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Hey everyone,

So I am going to be picking up a Tau Battle Force next week and have been flipping through my codex looking through the colour schemes and online as well and finally found one I like.
I am not the best painter so I hope I can do this one but I was wondering how you would paint this paint scheme below.



Could I just do a base coat and prime in black and then dry brush of Citadel Dawnstone and then do some highlights in Moot Green?

Also any help with highlighting techniques? I am not the greatest at painting so easiest scheme suggestions would be helpful too

Highlighting works best using the side of the brush, and not the tip, to avoid it becoming a clunky mess.

Obviously this will require a very fine detailed brush for the helmet highlights as the gap between them is very small.

As for the colours used I'm not the best at recognising them from sight >.<

Well that's good to know about using the side of the brush and not the tip.

Also I'm not looking for the specific colours used in this scheme just the technique I should use to achieve a paint job similar to this one. I think black primer then dry brush of grey then highlights of grey and green but I'm not sure if that will work.


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Also could I dry brush the green colour on or would that probably turn out poorly?

Still noone who can help with this?

I will be starting soon so hopefully I can get the technique for this down haha

Depends on how smooth you want the job to be. Drybrushing tends to give a grainy effect if done incorrectly.

I'd probably wind up starting mid-tone and shading down, then edge highlighting.

Black is actually harder than it looks to paint right as it can be hard to highlight nicely and bright colours are traditionally difficult to paint over black (need successive thin layers).

I don't use that many GW paints but I would use a black spray base -> a coat of very very dark grey (like Vallejo's MC - German Grey) -> black wash -> Highlight with the grey(s) of your choice and use successive greens (maybe three shades) for the green details.

You could get away with drybushing grey if you like however as mentioned above it could look grainy and wont be as defined as the grey in the picture.

This all being said - go for it! try out the scheme, if it doesn't suit just strip and start again! you only learn by trying.

No it won't be easy to achieve the above results. Black is a pain to paint correctly since highlighting with grey or green or any color will easily ruin black if you overdone it even slightly. It takes thin paint with a lot of layers and great practice so after highlighting black to remain a nice solid black

I would do black primer, drybrush 2 shades of grey (one dark, one astronomicon-ish), then a heavy black wash. This will get a more grey army than black (the picture shows edged grey, not drybrush). I'd then edge the green using 3 shades (im still on old paints, so the middle highlight would be more goblin green or something similar)
The red would be 2 layers (mephiston red I think), then another wash or two (I'd use gryphonne sephia, or whatever its equivilent is followed by nuln oil)
The edging would be hard, especially if you arent familiar with it. Drybrushing would be far easier, especially for the grey. At least there is no directional lighting.

That image pretty much all edge highlighting.
Prime black
edge highlight with a mid green, grey
then highlight only the corners with a bright green and grey to achieve that same effect

but as others have said painting over black can be a major pain so take it easy and build up the highlights