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I may be painting a riptide for a friend soon an warned to try an electronic sort of scheme. I will follow the pattern of the GW one as in all of their yellow panels will be blue circuit on mine, the tan panels on the GW one will be a green on mine and the black mechanics on the GW one will still be black on mine.
This was the scheme I was thinking, what do people think?:

"Spray Black

Base coat 3:1 regal blue to black on usually yellow panels

Drybrush astronomical grey over usually black areas

Wash black areas with nuln oil

Drybrush black areas lightly with astronomic grey

Apply first free hand circuit pattern in mordian blue, also around the edges of each of these usually yellow panels

Apply highlight in blue horror to the previous blue

Apply white applied highlight to the previous blue

Blend the usually tan coloured panels from dark angels green to scorpion green

Decals in shining gold

Head in bleached bone

Layer head in watered white

Layer head in watered white

Red gem effect on eye lens"

Why not paint a small test piece and post pictures of that? It will be easier for people to give feedback on it.

Ok, I'll try and get that done and post pictures by this evening, if not probably later in the week

Sorry, double post.

I do not know how good of a painter you are but I would suggest against a free hand circuit design. The appeal of a circuit is that it is crisp and clean and straight and that is really hard to do freehand. If you must have a circuit I would get a stencil.

Pics make it a lot easier for feedback. Even on a spare piece of card.

Sorry I'm a but late getting back with the test. But ere's the circuit anyway, for scale that circuit on screen is about 2cm x 3cm. I personally like how it looks, I know it's not perfect but the visual effect is ok.

EDIT: Put pic in original post too

might i recomend some thin strips of masking tape with which you can create the circuit pattern out of whilst maintaining your straight lines...

the hand painted lines look a little scrappy which would be fine if that was what you were going for but with tau you need nice crisp straight lines right?

But it really doesn't look that scruffy in real life, you can see its not perfect but not as bad as int he pic. Plus masking tape gets difficult for the thin lines inside the lines for highlights, any other suggestions / how to make that one work?
(Without an airbrush)

They make super thin masking tape just for that. It should be in the model airplane section of your local hobby shop. I use a 1/4" wide masking tape for my pinlines.

if it's on a flat area have you thought of using a printing block? but you said it was on a vehicle and all the tau vehicles are sleek and curvey

Yeah it's the riptide. I'm still not quite sure about the masking tape since the design is a lot closer together than 1/4 inch tape would allow, may have to spread it out a bit but some of the panels I will be painting will probably only be 1/4" wide anyway.

If you're happy doing it freehand [like others have said, it will lack some crispness] i'd suggest doing the lines and circles on the mini with a soft 'lead' pencil and the straight edge of some thin card... ands something small and circular.

That way you'll at least have a guide to create straight lines

It's an interesting idea, and it might work. Are you planning on painting that design on the whole model? I would first try it out on a Crisis Suit first before painting an $85 mode.

That design will be on all the parts which are yellow on the one on the Games Workshop website.

I'm not buying the model, my friend is an he just doesn't paint, so basically if it has even an alright paint job he'll still be happy.


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That's not to say I don't want it to looks as good as possible though. It's just that doing it on an expensive model doesn't worry me too much.