thanks man, been a 10 hour job to do this one

Your color scheme totally wrecks the Fireblade I just did in my eyes- I usually go for a 'clean style' like that and this squad of Tau is in urban camo to match up with a friend's army.. that and yellow is a PITA to work with reguardless! Gorgeous overall!

thanks to the glazes and shades painting yellow is easy now :) spray white, coat with casandora yellow. done :)

If you think that yellow is a good ink, look up the Coat d'arms inks- that's the original formula GW used, and I'll swear by those lovely inks.

I remember the inks, I really liked Chestnut ink, blue ink, brown ink, and magenta ink. they had a nice gloss finish which worked well for what I wanted at the time, but now I prefer the matt finish shades and glazes they're more universal in their application and uses, inks you had to be quite careful with.

True that! I don't mind the glossyness though, since I have dulkote.

Nice paint job. How do you tell the difference between a male and female tau though?

well in the xenology book that Black Library came out with a few years ago, they said there was very little difference in physical appearance. but it is generally accepted by most people now that the female tau have a Y shaped respiratory area on their heads while males have a l shaped one.

I really love the fireblade, and the headswap has worked well.

thanks man

Very nice indeed for a conversion.

Do you use any special technique for painting white? It's something I still struggle with.

white got a hell of a lot easier to paint recently. The technique I used to use with the old citadel paints was this.

Black undercoat
Codex Grey
50/50 Codex Grey/Ice Blue
Ice Blue
50/50 Ice blue/Skull white
25/75 Ice blue/Skull white
Skull white (thin coat)
Skull white (thin coat)

Thist took hour to do, but gave a really nice soft white finish.

The technique I use now is this:

Undercoat grey (either a medium grey airbrush primer, or wal-mart's matt grey color place undercoat)
wash model with Nuln Oil (or Badab Black)
paint white areas with 2 coats of slightly thinned ulthuan grey
paint the edges of the armour with ceremite white

done, and it doesn't sunbleach as bad as standard white would.

for the Fireblade above I the same steps up to the 2 ulthuan grey coats, then I did three coats of grey/white wet blending to make her armour stand out more then finally a thing white coat on the edges to finish her off.

Ah, thanks. I'll definitely give that a try.

I'm using the basic sand brown Tau color scheme, but I like the idea of prototype suits being white, so I'm gonna use it for Longshot, and I want to paint the Tau commader suit from from ForgeWorld (R'myr is the character's name, I think, the one with the double-barreled plasma rifle and the large shield) white as well.

Fortunately a friend of mine painted Shadowsun and her drones for me, so that is out of the way ;)

nice :)

there is a smoother way to do it that was shown in white dwarf a few months back that might be even quicker if you have access to an airbrush or spray gun.

1 - undercoat white
2 - spray ulthuan grey
3 - wash black/earthshade (your choice) directly into the recesses
4 - tidy edges of recesses with ulthuan grey
5 - edge highlight with white scar/ceremite white

Hmmm... unfortunately I do not have a spray gun. Maybe I can borrow one though.

In any case, thanks!

Awesome! I wish I could paint that well.. My Tau arent very well painted..

It's just practice Merellin. Give it time, you'll get there. It took me almost 6 years to get good, and another 13 to get to this standard. And I'm colour blind.