71 - Tau Empire Stealth Team for TOEMP Challenge #7 Completed!

The Stealth Team is done with about 3 or 4 days to spare. Depending on how busy my weekend turns out to be, I may have an opportunity to put together a scenery piece I've been mulling over in my head.

Well, these Tau models were fairly painless and quick to paint. Again, as I mentioned in the earlier post, there weren't that many colors in the overall scheme - lots of Black, lots of Purple. The only difficulty would be in the highlighting to make the subdued colors pop. And, let me tell you, highlighting is tough, for me at least. I still haven't developed a particular technique or level of comfort with it.

For instance, what looks like "battle damage" on these Tau Stealth units was actually my attempt at highlighting. But I couldn't get the lines on cleanly enough - too much twitchy hands syndrome. So, I kind of got frustrated and just started dry-brushing the highlights on. A lot messier, to be sure, but after looking over the results on the first Tau Stealth unit I tried it on, I kind of liked the unintended result. It did give the unit a war-torn, weathered look which, in my mind, fit the fluff behind the Stealth Teams (i.e., lone wolf units operating far ahead of the main army, having to live off the land and make due with whatever they had on hand).

Highlighting the Purple areas was a bit easier because of the large surfaces I had to work with. I probably should have given the Purple another, lighter highlight to make it stand out a bit more, but such is life. I also added a few touches of Red to the models to break up the color scheme a bit. After initially finishing the Purple on the models, I was a bit underwhelmed by how monochrome they all looked. I guess I'm from the school of miniature figure painting that believes every model must have at least 3 primary colors represented on it.

Here are the points breakdown for the Stealth Team:

Foot sloggers = 4 points
Lenses = 3 points
Beating Deadline by at Least 24 Hours = 2 points

For a total of 9 points. Now let's go work on that scenery piece, maybe...

Click here for more pics of the Stealth Team.