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So I'm looking to FINALLY paint my Tau (I know I'm the worst) but I was looking for a striking, but unusual Sept colour. I really like tha Tau and Vior'la colour schemes, and I especially like the contrast between the head/bodies on the commander models (brown/white for tau, white/red for viorla).

I was looking at the Ke'lshan sept, with black armour, grey fatigues and yellow sept markings/squad leader helms. This would be good as my Orks are Bad Moonz so I'm used to painting black and yellow. But does anyone else have some recommendations on visually striking colour schemes for Tau? Any pictures anyone would like to share to invoke inspiration in me?

Thanks for the help!

Tau are one of the more pragmatic armies, in that while each Sept has its own colours, if a particular warzone or environ requires alterations to that, they will make those alterations. With that in mind, your best bet would be to find a Sept scheme that you like some elements of, then alter the bits you don't. For example, taking the T'au Spet and adding some suitable camouflage on the fatigues or armour or somthing else to add more contrast.

Not my pics, but these images show how awesome Tau can look with camo:



And loads here:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/216076.page

Well, on the gallery starting page there is an orange white stormsurge. Would it have been painted with more shades i would absolutely LOVE the paint scheme. Maybe have a look at that, it looks liek a racing car :>


Funny thing is, i am painting my tau in fitting camouflage colors for my gaming board which is sandstone cityfight...grey and yellow, essentially. Looking at the Kauyon book, i found the official colors of the Kelshan sept, which is more or less exactly what i have been painting. I like the colors very much. Have a look at my Darkstrider:





Otherwise, try turquoise white dark pink, i like that combination too.

I'd say stick to a fairly neutral colour palette and try to make them look more dirty and weathered. Too often people paint up Tau to be absolutely pristine.

You can try out colour schemes with the DakkaDakka Army Painter.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/core/painter.jsp?i=53

I've always liked the N'dras Sept's color scheme.



The color is Kabalite Green (with darker panels in Incubi Darkness) highlighted with Sybarite Green.

Definately add my vote for camo. Effective schemes can be simple as well



try googling for camopedia. Some great ideas there.

I'm doing my Tau stuff in blue with yellow highlights (instead of traditional sept markings). I use Caledor Sky as a base, do the black parts of battlesuits in black, the cloth for Fire Warriors is done in Eshin Gray, the yellow details are done in two layers: Averland Sunset, then a layer of Yriel Yellow over the top of that. I've only done a few Fire Warriors and a Fireblade (and I really need to touch those up as they are not really up to my painting standards these days), but I am currently working on painting a Dual Fusion Crisis suit and a Commander (the latter of which is my entry into this month's unofficial painting challenge), so see my blog after a couple of weeks to see some pics of how they end up looking. The scheme definitely looks very cool. For vehicles, I plan to do a similar scheme, only instead of solid Caledor Sky, I will try to do some kind of blue tiger camo using Kantor Blue as the other color. I may do my Stealth suits in Kantor Blue as well, as I think they should be darker than the other units.

My Tau are yellowy awesomeness, though they're my own scheme as opposed to a sept D:

As for unconventional septs, I think it would be cool to take an existing scheme and make it different in some way. As in imagine if you took the traditional ochre sept colours and made them look metallic in nature, as opposed to matte, for example.

Thanks for all the advice, guys!

I have a friend who paints his Tau in camo colours otherwise I absolutely would try my hand at camo! Don't want to come across as a copy cat though

I might try the digital camo posted up top. It has a nice look to it.

The N'dras sept that Ghaz posted looks really nice too, and I've never painted green before....

Decisions, decisions T_T