Tau Redux - Not enough time!

I've been working on my Tau ahead of the new release. I have run the lil' fish heads since about late 2009/early 2010, but to be honest I've not used them for a long time.
This was due to both "Army ADD" and a lack of flexibility in the old codex. This was stretched a bit by the creation of Allies in 6th, but I've been focussed on my Necrons and Nids in 6th.
Now the Tau are back.
In preparation for this, I've been working on my boys with mixed success. As I am sure you will have noticed, the blog has been somewhat quiet lately. I've been working hard (yeah, yeah..mock all you want.. a teacher with extra responsibilities is work man!)and doing some redecorating around the house.. I've been to the UK GT Final two weeks back and I've been in Germany with work. Busy see?

What have I done then? Well, this is my Tau army as it stood a couple of weeks ago (above)

So, lots of stuff.. all a bit random.. I used an old military style paint scheme with green/brown and orange highlights/stripes. I copied this off of Adam from Warhammer Tau as I dug it and because it was quick.

But, in true Ven style...I got bored and moved on, not sure what to tbh!
Over the past 2-3 years what I have learnt about my gaming style and about 40k in general (I was a bit noobish 3 years ago) is that I love to shoot. My Wolves spent over a year shooting a lot...my Necrons spent a year shooting a lot...my Nids, umm.. well, they don't shoot much..a lot of S4..but they have PSYCHIC POWERS! who needs guns?!?
Me.
I need guns.
Praise the Emperor for Tau!
I poached the idea for the revamp from Rich Fielder over at Death or Glory blog. Rich is an amazing painter and has inspired me to try and do more with my painting.
So here we start:
Using an airbrush, I've sprayed the base coat Rhinox Hide mixed with Scorched Brown. This was to try and match the brown on the old tanks.. anyway.. after that I taped them up with masking tape in some sort of angular camo pattern.
It worked quite well, I then used the airbrush to spray a top coat of XV88 over the whole lot.


Once this has dried, peel off the tape and voila! a great looking but simple pattern.






I then used Scorpion Green, Hawk Turquoise and Lothern Blue in a 1:1:1 ratio to create a glow effect. I wanted to recreate the glow I had with my Necrons, but did not want to use the same green, with Tau I wanted to bring in a bluey element. After the first spray, I highlighted with the same mix mixed 50/50 with Skull White. I brought this in close to the source of the light and then used pure white to apply a further highlight.


With the lenses I also used Water Effects to provide a glass like finish.

Overall I am pleased with this basic standard.



The next step is to apply battle damage and chipping to the army...however, this will wait until I have done the entire lot with the same basic scheme.

In many ways, the production related delay on the new tau stuff is actually a benefit to me - it will enable me to get all the models I currently own painted up to the basic standard. I can then do the same with the new Tau and then go back across the whole army and do battle damage and eventually basing. I haven't figured out basing yet - unsure what I want to do.
Anyway, hope you guys like -drop me a comment with views. Tomorrow I will be throwing out a cheeky "first thoughts" on the Tau codex - ya'know, just like everyone else on the blogosphere lol!