Final Dry Brush on the Leader of my Tau Soldiers

Got some time to give some Dry Brush on the Tau Leader form the previous post.
As with the regular soldiers I used:

• on the trousers, arms and gloves, Vallejo 72.062 Earth;
• on the armour,  Citadel Layer Calgar Blue

Here he is:

For the hair I used first a layer of Alien Purple from Army Painter and over it another thin layer of the same Alien Purple mixed with a bit of  Citadel Edge Fulgrim Pink 

Painting a Leader for the Tau Soldiers

As promised I post here my work on the headless guy who will be the leader of the Tau unit I was painting in the previous post.

Headless starting point

 Since I got my miniatures as second hand, this poor guy came already primed in black but missing the head.
I found one which was not the helmet one of the regular Tau soldiers, but a normal, "naked" head, so I liked to have him as fearless leader, kind of bad-ass who does not need any helmet or computer assisted targeting or things like that.
I glued the head to the figure and since the head was not primed, I used Citadel Imperial Primer applied with a brush.
First, I must say that I do not like the product. I got it because I needed something to prime a miniature without using a spray as I intended to prime a miniature for my daughter so that she could be able to try to paint one right away. The first time that I tried to use the primer, it didn't seem to work, it was very liquid and was not covering the miniature at all, even after shaking it several times.
At the end, I solved the issue by taking a wooden little stick and stirring the product inside the recipient. This helped but it was still not doing its job very good.
With this guy, however, I was already aware of the issue with the primer, so I stirred it with the wooden tool before applying and was prepared to get a non uniform application if the primer, which is not so bad if you consider that in this way the primer is also giving me some shadows in the face as you can see in the pictures.

 

After that I just applied the base colours with the idea of following the quick method of base colour + wash ---> ready (more or less)
The colours I used were mostly from the Citadel Base Painting Set:
Macragge Blue for the armour,
Balthasar Gold for the rifle, backpack and implant in the head,
Mephiston Red for the hair,
Waaagh! Flesh for the trousers and arms and gloves, and
Vallejo Sombre Grey 72.048 for the head and feet/boots.

Please note the difference in the colour of the trousers, arms and gloves between the leader and any one of the other Tau soldiers:

After applying the base colours I proceeded to give it the same wash treatment as with the rest of the Tau soldiers, namely the Vallejo 73.207 Blue Wash
Here is the result in pictures:

I "highlighted" the eyes with some extra deep colour there

Here you can see a comparison between the leader and one soldier and this point in the painting process:

And this will be the comparison between the leader at this moment and the regular Tau soldier already finished:

As soon as I have some spare time I intent to give this guy some dry brush and see how it turns out.
So far I think it looks quite nice although, for some reason, the image of him I was having in my mind when I started working on him does not correspond to the result so far...

Hope I can post an update soon.

Final dry brush on my painting of some Tau soldiers from Warhammer 40K

On a previous post I described my work on some Tau warriors step by step, however I failed to provide some pictures of the final outcome after doing some dry brush on the trousers, arms and gloves with Vallejo 72.062 Earth.
Here they are:

Those are four different pictures of the same soldier. I hope that you can appreciate the dry brush work I was referring to.
Here there two different side by side pictures of the after and before:

Here are the other five soldiers in their final stage

Now, I just need to give them some kind of non-glossy, matte varnish to protect the paint on the miniatures and they are, as far as I am concerned, ready to go :)

Painting some Tau soldiers from Warhammer 40K

My relationship with miniature's painting is of the love-hate kind.
I will love to be able to paint them, but I hate painting them maybe due to an inborn lack of patience for such tasks.
I tried the painting of miniatures several times already. My first time was long time ago, with the release 3rd Edition of Warhammer fantasy, at some point around 2002. I got the starter box with humans and orcs at the Spiel Messe in Essen and divided it with someone. I took the orcs :)
Assembled the big guy, tried to paint the little ones and some of the beasts...
Never finished, never even played...
:(

[jump in time]

Later I tried again, this time with the Tau from Warhammer 40K. I think that already in or around 2002 when I got that orc army for Warhammer fantasy, I also saw the Tau army; they were the new kid on the block coming to the Warhammer 40k universe and I liked them the moment I saw them.
I don't like Warhammer 40k. The gothic setting is not something for me; but the Tau, they are really cool. They really resemble the Japanese samurais they are apparently based on; they even got mechas if you are into that stuff.
Anyway, in some point around 2012 (yes, like 10 years after the orcs) I partially convinced some friends, partially was convinced by them to try Warhammer 40k and that means pore or less, painting miniatures again.
I got some Tau forces second hand on line, some of them were already painted (at very good) other were covered in paint (if you get my meaning) and some were just black coated.
They were mainly in the classic desert orange that the Tau usually seem to be.
i tried to replicate the nice painting job on the same tones with one or two drones and, well, it was more or less fine for me.
But I wanted for my Tau forces to be a bit different, so I got some other colours and tried to paint a few further drones...
I played the game three or four times during this period, against an orc army. The game didn't really catch amongst the group, the interest faded away...
No more painting, no more Warhammer 40k

[small jump in time]

Runewars !

I saw the announcement of this game, got tented, but discarded it.
Some months later, saw the release of the starter box. Got tented again. Saw the announcement of the Army Painter Guide to painting the armies. Got very tented. I read all the news and downloaded all the stuff.
Told to a friend, but surprise, he already had bought the starter box. Tried the game. Looks amazing good.
Searched for my painting tools, brushes, colours, etc and got into the mood of painting miniatures (yes, again).
Not having anything form Runewars of my own (yet) I took my old Tau soldiers and decided to try again.
This time, however, I didn't look to them so much as Tau forces from the Warhammer 40k but more as Colonial Marines (yes, the guys from Aliens) or Starship troopers and since the humans in Runewars go, more or less, in blue I decided to try some blue colouring on the Tau soldiers.

Here is the evolution of my miniatures. There a lot of pictures, some are better than others, but I hope there are able to show what I did.
For colours I worked with some Vallejo I was having already and some Citadel which I got recently, namely the Citadel Base Painting Set, which includes the Macragge Blue.

Hope you like the outcome as much as I.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Step by Step

Base Coat: Vallejo 72.019 Night Blue; maybe it was not my best idea. This colour is really very dark and on top of the black coating...
Well, it is difficult to see even after two layers.

Left model base coated with Vallejo 72.019 Night Blue
Right model just black primer for comparison.

Base coat Vallejo 72.019 Night Blue

Over this base coat I tried some dry brush with Citadel Macragge Blue from the Painting Set to the armour as well as some Vallejo 72.067 Cayman Green for the trousers and arms and gloves.
The dry brush was excruciating. I did it twice and still barely visible...

Left model, dry brushed and base coated trousers and arms
middle model, Vallejo Night Blue base coat for comparison
right model, black primer for comparison

Close up

Further colours:

For the gun, the backpack and the little antenna on the helmet: Citadel Leadbelcher

For the feet/boots: Vallejo Sombre Grey 72.048

Picture taken with flash, not my best idea...

Now, the Wash. According to the method from quick painting from the Army Painter, they base coat directly with a primer-base coat mixture, give some more base colours and them wash with their especial Quickshade.
I decided to try something similar using the Vallejo 73.207 Blue Wash
I have never done a wash before, therefore on some of the miniatures there was too much of it and they turned out too dark, others were not so bad.
I liked a lot the effect which it gave to the feet/boots. I think they look very good with such a simple sequence: base coat and wash.
The trousers and arms also look very good at this point, I think.

This one is my favourite so far

This one is the second I liked the most

This is quite dark, it was the second one I washed

This poor fellow was the one I washed the first, therefore the darkest of them all

Further I tried to dry brush some colour on them with the Citadel Layer Calgar Blue
It is a quite nice colour, however my skills with the dry brush technique are very basic, so I was busy with them for a while and did it twice.

Kind of Panorama view

I cleared a bit the gun of the models where they turned out too dark because of the wash with Vallejo 72.047 Wolf Grey which seems to match the Citadel Leadbelcher quite well without the metallic hue.

I also gave some dry brush to the trousers, arms and gloves with Vallejo 72.062 Earth.
I considered Vallejo Khaki 72.061 or Vallejo Desert Yellow 72.063 for this task but found them not close enough to the dark green I was having already.

I have to do some more pictures with that last dry brush, so this is for now :)

I also attached a head to the headless guy who I used as black primed comparison. He is supposed to be the leader of the group, so he will get a separate entry, also I didn't paint him as the rest.
Basically because I was busy experimenting with those guys and I started painting him after I was already after the washing step for the basic soldiers. But, again, that is for later :)