Testing and Scheming
I have been giving some thought to how I should paint my Tau army. I initially leaned toward the traditional yellow (ie: Vomit Brown) paint scheme which is indicative of the primary Tau homeworld. The trouble is, it's been done to death and I wanted something that would stand out a little bit. I also considered a strong break with standard Tau practice and going for a radical and flashy look. I was considering Purple and Gold. However, I decided that if I was going to be using nonstandard models (substituting converted XV25 Stealthsuits for XV8 Crisis Battlesuits) I should use a more traditional paint scheme. Looking through the codex and the various Sept worlds, the description for Bork'an caught my eye: A centre of learning and academia, with many universities and research facilities. A high percentage of the Fio Caste (Earth caste, the artisans and laborers, the engineers and scientists) come from this world. I like the idea of high-technology and learning and research, so it struck a chord with me. All of the pictures featuring Bork'an Sept Tau were done using a cold-weather camoflage scheme, so I decided I'd try it. The standard one looked alright, but I thought it would look even better (and maybe a bit colder) with a little bit of light blue in the lines of the armor to bring out the white. With the main colors being Skull White, Codex Grey, and Enchanted Blue, though, I worried that the scheme would be a little too cool. (Lots of cool colors, I was concerned that the model wouldn't look right without more warm color.) So, I decided to sit down and paint up one of the models to see what it would look like.

Some Assembly Required
I chose a Fire Caste Warrior (Tau: Shas'la) as my test subject, since I'm still working on the posing and converting of the Stealth/Crisis suits. The model itself was a little fiddly to put together, partly due to flat (as opposed to concave and convex) attachment points and partly due to me wanting to hurry up before the glue had dried. I had particular trouble with the left arm, as it is quite small and depends so much on the position of the right arm and gun.

Primer
Since I would be using White as my main color, I was leery of painting the model with Chaos Black as is often recommended. The point of a primer coat is to get a solid coat of paint on the model to give the rest of the paint something to adhere to. Most of the more opaque paints will do that effectively. Initially I was going to use Codex Grey as the primer coat, thus saving myself a step later, since I'd planned on painting the cloth Codex Grey. Unfortunately, Codex Grey is very similar to the color of the sprue material, so it was hard to tell if I'd gotten good coverage. That being the case, I switched to Space Wolf Grey. This too would save me a step, as I'd planned on putting a layer of it down on anything that would be taking a coat of Skull White. (Skull White is not a very opaque color, so painting it on top of a dark color means that a lot of that color shows through, then you have to make lots and lots of layers of Skull White to get it to actually look white. A common technique to avoid this is to put a lighter color down before you paint it with the Skull White. Sadly, the picture for this step had too much glare to be of any use. Just imagine the above picture but in a very light blue-tinged grey instead. :)

Greased Lightning
My next step was putting little lines of Lightning Blue on all of the lined areas of the model that would eventually take Skull White. (That would be the armored portions and the main barrel of the Pulse Rifle.) I ended up with thicker lines than I wanted, but that would be okay, since the Skull White would cover them up nicely.

A Touch of Grey
I then painted the cloth areas of the model with Codex Grey. This slightly dark grey would contrast well with the White armored areas, yet not stick out too much since the Tau value their camouflage. Looking at the model afterward, I think I will have to give this some sort of wash, perhaps watered-down Black Ink, to really bring out all the sculpted wrinkles in the cloth. This is simply a test, however, so I'm not too worried about it right now.

Pearly Whites
Next up was the Skull White itself. This is the main color of the paint scheme, and it will be the make-or-break of the model. I painted all the armored and otherwise solid areas of the model with Skull White. I had to be careful not to paint over the Lightning Blue, since in some areas of the model, the lines are only very slightly indented. With deeper lines, it would be fairly easy to simply run the brush over the surface, leaving the recesses untouched. Sort of a drybrush method, but with more paint on the brush. Since the lines were not deep, however, I had to do it the old fashioned way: paint as close as I could to the lines without going over them. I mostly succeeded. Mostly. :) It was obvious even as the Skull White went on that it was not very opaque and I'd need more coats. I remember overhearing someone, when asked about their white Eldar models say that they'd used 12 coats of white paint. While I will definitely need more coats, I didn't do them for the purposes of this test model. I just wanted to make sure that the paint scheme in generally wouldn't look too wierd.

Paint it Black!
I decided to add the largest of my detail colors as well, to round out the main colors. On this model, I decided to use Chaos Black for a lot of the harder materials that weren't armor. That means the soles of the boots (or the Tau equivalent on their hooves) the area around the optics on the helmet and the 'furniture' on the gun. There are a few areas of texture covered by this color. I may eventually decide to add a tiny bit of grey in this to let those stand out, but I'm not sure about that point yet.

Don't Sweat the Details
Although I plan on using Blood Red for the optics on the helmet and the rifle, and Burnished Gold for the Tau iconography on the shoulder pad and gun, I didn't paint them on at this time. The point of this exercise was to see how the main part of the scheme worked, not make a single example model. The small detail colors aren't as big a deal to this paint scheme, so I left them off for now. In the same vein, there were touch-ups that I will need to take care of and several more coats of Skull White, plus some highlighting and shading before this model is finished. Again, however, none of these make a great change on the aesthetic appeal of the paint scheme, so they weren't important to include in this test model. While I was thinking about all this, an idea came to me however. It is very difficult to highlight White, because there aren't any colors that are lighter than white. Most "white" armies get around this by adding something to their Skull White to make it just slightly darker so they can then go over the highlighted edges with pure Skull White to get the highlighting effect. I didn't want to do that, but I also didn't want to just skip highlighting. After some thought I came up with this cracky plan. After the model is painted, I will spray it with a Matte varnish/sealer. This will protect the model from chips and scratches and will also make the paint scheme less shiny. If I then paint the highlight edges with a gloss varnish, I should get the highlight effect that I am looking for but still have pure Skull White as my main color!

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