Project: Tau - Part 1: Basing and Project Images so Far

I really should have posted on here much earlier, but better late than never huh?

I think it's high time I started posting about what I'm actually working on currently, seeing as this is a painting blog after all haha.
As I've said previously, I'm working on painting up my Tau models (inspired largely by the many Tau rumours about the new 'dex next month), many of which are old and actually date back to around their first release.


At the moment I am specifically working on nailing the colour pallet for my infantry bases.
When it comes to colour theory (and anything visually artistic for that matter), I'm pretty hopeless. It tends to take me many iterations and test models to find a scheme that looks good, that I can competently achieve with my skill level and that other people also find appealing.



I've managed to get this routine pretty well nailed over the past few months, but this is my real attempt at painting bases and as a result, it's thrown my meager understanding of what colours work together totally out of whack again by having to add even more colours to the mix!
Even after several tutorials and reading plenty of guides already, but I'm still struggling to turn that information into acceptable results.
But, there's only so much i can say with words:

This was a late iteration of my Tau scheme, it took me around 7 test schemes to reach this point and it is here that I decided on the colours. The issue I had with it was the "dirtyness". While it looks good on these models (in my opinion) I had mixed results trying to get a consistent level of quality across the whole squad.

This forced me to try and clean the scheme up, which turned out well! The colours remained the same but turned out much more vibrant and eye catching in their final iteration. It was after I had nailed the colours that I really started to look at basing. Given the primarily "white" scheme i went with a dark base, black with snow as seen here (With my WiP Hammerhead):

"I'm not the only guy without an antennae? Right?"

Overall I liked it, I just found the base to be too hard for me to reproduce in large numbers (given my inexperience) as well as not really fitting the fluff I had imagined for my Cadre.
Eventually I ended up buying a number of resin bases to use to speed the process up that also meshed better with my overall vision of the army.
I love the bases themselves, but applying colour has proved problematic, I just can't seem to find a balance between contrasting with with the model itself, without looking totally out of place.

As you can probably see (despite the horrible picture quality) this isn't far from acceptable, but I feel it still looks out of place, I think I need to darken the rubble (and actual base "trim" to match) while leaving the slab that the Firewarrior is standing on roughly as it is. Thoughts would be appreciated here!

I don't really have too much else to say without rambling so I'll wrap up this post here to stop it becomming too lengthy, though hopefully this post has adequately shown where my skill level resides while also showcasing my Tau scheme a little.
I've got some other things I want to talk about regarding my Tau project that I will bring up in a follow up post sometime in the next day or so!
I'd also like to request some feedback on the blog itself, so if you have any thoughts, suggestions, critiques or even requests, go right ahead and leave a comment! This is my first blog, so some guidance would be much appreciated!


Cheers - Felix.