Welcome to the Colour Scheme Ideas series, where we break down easy steps to follow and know exactly how can you paint miniatures for wargames, inspired by the world of tabletop RPGs and with our own flavour.
I imagined the mighty T’au battlesuits in a striking blue that’s both easy to paint and visually appealing. These suits belong to T’au rebels, following Commander Farsight’s orders on a mission to a jungle-covered planet. To get started, we’ve listed all the tools and paints you’ll need below.
Black primer (Morris)
Vallejo and Citadel Colours
Tweezers and Sponge
The core concept is to painting the armour with the sponge to achieve the effect that will be shown at the end of this guide.
Steps
Step 1: Priming Your Miniature
When it comes to painting miniatures, priming is one of the most crucial steps.
It’s the foundation that sets the stage for all your creativity to shine. Understanding how to prime your miniatures properly can make a world of difference in the final result.
There are lots of variables when priming your miniatures Some of them are the temperature, the distance from which you are priming your models, the quality of the paint, etc.
I used a primer from Morris, which is a cheap one that does the job, but choosing one is up to you!
Step 2: Sponge Effect
The main goal of this colour scheme is to create a striking effect using just a sponge. Simply hold the sponge with a pair of tweezers, gently dip it into the paint on your palette, and then dab off any excess on a paper towel. Once you’re ready, start applying the colour to the armour plates of your T’au Fire Warrior.
2.1 Purple
Let’s begin with a purple colour, applying it to 80% approximately on the miniature, leaving some black parts.
2.2 Candor Blue (Any dark blue will work)
After applying the purple colour, it is time to give our Fire warrior a blue tone. Dip your sponge in the blue colour without cleaning it fully from the purple one to achieve a smoother transition. Apply this step at about 60% of the fire warrior.
2.3 Temple guard blue (Any sky blue, or a generic blue that is lighter from the previous one)
Take a sky blue colour of your choice, in this case we used temple guard blue, and apply it with the same way, at about 40% of your model.
2.4 Baharroth Blue (Any lighter blue than the previous one)
It is time to apply the lightest blue colour on our Fire warrior model. Apply it on approximately 20$ of
the model without cleaning the sponge from the previous colours.
2.5 Any white colour (In our case we used Dead White from Vallejo)
The most important part when painting in tabletop quality, is to make your model stand out on the tabletop! We are going to achieve this by applying some white colour, but we need to be careful and blend it nicely with Baharroth blue. You will need about 50% of white and 50% of Baharroth blue. Gently apply this colour at the higher parts of your miniature.
You can now apply more white colour if you want, but we chose to stop right here. Remember, the fun part of the hobby is that you can do anything!
Step 3: Contrast Colour
3.1 After the sponge, we now need to paint the rest of the miniature. We will keep the colour scheme simple though. Take a regular detail brush, and apply some lines following the natural creases of the fire warriors’ clothes.
3.2 Mix some white colour to the grey that you previously used, about 70% white and 30% grey. You will need to apply this one carefully inside the lines that you did with the pure grey colour.
3.3 After that, it is time to apply the snakebite leather colour from Citadel paints. You can also use Xpress colour from Vallejo or Speed paints from Army painter as well. We picked a leather looking colour in this case. Apply a thin layer of it to the clothes.
Step 4: Metallics & Finishing Touches
At the final step of this custom colour scheme guide, we applied some metallic colours, in this case we used leadbelcher, Balthasar gold, and retributor armour. After the metallics, our model need some finishing touches to stand out more! We painted his lens red with mephiston red, his feet purple with the purple with the same colour we used with the sponge, and his nails bonie with morghast bone!
Conclusion
This is a tabletop quality painting guide with some techniques that can make your model look more professionally painted, especially when a team of T’au warriors are put together! In the next tutorial we will talk about how the bases are made and how to apply some basic airbrush effects on the weapons!
