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I am trying to finish my Tau, and am stuck. I have looked at those models for almost 6 months and have no clue what colors to paint them. I was originally going to do a tron scheme, but I didn't feel like spending endless hours per model. Then I was going to do a snow scheme, but when I heard that the SW were getting redone I decided having 2 snow theme armies would be a bit redundant. Next, I wanted to try the water paint job like in the How to Paint Citadel Tanks, but either I massively screwed up or they left a few steps out.
Here are some guidelines:
-original (ish) (i don't want it looking like every other tau army)
-a paint scheme that wont take forever to do 1 model
-no snow, jungle, or lava (i already have armies for this.
-something that translates between CS, FW, and vehicles

I would appreciate any help or ideas.
Thanks

just some random stuff most unpractical
lightning bolts (dunno how to do on the fire warrriors but vehicles look great with them)
swamp ( have them with the traditional brown thing but covered in dirty mud and gunk)
urban camo ( seems so easy but ive never seen an urban camo tau)
desert (would resemble the classic tau though...)
I dunno these are just some of the ideas i came up with i dont know if any of these fills you criteria i just checked what you already had and that to make it original
hope it helps
-deffskullz

Just pick a color out of the codex itself. There are lots of simple 3-4 color scheme paint jobs. They all look good and are not that difficult to do.

I say black as a main color and ice blue as a secondary, I don't know if this is already a chapter theme, but I'm sure it would look great.

Sa'cea seems to be a scheme that is not often done. The colors are shadow grey for most armor, and orange for details/random panels/accents.

deffskullz wrote:
urban camo ( seems so easy but ive never seen an urban camo tau)

-deffskullz

heh... I have some urban/mountain camo Tau in my gallery

Sweet responses. I was wondering if anyone had an idea how to do night camo?

Black with dark colored digital camo pattern and Green highlights for any sort of markerlight or optical spot on the helmet.

Go with the orange armour as ph34r said...wow, I find myself agreeing with him a bunch suddenly....but not only would orange stick out on the table, you could place this inside the T'au symbol:


If only the team was decent this year....

Personally, I think this would look better:



But that's just me...



Ghidorah

whoa flinty ur tau look nice!
see it does look good lol!

I like the Sa'cea scheme. I was wondering if there was a specific pattern or if their colors were random.

Here's my Sa'Cea Tau. My pattern is just alot of free handing over the whole of the tanks and suits. The warriors were just painted straight up with the striping color from the tanks. The colors used were Shadow grey for bodies. A 50/50 of shadow grey and space wolf grey for the stripes. The orange is the old Coat D'arms "blood angels red". There have been more added to this since a few years ago when I took these pics. I also have gone back and fixed a few things to clean the look up a little. I really need to take some modern pics of them now. Hope that helps.

















Quick explanation on this pic. The Orange suit is the over all commander. The suit with alot of orange accents is second in command. I went with the same design motif as in Dawn of War where the leader's suit is a reverse of the colors of the army. There has also been instances of this happening in the codex itself. Vior'La is white with red accents while Farsight is red with white Accents. Shadowsun who is from the Tau homeworld is a direct switching of the default Tau colors. Going by those three precedents I went with the orange suit. It has also always made it real easy to know exactly who the commander was for missions that required it.

Just to let you know if you are painting camo for ya tau there is just one rule, its either gunna look really good, or really really crap.

BloodDeathAssault wrote:Just to let you know if you are painting camo for ya tau there is just one rule, its either gunna look really good, or really really crap.

That is why I haven't painted yet.

@Fallen. I like the scheme and might use a version of it.

You know, I have yet too see a black and (something) colored Tau army.

I personally like black red and white combos...

This is my take on the traditional Desert Scheme for them. This mini took me all of about 15 minutes total to do.


Basically, the gun is Chaos Black with Scorched Brown areas, the body is Bleached bone cloth, Bronzed Flesh armour plates. The camo was just a matter of dipping the tip of a brush into a color and dabbing spots everywhere at random. Fast, easy, and fits the Tau fairly well.

For the Tanks, why not check out old Desert schemes from Soviet tanks during the 80's? Pictures can be a bit hard to come by on account of the whole 'money troubles' causing them to deploy most tanks with the signature Olive Green but you might find some fitting of Space Commies.

Then again, Olive Green tanks with Desert Infantry can still look pretty cool

15 min? How does it take you so little time... My guys take 1-2 hours each.

I spend about half an hour per Guardsman. The Tau only took me 15 minutes because of the massive number of smooth surfaces and the fact that I just blazed through it, thanks to it being a demo model for my buddy.

Oh, Okay, well the last model I painted took me 4 hours. That Officer of the Fleet.

Codex grey camo. Kinda like the new Army ACUs. I did it on my guard for a while, but I got tired of it taking soo long, and I really didn't think a digital pattern fit with them.

It would probaly work well with tau though. I saw an article in a WD about how to weather tanks. They used a mix of salt and water on a tank that was basecoated brown, then after the mixture had dried they applied green. It ended up looking like the perfect digital effect after the salt mixture was peeled off.

Yea my Fleet Officer probably took me close to that, from starting the build to the last brush stroke. I didn't have any Snot Green, which I needed for his Segmentum Colour on his vest, but once I got that I think yea around 3 or 4 hours from start to finish.

yeah,,, the washes take forever to dry and that add a lot to the time

Here is a possible color scheme. What do you think?

am I the only one who thinks that the vomit brown dessert scheme looks freakin awesome? nobody I know (on the internet or in real life)has ever painted their tau inthe dessert style. but If you want something original, try a dark green color.

Yeah, I think T'au Tau look the best.

I would do that but at my shop there is a kid who is doing the vomit brown tau, and I don't want to step on his toes. Here is a mod I did to the FW. Do you like this one better?

I made the mistake of doing a camo pattern Guard uniform. They may look real nice, but they are more pain then they are worth... Try to do solid colors that look nice

Sanchez01 wrote:I made the mistake of doing a camo pattern Guard uniform. They may look real nice, but they are more pain then they are worth... Try to do solid colors that look nice

+1 Agree with this. There is no way I would consider doing the strip pattern of the tanks on the guys. Their color scheme is just fine.

I do feel your paint though in trying to figure out a color scheme, I went through 5 tests models before i got something I liked, and it was nowhere near the original concepts I was trying to work out.