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Hi there!

The tau have great promise. I have a few things that might improve the overall look. White is a really tricky color to pull off as it requires a lot of patience. Rushing white will lead to a chunky almost eggshell texture.

I would suggest base coating grey. After base coat wash entire model in Nulian Oil shade. Bhadab Black same thing. Paint the black areas last as it is easier to clean up than white. Carefully paint all white areas with watered down codex grey. Thinning paints properly is the first step on the road to great painting. Basing in codex grey is a great way to add a subtle shade to your white. Make sure while applying codex grey that you avoid receses. The black wash you used will hide in those reces and putting paint over it will ruin the depth. The nice thing about watering down your paints is that if you make a goof you can quickly clean off your brush with some water then gently rub the area you blotched on until the paint comes up.

After codex grey, water down the white and do it in several thin layers over the grey. This will give you a silky smooth finish. Will drastically improve your overall look. This will be time comsuming but with practice you can get it down quickly.

For the black areas, I have a great trick. The initial wash of black that went on everything will have lent some shading to the pants/cloth areas. Do one more wash of black over those cloth areas and let it dry fully. This should actually give you pants with shading over all the raised edges. If they are still not dark enough, water down some wash and hit the area again.

Macross is a great inspiration. Deffinatly keep practicing.

One more tip about future projects. A good base ties the whole model in. Think contrasting colors in the future so your model dosent melt into the base. Snow with white minatures is a little overkill. One way to pull it off would be to do your bases in a bestial brown, then cover it in areas with snow to achieve a spring melt look and feel. To pull off an entire ice world look you would need to add some rocks or ice to break up the white a little.

Good luck and keep on truckin.

-Fatboy-

Those Tau look great. I think I may steal that white scheme for an honour guard squad.

Also I think that a lava base would make these models look outstanding, just my 2 cents. Any who keep up the good work. All for the greater good and such


Firepainter

Thanks alot FB ill make sure to try out your advice when i pick up my next squad of fire warriors for conversion to pathfinders I'll drill out the weapons too like MD suggested.

For the bases im trying to go for an urban city environ where snow is still around or half melted. I have a nice grey gravel underneath the snow that pokes through irregularly. Ill try to make it more noticeable and hold back on so much snow for future infantry. Eventually I'd like to build a large amount of snow themed city terrain for our group.

As far as the white on white goes I understand your point its more or less the only aesthetic i can see. I have a form of colorblindness known as monochromacy so aside from greys and light/dark i have a hard time picking out anything that isnt vastly different in contrast.

FP I've seen a website that sells some interesting lava bases and plan on buying a number of these in the future actually Excellent suggestion. Good luck with the honor guard as well!


anywho I'm definitely ready to begin watering down paints and will be experimenting with some of the methods weve read in the tutorial section and from various videos on youtube. On behalf of all of us thank you all very much for all of your comments and suggestions. Your help has been invaluable to improving our methods and we appreciate it very much

I check in on your post every once in awhile. No new posts? no new updates? If you guys have done any more painting I would love to see it

been trying to wait till I have a good selection of pics to put up with examples of changes people have suggested.

A have a few so far though:




Here our necron player Xzerios has begun to base his troops and is going for an alien world type theme.



His wraiths are still on their way.

Eric's Greyknight army is coming along.



Eric's first dreadknight.



Draigo being worked on.

Andrew another friend of ours has joined us and has selected Blood angels as his army.


Here is his first paint job on a mini ever, a rhino troop transport. He put quite a lot of paint on it his first go around so its kind of clumpy.

Zmans Ork biker army continues to grow.





Hes also finished a dakkajet that I dont have pictures of yet.

Here it is as a WIP:



As a result of this paintjob he decided he really liked thinning down his enamel paints and is currently doing another squad of bikers that are turning out much better then previous attempts. Hes also working hard on a painboy biker conversion complete with gigantic syringe that I helped a little with. We are trying to use a tube of "realistic water effects" gel to make a glass covering for the syringe.

When I can I'll take more pics of those things and add them.

looking good, I especially like dakkajet in progresss. I am a huge fan of all the flyers for 6th edition amp up

What are the names of the reds and greens used for the Necrons?

Thanks.

General note, prime with grey primer for the same color I got here.

Stop Light Red for the red sections. I must note that you want to prime any of finecast models with grey primer if you want the same darker red I got.
Sublime Green for the green areas. A word on this guy here. Since I didnt use it that often, it kinda got clumpy on me. I recommend some enamel thinner when it does so. Beyond that, its a good green and works well with the old Scorpion Green from the older Citadel paint range. To get that hazy glow that the warriors have, I went with a good layer of the Sublime Green enamel paint, and after it was dry, A quick touch of the Scorpion green made the tubes and such glow. Also, before I forget, this color smells of apples... delicious apples. D:

Good looking stuff! I can't wait to see them in person!

It will be a while before you see more than base coat on mine, if any paint at all...I am slow.

Thanks for the reply, I appreciate it.

Np good sir. :3

Why in the world are you using enamel paints? Such an awful medium.

Zman and Xzerios like them since they dont have to use sealant. Xzerios likes them since he doesnt have to use primer on most of his models so it saves him time. I use acrylics myself I dont like the consistency of testers et al.

Congratulations, I saw your group shot of the tau on the front page of dakka earlier today

Is that not random? Regardless thanks! I just checked, thats pretty neat!

Well its been awhile but I have some more pictures to show everyone
First up we have a new player in our playgroup Johnny5 ( hes a short circuit fan).

He has elected to go with the space wolves faction and has begun assembly and painting:



Here you can see a number of his marines including a scout with a converted sniper rifle. He only has the parts in the battleforce so I cut up the shotguns he didnt want to use and used some spare kroot rifle sections to make them look more like rifles after adding a few bolt pistol scopes I think they turned out rather well.

So far hes building his battleforce as two groups of grey hunters and 5 scouts and has begun dry brushing his infantry boltgun metal anf then going over the armor plates with a light grey color.. the name eludes me.

Hes also built his first drop pod:


From what hes said he'll be doing a grey mainscheme with white trim on most of his models and red/yellow for various details.




Next our ultramarines player has made some progress with one of his squads.


Due to a misunderstanding he glued his sgts shoulderpads on incorrectly but has decided after some thought that he rather likes the look and well carry it over to all sgts in his army.

Drives me nuts but as long as he likes it lol.





Here are a couple of shots of Xzerios completed and based flyer.




His first squad of wraiths.



I think these guys look pretty cool with their alien sand basing.

One of our Ork Players Zman69 has made quite a bit of progress as well adding yet more bikers and a custom painboy ( complete with gigantic syringe) as well as a dakkajet to his army.










As you can see hes taken to drilling out his barrels, something I still need to go back and do to my army myself.

Our IG player "big Al" has registered to dakka now and has decided to go with the username "Troutslayer" hes also done a fair bit of work lately:








I've been working on my Xv8's myself and trying to make my poses not seem to stiff. I find its hard to give them an impression of life or intent.








The Xv8 with the radome I built out of a burst cannon and a shield generator is my favorite right now.

Only thirteen more to go and a handful of broadsides...sigh..

Speaking of broadsides I added one more to my collection giving me a grand total of two! These pewter bastards are heavy so im looking forward to getting some of the new kits... Im hoping I get lucky and get some decent casts.

I also finished my stealth team and now have a full group of six:



Thats about everything so far, we expect the space wolves player to pick up his pace as hes really starting to get into the swing of things and the ultramarines player had his first game recently and did quite well so perhaps well see an increase in their painting/assembly time as well.

Our IG player went and camo'd his vendetta in a jungle scheme at the time of this posting so now it looks quite different then the picture ive uploaded but it seems to be turning out quite well so far.

Anywho, as always C&C is welcome! Let us know what you think and how we might improve

Chop your Xv8's that is my suggestion...you can cut the legs/arms in strategic places to reglue them for more dynamic poses

I've done that to two of the Xv8's arms( the guys with their arms extended) and my farsight pose. I keep trying to get a kneeling position pose like the one the firewarriors have but so far it seems quite difficult to achieve.

Should have a large update of orks to post in the coming week