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I've been dipping my tau in brown and using no bare heads. Given the likelihood that the new book will make ethereals playable, it seems unlikely that I can get away with an all-helmeted army in the future. The issue comes in, however, with the tau blue skin. How do I paint blue skin and still dip the rest of the model in brown?

One option I've considered is brushing on the dip with a very small brush and avoiding the face, but with ethereals, there is a lot of skin poking out in places where it would end up dripped on.

So does anyone have any ideas for how to dip a model in brown even though it has light blue parts?

I would paint the skin the lightest blue possible then go back over it post-dip with your normal blue colors.

A bit of gloss on the skin areas pre-dip will make the dip run off of those areas better as well. If it's just a head you can also wipe the dip away from that area with an old brush or paper towel.

I'd advise brushing it on a lot thinner than you normally get from dipping. Treat it more like a wash and you should be fine.

Alternatives would be to use a different skin color, something that will use the same tone of shading that the armor will. It's 40k, you can paint any skin color you want.

Or you can try out different painting techniques on your ethereals. If you really detail them they will stand out from your regular troops and look more elite.

Thanks guys! I'm going to keep the blue skin because I like it, but I'll probably adapt some of these tips either way.

Could you get away with painting the head separately and pinning it on after the body has been painted and dipped?

Well, dipping doesn't have to be the final painting stage. You could always just do the armour colour, dip them, then paint the skin.

That or experiment with blues that work with a brown dip. It would be a darker, dirtier blue. But if your Tau are a little grimdark and gritty it could work.

Right now I'm thinking of using a darkish blue and making sure the dip is somewhat thin there if I can help it, then going back over it after with a little light blue highlighting.

I'd paint the rest of the model and dip as normal, then for the skin, paint it a bright blue - such as enchanted blue - and then apply several controlled blue washes, to mimic the depth of shading that the dip gives. This should match the style of painting to the dipped parts.

The other thing that occurs is to cover the skin with putty of some kind. Blu tack or something.

Bewareofthephil wrote:Could you get away with painting the head separately and pinning it on after the body has been painted and dipped?

You could try this, but it's hard to paint effectively over dip because it is so slippery. To provide more "tooth" to the paint, you can brush on a matte varnish over the dip and then paint on that.

Here's an article I wrote last week on brush dipping.

http://chicagoskirmish.blogspot.com/2012/01/with-liberty-and-brush-dipping-for-all.html

My best recommendation would be the carefull application of the dip with a brush. As explained in the article above, after the initial drawing off of the dip, a brush soaked in mineral spirits can be used to clean the dip off if it has gotten on the skin areas. Mineral spirits will thin/clean the dip but won't damage the acrylic paint underneath.

If starting this project from scratch, I would recommend a dark tone or Tudor (Minwax) dip for the whole army as the black pigment usually looks better on light blue than a brown pigmented dips like Soft Tone/Pecan or Strong Tone/Antique Walnut.