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Hi guys,

I'm trying to paint my Tau Devilfish, but not having a lot of luck if I'm honest. I'm trying to go for a clean white look, with black lines at the edges of the plates (if you've seen a devilfish you'll know the lines I mean). I tried a test area by spraying white and then trying to paint the black straight, but my shaky hand got the better of me, I then tried inking the ridges and then cleaning up the overlap, but that ruined the clean white finish. I'm think about attempting to undercoat black, mask the lines and then overcoat with white. Does this sound like a good idea? Any one else have any tips that might help me out?

Sorry about the bad picture, but these lines are what I'm trying to go for:

http://www.starshipmodeler.com/rv/pg_tau/pg_tau_fig39.jpg


Thanks a lot dakkadakka.

Start with an undercoat, then pain th panels, not painting in the indentations.

Voila - clean lines.

Hey Kator,

I've been lurking on the Dakka forums for quite a while but I'm in somewhat of the same predicament as you, so I figure we can brainstorm a bit on the matter at hand. I'm painting a bunch of ships for Dystopian Wars that have the same kind of lines between the armour plates.

I trick I know military modellers use for tanks and the like is to make washes out of oil paints - the kind in tubes that artists use. As I understand the process, after basecoating and painting on camo, they give the entire model a coat of gloss varnish. Then they mix a wash out of oil paint and thinner - typically turpentine. This is painted between armour plates and in the recesses - and because of the long drying time of oil paint, any overspill can be cleaned up with a q-tip dipped in thinner.Finally the wash is sealed with a coat of matt spray varnish.

I'll be trying this on my ships - which will also be white - with a wash of Payne's Grey. I figure the deep lines of Tau vehicles should take well to a thin wash, but in any case I'm interested to know if you find a good method.

Oil wash would be my first suggestion as the capillary action of the wash will travel well. A micron pen is also excellent for lining tau armor.

heavybolter wrote:Oil wash would be my first suggestion as the capillary action of the wash will travel well. A micron pen is also excellent for lining tau armor.

basecoat white. then use wash oil/gw to fill in the lines come back with a gloss white and finish it off thats how i did mine

heavybolter wrote:A micron pen is also excellent for lining tau armor.

Working on some Tau myself, and I've seen this suggestion several times. I'm pretty new to painting with acrylics (did aircraft modelling, so I painted with enamels), so I'm wondering if you're referring to pens like rapidograph or sakura. Is that correct? What's the ink's permanency like (i.e. will it hold up to having a varnish painted over it)?

You can apply acrylic gloss varnish, ink wash the cracks, then use a cu tip and alcohol to gently go over the outside of the cracks and remove excess. After that just spray on a matte varnish, good to go. Another option is a good airbrush. If you have a steady hand you can zip right over tau stuff no problem, even infantry figures.

Micro pen .003 works like a charm mate spray over top of it is the easy way to go and looks clean

Micron pens are good. You can also use painters to cordon off the panels, and then ink it like you did.