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How do you make such clean colors I see in the gallery? Mine all look like this-

Thinning down your paints, that's the trick.

Thinning your paints helps. It also depends on the color of your primer. If you are priming black your colors will be naturally muted and darker. If you are looking to achieve something a bit more true to the color you can prime grey. If you really want bright colors you can prime white.

Personally I prefer priming grey and working up or down from there.

Hope that helps.

I prime Tyranids white for Kraken, Grey for space mahreens, Orks, Tau, Chaos, and IG.


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So, I have to thin 'em down? Got it!

Thin them down on a pallete, NOT in the bottle.

As people have mentioned, using a white or light grey primer helps. Also be aware that if you're using the GW range, "base" and even more so the old "foundation" paints tend to be on the dull side. You can lay down a base to get coverage and then completely cover it with a layer to get more vibrancy, or just paint the layer itself straight over a white undercoat.

Also with washes, use coloured washes and glazes to give things a bit more brightness (rather than nuln oil or agrax which tend to dull things down). You can even swap to inks as they tend to be more vibrant.

To paint your tau quick and bright in the colours you posted above I would follow these steps:

1. Undercoat with GW Skull White spray
2. Base with GW Mephiston Red spray
3. Wash armour plates with GW Carroburg Crimson shade
4. Paint all armour plates except for the crevices in GW Mephiston Red
5. Edge highlight with GW Evil Sunz Scarlet
6. Wash with 1 or 2 coats of GW Bloodletter glaze

Remember to thin down your Mephiston Red and Evil Sunz Scarlet paints (I.e put some on a palette or old dish, add a little water and mix them together.)

Watch some of the painting tutorials on GW's website. They are a great help.

One important tip, don't mix your paints with black or white to bring the color up or down, it will just make them look washed out. Mix them with another color or a darker or lighter hue to alter color.

thin em. you'll hear that a lot. layer up your colours to get smooth finishes. this technique will help get you used to layering up highlights aswell. varnishes help also when the painting is done. i prefer a matt finish, but gloss is another option. these will also enhance the evenness of your paintjob.

How is this?

It's a bit dark but looking like a great improvement already! Well done mate. That red on the tabard is looking really nice. One thing that might tidy it up is painting the rim of the Base black, but that's just my personal preference. Good job!

Saw this in the comp thread and it looks very reasonable. Slightly harder to make out than the tau due to the shadow from the shield.

Thin your paint - I spent 10+ years going straight from the bottle. I cannot tell you how much this held me back, I was neat but never had the perfect painted surface for smoothness.

The tau has some odd colour choices. The blue feet are in such contrast to the red and yellow/brown that they are what I'm first drawn to. Use this to your advantage to draw the viewers eye to key parts - head and weapons or anything else you feel is important but not to many otherwise they wont know where to look first.

Keep going and try things out and enjoy yourself!

To achieve the 'clean' look (like most of the models in my Gallery, don't wash the entire model. Instead, carefully wash only the recesses and highlight the raised areas.

Alternatively, after you wash, clean it all up after you wash by layering with the base color and avoiding recesses.

Thin, multiple layers is key. If you are attempting to get a strong, clean color in a single layer especially over a black primer you are going about it wrong.

Try priming with white or grey for an easier time getting the full vibrancy from your colors, or be prepared to do two to several thin layers over black to bring the real color out.

What you have there is the result of the primer or lack of influencing the paint you've applied on top.


Also for utmost cleanliness to your miniature don't wash 'at all' dipping / full miniature washes are for quick and easy ready to go paint jobs that are more about just getting the miniature on the table then how it actually looks.

If you are really wanting to get those deep shadows and etc that inks / washes provide without the dirty look to the surrounding paint, refine your application to only the receded areas or my preferred method, to simply not use inks / washes at all for shadows and simply start with your base color being the dark color you want your shadows to be and simply add thin layer after layer of the brighter color to bring the surrounding area up accordingly.

For example, no inks or washes were used on this model accept on the cloak as white is good for 'self highlighting' when a thin wash of the desired color is applied upon it.




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also the space marine looks much better then the tau. Though the picture is a bit dark.

This helps very much. Thanks all!