paint units with little or no concern of a overall theme. This has led to an army that is very mixed and lacking a color scheme. (Great for Eldar, not some much for Tau). To solve this "problem" each FOC slot has a different color to in addition to the primary colors. HQ: Golden Yellow, Elites: Scorpion Green, Troops: Blazing Orange, Fast Attack: Enchanted Blue, and Heavy Support: Scab Red. This gives me units that look different, but still have a overall color scheme. This will apply mainly to the Tau units and vehicles. Drones will be colored as to the spot on the FOC of their parent unit (ie devilfish drones will have orange, piranha drones blue, etc). The vespid will have a wasp colors (yellow and black) with blue armor and gun. The kroot, I have no real idea how I want to paint them. I am thinking of earthy tones, but the quills might get some orange.

The first unit that I have done is a devilfish for a fire warrior team, so its FOC color is orange.
All suggestions, comments, and criticisms are welcome.
Thanks





drones



I know it is not the cleanest or best, but i am pretty proud of it, this is the first time I have tired doing the black lines with the tau vehicles.
(And yes more units will be posted as time goes on, I hope to start on a hammerhead this week, followed by the sky ray and the second devilfish.)

Also how does one post actual pictures in an article?

You'll want to copy and paste the "IMG code" bit from the relevant photobucket page. Like so:



As for the paintjob, I'd work on painting right up to the lines - as it is, it looks a bit messy. I'm not much of a fan of the orange as a colour, but the purple and blue work well. Keep at it!

Thanks for the information about posting the picture. I will try to clean it up a bit later on, so I will see where that gets me. I also like how the grey/blue looks with the purple. I know the orange is kind bright and does not seem to mesh as well, but it will only be on the troop choices. Thanks for the ecouargement, I like to think I am decent modelder, but my painting skills need work.

Notes: Everything will be primed white, and the shield generator is a disruption pod upgrade.

I got a new unit done, a hammerhead with railgun and sms.







Enjoy, hopefully the next unit will be a second troop devilfish. (I would prime it but I am getting 20mph plus winds right now. Not the best priming conditions.)

I agree that you should do touch-ups to get the colors going right up to the lines. You have the right idea, painting everything in to the recesses, but you should touch up the colors to make them look nice and crisp.

Also, from a colour theory point of view, the blue and the orange are excellent. It's the purple that throws them off, as that is a pretty bad tertiary. Too close to blue. I would have gone with the orange and the blue as my main colour scheme, and the third color could either be a metallic, or black to take some of the focus off the brightness.

Solid , bright , vibrant colors .
Neat or not, its very catchy to the eyes.

Nice choice of colors, like tropical fish .

If you go down to your local art store you can buy an ultra fine marker pen that you can then use to go over your lines. It means that you can paint all the way up to the line and not worry if you go over a bit as you will fill the lines in later on.

I think that your colour scheme is ok. Some of your colours don't mesh well with the others, the orange looks pretty bad with the other two colours but could look great paired with something different.

With colour choice my advice would be to group colours that have a similar asthetic, for my stuff I use Scab red, shadow grey, and vomit brown. They all have an earthy quality that look good (IMO) together. If you like that orange group, it with other bright colours and if you want to leave some pieces black (i.e. the vents on the fish's motors) then you really need neat lines because the messy lines become really obvious with that much contrast.

All in all, I think you have some good idea's that could come together nicely if the execution is good. Although you have lot's of area's where you could improve your painting you should see that as a good thing because it means that every model you do will be better than the last, which is certainly better than being in a rut.

Keep painting dude, take your time to do thing's properly and your stuff will come out great. Then you can post stuff on here and get all the compliments.

Also read as many of the tutorials as you can, they really helped me.

Good luck!

You should probably stick to 2 colors: blue and orange. Regarding the lines, use a fine 000 brush and do the lines with either Devlan Mud wash or the Badab Black wash. Both will flow nicely in the grooves and if you do paint a little outside the line, clean up pretty easily. IMO, the sloppy lining is the main detractor from your paint job.

Here's a Hammerhead I did, that is lined with Devlan Mud

nice colours but could do with some neatening up on the lines

I am not a fan of your color combinations. They seem to defy any color theory I have come across. You have at least 5 colors which have no real regard for each other. They are painted solidly, but schematically many of them clash with each other; and this makes sense, for it is difficult to find 4 complementary colors, or even three and an accent color.

Ever since I got made fun of for my ork army, I have been conscious of the color scheme of my armies. What I did was I googled color theory and they pages I found told me all I needed to know about complimentary colors and distances on the color wheel. I recommend you google it yourself and read up, or take an art class if you have that kind of time. Not to be mean, but presently the color scheme looks like the kind of thing you would see on a toddlers toy from a pound shop.

while the color scheme bugs me a bit, its your army, so if you like the color choices its all good.
your off to a good start, and your models will look awesome once you get the hang of things and clean up the lines a bit

First thanks for comments and constructive criticisms. I will look into getting one of those pens and will get some finer paint brushes. I have the black wash and will try it for the lines. I realize that my choice of colors is a case of one where people are going to like it or hate it. The reasons for the colors are a couple, one to semi match my dice that I use, two to have the different colors for the FOC slots but still have a overall scheme for the army, and three I like to use colors that I do not see a lot of at my flgs. I see a lot of blacks, greens, and browns. I have never been an artistic person so I do not know a lot about color theory and I will look it up and educate myself as suggested. That said, I am keeping the color scheme because I like and I have painted two tanks with the scheme, so I feel committed to the scheme. Once I have the next two vehicles painted (an another troop devilfish and a sky ray) I will work on cleaning up all the vehicles, before moving onto the battlesuits. The winds have died down so I should be able to prime the devilfish today.
So once again thanks for the comments and I will try by best to improve.

That's right, it's your scheme and if you like it, go for it!

The main thing is to be consistent throughtout the army- if you've got orange and purple on the devilfish, put it on your troops too, and then it'll be obvious why you went for it

I just traded for a large tau army and am getting up the courage to paint the second half of it. Your work is inspiring

Assuming you're going to keep the paint scheme, I'd definitely try that small brush to clean up the lines a little. For the next tank, maybe you can get one of those markers, but if not, you can use the badab black wash for the creases. Like Ifurita said, it should flow in there really easily, and if you get some on the outside (assuming your outer paint is dry) you can almost just wipe it off. Definitely give it a go

Great work and keep posting your new units!!!

Also, for the top of the drones I can see some streak marks, might want to thin down your regular paints just a little (whatever amount you're using just put on a little ceramic tile, then add a little water to it to make soupier) so that you get smoother coats. It will make those bright colors look even better and more shocking to your earth-tones opponenents >

Damn straight! If you like your colours then stick with em. How good your models look is 1 part colour choice and 10 parts painting skill. And colour choice is a subjective thing anyway.

Keep up the good work dude.

Well I have most of the vehicles done and will get some pictures of them later. So I now have two fishes and two hammerheads done. I am taking a break from painting vehicles and saving the monster that the sky ray is going to be for later. So now I am moving on to the troops. First are the Kroot. I love these models and how they look, even if making them can be a pain sometimes. What I have here is a test model. So it is not neat and not completely painted. But it gives me an overall idea of where I want to go. I used white primer again for the model. Next is a watered down Commando Khaki followed buy a watered down vermin brown. The quills are vomit brown the blazing orange orange and then golden yellow. While the quills on the body are not colored this way I will do it for the rest of the models. The equipment is catachan green with commando khaki. The blades are shadow grey, the gun is black and rotting flesh for the wrappings. For the body and the quills I am going to water down the paints and try to keep the uneven coloring.
So once again thoughts, comments, well thrown bricks to the head, cans of spam what have you.
I am open to suggestions, with my previous kroot models (which I painted dark black), I was never happy with the way I painted them and for what ever reason, kroot seem to be a hard model for me to choose a color scheme for.

I wasn't a huge fan of your vehicles, but i think i know why. there are not many armies or paint schemes that start well with a white undercoat. Have you tried chaos black?

But I really like the skin on the Kroot. Reminds me of a crab.

The kroot looks very nice

I think a darker wash before you get to the highlighting on the skin would make it look even better, to get some darker contrast into those recesses!

This would also make that white wrap on the gun barrel look really good, too . You could try Devlan Mud and see how it looks, since it is a test model!

Keep posting pics

Hey ya'll. I have completed the kroot squad. Here are some more pictures









I am very happy with the shaper who has a space wolf shoulder pad.





The process of painting them is how I described earlier, so I will not bore you with the details. I would like to
say that this is the first time that I have been really happy how my kroot turned out. This has been my third squad of them
and I was never happy with the previous two.

I also painted a test model for the stealth team. For the elites the color for the FOC slot is scorpion green, with the other colors being purple, space wolf grey, and shadow grey. Gold is on the tips of the guns and on the sides details. Black will be used at the jet pack exhausts. I am not sure if I want to put black in the recess of the models. Once again comments, thoughts, and criticisms welcome.

the purple is a bit rough, but i like the overall scheme.

i think a darker color in the recesses would look good, personally

I haven't got around to painting models, put I do traditional painting often so I'm fairly sure my advice is correct. I think you might want to think your paints a little, and do a few layered coats rather than 1 or 2 thick coats. The paint on the stealth team looks a little clumped. Other than that, I like the lime green with the grey (although the purple might be a bit much, I understand the reason). Good luck!

The only think i can see wrong is ur lack of patience and neating up. If you were to go back over ur models with some paint and neaten up some edges and stuff it would be awesome.

The kroot on the other hand came out very nicely.

Keep up the good work.

Don't take this wrong or anything, I actually like the colors, but at first glance (due to all the colors separated by black lines, but still mashed together in strange and interesting configurations) all I could think was "wow, a tetris army". I suppose that should be a "tau-tris" army

Hope to see them all touched up and finished!

Hi ya'll. Well I have completed my stealth team, it has five members. I am really happy with how these guys turned out. I think they are a lot neater and cleaner looking. I love the washes and how easy they are to use. Once again the FOC color is green and is very dominate. The way I painted the suits give me a guide for when I tackle the firewarriors, using purple cloth and grey armor. Which I know somebody suggested so thanks for it, it is a good one and I will use it.












@Kc7sbp no offense taken, I like going for bright and weird color combinations.

I will be working at camp this summer and will have no real chances for 40k playing so before I leave I am trying to get as much stuff painted as possible.

My next project will be my bladestorm team. Then some random gun drones painted as a fast attack squad and my two commanders.

In the Grim Darkness of the... Wait! Those are not dark! I can feel the universe... Collapsing!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!


Way to go, genius

Your Stealth Suit color scheme looks like Buzz Lightyear..."To Infinity and Beyond!!!"

I love the second hammerhead

@ Warlord Imp, your comment has made realize that yeah, they do look like buzz, I was wondering what the scheme was reminding me of.

@ 1xx700007117, thanks for complement..

@ P4NC4K3, I am not sure if I can do that, but it would be wicked if I did.

Hopefully I will have two of the three XV8s done today.

For your viewing pleasure, I have some more buzz lightyear suits, these are VX8s and are bladestorms.















As with the stealths I am pretty happy with how they turned out, I also now have a good method of painting the suits that lets me get them done in a decent amount of time. My next project will be to get the commanders done.