Piranha:HO! HO! Home again, flying fast on a two man open sleigh!

A nice addition of festive trees to bring some spirit to the picture!

 

Well Hello once again! Over indulgence of left over mince pies; turkey sandwiches are the treat for lunch; looks like Christmas is well and truly over and I have thoroughly enjoyed the respite. I hope you too have had a wonderful holiday. During my time off I was able to finish my first Tau Piranha, which has acted as the test for the future Tau vehicles. Despite some small hiccups to begin with the overall process ran smoothly. Be sure to see some close ups after the break.

 Before I started painting this model I did some research about how to do Tau camouflage, and after five minutes I realised there was not much to it. The main thing I needed was some tape, more importantly painters' tape. I purchased 'Scotch Blue with Edge Lock' tape - side note it's fantastic and fairly inexpensive!  

 

 The first stage was priming the model white, after building it all in one except for the cock pit which was done separately then fitted in.

 

 

 The whole model was painted with Skrag Brown, then the shaped tape was put in place, then the model was painted with Deathclaw Brown, again tape was applied, then for the final layer Tau light Ochre was applied.

Between each stage the paint was given a day to dry completely, once the last layer was painted and left to dry all of the tape was removed.

 Some sections needed to have paint re-applied to them, then after than it was onto the little details of lining in, highlighting and painting in the black, all the easy stuff...ha...

 I made sure each section was crisp, and made sure each top layer had highlights - looking at the codex I just accepted it would be impossible to get the paint that smooth without an airbrush so I tried for sharpness of lines. The under carriage did not matter too much to me for highlighting's sake. The drones were painted separately.

 I had fun doing the console in the cock-pit, I selected nice cold colours and enjoyed making them look shiny and gemmy, - and according to my club members - a bit of showing off!

 Just to prove I painted the under carriage with the camouflage! I am still a bit undecided as to what the piranha will fly on but for the moment he will remain on a flight stand.

Overall I enjoyed painting this model, it is laborious at the beginning but if you get that stage right the rest will surely fall into place. If I had one tip for this model it is have a steady hand, the last thing you want is colours running about and you having to constantly fix mistakes. Do you know of anyone who has painted their Tau vehicles in such a scheme? If so I'd love to hear about it - feedback appreciated. I have some devilfish sitting in a box who are ready to be painted, they might be subject to a tutorial on this, I'll just need to see how much time I have and also if there is a demand for it.

 

Thanks for reading! Next up will be more Tau of the Firewarrior breed - maybe even a battlesuit! Until next time, bye for now!