Tau Tanks

With 36 fire warriors, sniper drone team, 18 drones & 9 stealth suits done, the outstanding units are 10 crisis suits with an armada of tau tanks.

Since last week, camo and basic coloring for the 6 tau tanks are done. final posing and mods to the battle suits are also done awaiting basecoating in black.

The reason why the tau are partially red is because to be frugal, I bought all the tanks and the battle suits 2nd hand for a huge bargain. I guess the kid who put the models together did it in a rush. All of those pre-owned models were basically gut up into bits and pieces, filed down, reposed, joints modified and converted and then put back together in my style of assembly.

Being a huge gundam/mecha fan, my experiences with building and modeling tau has really allowed me to feel in my own element of talent whenever I work on these models. I want them to look like they jumped out of the appleseed universe. Lets hope it all works out.

How To Airbrush Tau Camouflage

Heres a simple how to on tau camo.

1. My tau are themed based on the sa'cea sept color pattern made up of pure shadow grey (darker tone) & a 50/50 mix of shadow grey & spacewolves grey. (lighter tone) I've decided that the darker tone will be the primary color where as the lighter tone will be the camo pattern. First Airbrush the lighter tone evenly over the target surface.

2. tape rows of masking tape onto a self healing cutting mat with the rows touching eachother forming a larger sheet surface. (see picture) then use a ruler and score out intercepting diagonal lines throughout the sheet until you have irregular angles.

3. Using the irregular shapes, tape them onto the target surface in the desired pattern.

4. airbrush an even layer of the primary color (darker tone)

Special remarks:

the reason why your masking isn't working can be 1 of the 3 reasons below:

a. your airbrush regulator needs to be pumping out less than 1 lbs of pressure. anything stronger will blow off the masking tape or cause the paints to seep in.

b. you need to be hitting the masking tape with the airbrush on the top or "face" surface. if you hit it from the sides. paint will build up between the edge of the tape and the unmasked surface. When you peel off the tape, the edges will look shit.

c. your masking tape probably has dust or dirst stuck to the edges. buy a new roll.

Sometimes its so hard to focus on a single army and not lose interest. Building, converting and painting all the pieces to have a playable array of strategic assets in your army is perhaps one of the hardest things I struggle to do. I dunno, I just find it hard to really concentrate with a single hobby.

Nonetheless within the 40k universe space wolves are cool but perhaps they are a more forgiving army? It sucks to win a game and have someone call you out for the army you are using. My basis is I build whatever I think looks cool in a collection.

Way before I knew how warhammer was played, I remember buying a pack of fire warriors when my younger brother at the time bought his starter set with (I think we space marines & dark eldar)? maybe 10 years ago...

Anyhow, I decided to airbrush my way through this endeavor. The fish in the center with camo is the test subject. The fishes were all first airbrushed with a 50/50 mix of shadow grey & space wolves grey. Then masked followed by a successive layer of shadow grey to create the urban camo shapes.