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Enslaving children to paint is always a plan. I have, many times over the years, used my own children to do large scale drybrush jobs

Ok that mushroom rat is killer, kudos to the student who painted this

Thanks for the comments everyone. I passed them on to my students. The mushroom artist said, "Well, I guess the old nerds on your ancient website like my work." Which I guess is a good thing?

I have finished the grey and peeling of masking fluid, which I hated at first , and also a black wash over everything and some rust wash dripping from the patches, which made everything better .

Started the graffiti. Much of it is from photos I took while Mrs. Jazzy Jeff and I were in Rome. Some is from the interwebs. My further plans include more Dakkanauts, and some iconic pieces from local places, mostly Denver.
Thanks for tuning in to the latest batch.

The individual layers- basecoat, paint, weathering, rust, graffiti- are each excellent; the combined, overall effect is tremendous! Some of the individual graffitum are incredibly intricate and others more rough and ready vandlaism and all of them work exceedingly well on the sections they adorn. Great stuff!

Superb tags, and lovely crusty rust. You're really racing my motor here

Inspiring stuff with the terrain, I really have to start doing the same. Rust effects and graffities are top notch!

Old...ancient...

GET OFF MY LAWN!

Ahem...more great looking terrain. DJJJ. And the graffiti is stellar, as always.

Another session last night brought along a couple more tags.

These are very, very cool. I wasn't going to add tags to the Deadzone/Firefight building and now it seems I have no choice

I am genuinely flattered to be part of the display! And yes, the tag does look like a colony standing up! You've got a great imagination and a steady hand on all of them. Rock on!

Old? nerds? Pah! Probably true though . I’ve recently semi branched out to twitter, but it really doesn’t have much of a community feel… maybe this old man is doing it wrong though!

Great work on the terrain. The chipping fluid may have been a PITA, but it came out really well. As ever the tags and plagiarised Roman graffiti are cool additions adding plenty of character

Some very nice work on the terrain painting there DJJazzyJeff.

Cheers,

CB

Amazing freehand on those graffitis, love Popeye especially!

Well, I got a favorable result on an ebay auction, and now have another army. On a bit of a whim, I decided to get into T'au. I have very little idea what I'll do with them paint-wise, but they arrived yesterday.
I'm sort of thinking about doing the battlesuits in various colors, maybe emulating Gundams, Mechs, or Transformers from various sources. Not at all sure about the tanks or footsoldiers.

Meanwhile, the Emperor would frown upon those Xenos scum hogging all the attention, so I had to take a picture of the Adeptus Brisonius as well.

Having played a total of about 4 games of 40K ever, I would say it's pretty justified to have two armies.

That sounds totally reasonable and proportional

If you need the voice of reason to discourage your army hoarding, you've come to the wrong place. Your towers and catwalks, on the other hand, look amazing! Great work on the peeling paint effects, and your graffiti game just keeps getting better and better.

I can't wait to meet your Tau on the table!

 DJJazzyJeff wrote:

Having played a total of about 4 games of 40K ever, I would say it's pretty justified to have two armies.

Sadly, I've only played about that many times too, but have three armies and a smattering of troops for a few others Sounds like you are showing self control

Yep, definitely restrained there… I have the startings of 4 Marine Armies, plus some Guard, Orks and Necrons. All with very little chance of seeing a battle! That’s not to mention the Warhammer Fantasy armies, 5 I think!

The tau plan seems interesting, Transformers would get my vote, mixing in autobots and decepticons. Would each be painted differently or coloured based on their unit?

Thanks, everyone, I feel better. Two 40K and one AoS army doesn't seem so bad. I'll let Mrs. Jazzy Jeff know it could be worse.

My color scheme ideas are all over the place.
I was thinking each robot would get its own color scheme. There are a lot of Mechs out there that have a combination of white, red, blue, and yellow. I could emulate a whole bunch of anime and gundam characters while still keeping fairly cohesive. Having a few other colors on a couple of battlesuits that stood out with their own colors would be kind of cool.
That didn't answer the question, however, of what to do with full units. Foot soldiers don't feel the same as a full on giant mech, so would they get the same treatment? Every warrior has their own unique colors? It fits with some of what I was thinking, but how much unit coherency would/should there be?

There is a painter on the instagrams who goes by hobbycrusaider who has a Tau army that are all Transformers. He's done some conversions with 3D printed heads and wheels, etc. and it looks strictly the business. I didn't want to exactly copy that, and it also seemed like a lot of work before I would get the army up and running.

Then, I got an idea in my head of painting everything black. I could add details in yellow, orange, and red. Make all the T'au symbols look like suns.
Two of the games of 40K I've played were against MacPhail, the other two with his monthly 40K group. They have a campaign system going. It all sounds very official when they talk about it, so I'm sure someone has it figured out. But, performance on the table adds XP and points of other kinds to the unit and the army. I thought I could add color and embellishments as I go based on a unit's performance. Then I could get everything painted to table top standard fairly quickly, but still have room to add detail and design elements throughout the coming months, etc.

I started one, but didn't really like it.



Some things are good. I like the Tau logo, but the red lines look like it's glowing on the inside. It didn't jive with me. But, the unfinished model made me think of Tron Legacy, which is cool.
Then, since I was thinking of Tron I thought about switching it up and going full Tron mode. Everything black, but I'd have to go blue glowing lines. The orange and red are for the "bad guys". And, to quote the line from Tron himself from that movie, "I fight for the Users."

So, I wanted to see one in blue, But, it had been raining a lot here, so I couldn't prime more models black. The original Tron, however, has white or grey suits with glowing lines. So, then I thought maybe I'd make some of the army white, HQ models, the stealth suits, maybe a bigger robot. They'd be a nod to the original.The main core of the force, the foot soldiers, some of the other robots could all be black. They'd be a nod to Legacy.

Since I had a couple primed white already, I started one.



I like where it is headed, but I'm not sold on it as a scheme for the whole army.
There is another painter who goes by tau_enthused on the insta, and he has some Buzz Lightyear-looking Tau that are really colorful. All of his buttons, lights, control panels, knobs, etc. are a variety of colors. A Tron-inspired theme would limit my color palette substantially.

So, I'm afraid I back to the old drawing board. We'll see what comes of it all.

Cool test minis, I really love the black one. The glowing lines are really cool and you could mix up the glow colour based on type of suit or unit. Maybe save the white/grey for the rank and file warriors? If you go with the last scheme I reckon it’d work with a lighter blue in the deepest recesses, it’d have more of a glow that way. Just my 2 cents though

I really like the look of both color schemes you are trying. If you're still experimenting and looking for more, if I ever start a Tau army I plan to use the Star Wars Clone Trooper color scheme for Utapau. Feel free to try it out if you want.

I did another test mini. Purple glow on black this time. There are so many little recesses and areas to have glowing. I think I have a plan down, though.
Prime black > paint in recesses with brightest highlight color > paint over some of the highlights, especially farther out with progressively darker versions of the glow color.

Not 100% sold on it, but I have five models in various states of completion already. I guess if I'm going to do something else, I had better figure out what it is.
Not the best picture. I was painting away from my bench as Mrs. Jazzy Jeff was watching tv and I thought I'd be with her. I'll post some more soon.

It's nice, really subtle

I like that effect and thanks for describing how you got it. It's weird, but I'm getting a 'deepsea/water world' vibe of the purple glow, in a good way.

The previous owner of the Tau army had started a couple bases. Mostly ruined wasteland sort of thing. Skulls and cork rocks, etc. I have something similar on my marines and wanted totally different. They are all plastic cemented down though, so getting them off the base to rebase has been difficult. I've broken most of them at the ankles. Which lets me repose them how I want, but adds an extra step or two worth of work.

I decided to try out some sci fi bases. Ship decking, space station corridors, etc. I got super glue all over my fingers, but here's a couple bases started.

Hunh, nice base conversions. Definetely sells the industrial flooring vibe.

How did you get that ship's decking effect? Is that plastic netting you've glued down, or what? Very nice outcome and I'd like to try it myself on something!

Those look great! Nice use of unifying textures... you found some good plastic bits to use. They'll look good on your new catwalks.

Cool bases! The netting works well. what’s the plan with the slotta gaps I spied on one of them? A pipe work or cable channel? The green round thing on the smoke alarm should make an interesting piece in on of the larger bases I reckon!

All your weathered and graffitied walls are just so great. You’ve got it down to an art.

Although I hear Rome and graffiti and I immediately think “Romanes eunt domus”