How to paint Tau Drones

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In this article we will see how to paint a Tau Drone using an orange color scheme.

The idea of this scheme would correspond to the T’au Planet itself, but achieving a higher contrast with orange and yellow tones, comparing with the official Games Workshop schemes.

Let’s Start!

Contenido

1 Armor
2 Black
3 Gold
4 Red visors
5 Base
6 Final result

Armor

To see how to paint the armor of this Tau Drone, I recommend you to follow the step-by-step tutorial on how to paint orange armor . There you will see in detail how I paint the orange color of these armor, starting with the airbrush, and going through the shadows and outlines.

Here we have the result after following these steps:

Black

To continue the painting process, you’ll have to paint all the black areas using Black Model Color.

We will outline this black with Sky Blue Model Color . I have opted for a light blue instead of a grayish one, to give it a different tone. Also, blue is the complementary color of orange (it is on the opposite side of the color wheel).

Gold

Now we will use the Gold color from Vallejo’s Metal Color range . This range of metallics is great, because it allows us to use them with an airbrush or brush (they have a very good dilution).

We will apply Vallejo Shadow Wash to this gold. If we prefer a more reddish gold, we can also use the Sepia Wash.

We can leave this gold like that, or light it up slightly by mixing Gold Metal Color and a little Silver Metal Color . In my case I liked the result and I have left it like that.

Red visors

Now it’s the moment to paint the drone’s visors , which we will paint red. To do this, we will paint the entire area of the visors using Red Model Color . Once dry, we’ll use Vermilion Red Model Color to paint the bottom of the visors. And finally, we will paint a little dot using White Model Color , in the upper left corner of the visor.

Here you can see the result:

At this point, we could end the Tau drone:

But I think we can give the finishing touch preparing the base , instead of leaving it transparent.

This last step will be totally optional, and it will depend on whether you prefer to have the base transparent or if you prefer to have a personalized base like your other Tau units.

Base

We will start the base applying Vallejo Brown Earth.

We can also add some stones (in my case I used rubber) that we will paint black and then using Neutral Grey Model Color.

We’ll apply a Sepia Wash to the whole ground, and a Black Wash to the rocks.

To finish painting the rocks or stones, we will apply a dry brush of Cold Gray Game Color , and we will finish with a light dry brush using Wall Gray Game Color .

To finish with this base, we will add artificial turf or electrostatic turf (in this case I have made a mixture at 50%-50% realistic green grass and dark green):

And also some tufts:

Final result

And here we have the final result after following these steps:

Sep, 2020