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Hi all. My friend came with me down to Warhammer world and has take the plunge with a Tau Army. He wants to paint it in Tau Sept(bare in mind I know nothing about Tau) which I beleive is the ochre/sandy looking guys.

Im pretty experienced painter but I cant seem to find a good but reasonably straight forward in terms of complexity guide for Tau on Youtube.

Seen a few where its spray black then going on for 3 coats for building up the armour etc...but that sounds an awful lot of work for a returning painter to me. Must be some easier guides somehwere?

So I use a more sandy version than GW’s orange, but yes, I’m afraid it’s 2-3 coats to get the depth of colour right.

I don’t have great photos uploaded at the moment, but I use Vallejo desert sand as the primary colour and earth as the secondary:



The earth colour has better coverage, so you can use that as an all over base; I don’t, but only because it changes the colour of the yellow somewhat, so if I started doing it the new stuff wouldn’t match the old.

Whilst I am using an airbrush for speed/efficiency, an old guide I have suggests that you build up from black with XV-88 before going in with the tau sept ochre. I find this turns out quite well, but your mileage may vary with hand painting.

I paint my Tau in this colour scheme and you can simplify it down if you're happy with a simple method. I determined long ago that I would trade perfectionism for getting things done. So feel free to use this and adapt if you wish. I'll outline the entire model and you can go from there.

Prime the model in a medium grey colour.

'Hooves': Eshin Grey, Nuln Oil
Skin: There's enough tutorials online for easy Tau skin
Belts/Boots: Dryad Bark, Agrax Earthshade
Fatigues: Doombull Brown, Agrax Earthshade
Weapon Stocks: Eshin Grey, Nuln Oil
Lenses: There's enough tutorials online for this.

Now the fun part which I'll go into a tad more detail on as its the key.

Armour: Tau Light Ochre base followed by a selective Agrax Earthshade wash into the recesses on the armour panels. Then touch-up and neaten all surface areas where the wash has stained with more Tau Light Ochre. Edge highlight with Ushabti Bone.

That's it! If you really focus on making sure the armour is neat with good edge highlights, you honestly don't even need to bother going further on the other steps. What sets the Tau aside is their lovely, neat, angular armour. So if you get that right, that's what stands out on the tabletop. But, by all means, feel free to take the other steps further if you wish - such as highlighting the weapon stocks etc. But I honestly don't feel its necessary when I see how quickly you can get them done as above. This will give you a scheme which looks very classic (although it won't be quite as 'orangey' as some of the official GW T'au Sept stuff looks).

Best of luck!!