Ice World Basing Experiment #2

XV25 Stealth Suit

This is a bit of a mixture of two painting projects;

1. Painting my Tau XV25 Stealth Suits so that they look 'mid-stealth on' as I like to think of it (think of the illegitimate offspring of the human torch and invisible woman), with part of their suits the same colouring as the background and part still looking like the suits of the rest of my Tau cadre.
2. Experimenting with snow/ice world basing.

This time I used a PVA to lay down a sand base, followed by painting Rhinox Hide  and drybrushing with Skrag Brown. 

I then cut two small pieces of sprue with a scalpel into crystalline shapes and polystyrene cemented them into place (I'd left two gaps for the crystals).
Ceramite White basecoat on the crystals, and Scar White on parts of the ground.
Then Lothern Blue layer on the crystals followed by 50/50 Lothern Blue/Scar White, drybrushed onto the crystals, then adding a tiny amount of Scar White to the mix each time, I then added another 5 layers of drybrushing on the crystals until I was essentially drybrushing pure Scar White only onto the very tips of the crystals.

Finally I dabbed PVA onto the white parts of the ground and small amounts of PVA were added to parts of the Shas'ui's hooves (roughly equivalent to where I find snow kicked up onto my trousers in the winter and sticking), and some PVA onto the top of the XV25 suit, onto the static parts where I imagine snow could pitch and is less likely to be knocked off (unlike the arms and Burst Cannon).

So, what do you think? Does the stealth suit look mid-stealth? (I'm hoping that as part of a unit and army painted with Ice terrain the white will look more like the background.. well fingers crossed!).

How does the base look?

Ice World Basing Experiment #1

Hi there, I have recently begun collecting a Tau army as well as Clan Skitr, now my Tau are from Sept Dal'yth (purple markings) and I've decided on a colour scheme of blue-greys and ice blues as Tau are known to apply camouflage to their armour and I'm envisioning this army on a desolate ice world with solid ice underfoot, drifts of snow and patches of partly-melted slush and slurry.

This blue-white shiny glistening ice is perfect

I love the blue tones to this ice

I've got some Citadel Snow 'flock' and Mourn Mountain terrain paint.

So my first attempt was the paint a bare base with Mourn Mountain, followed by a drakenhof nightshade wash.

Unfortunately the effect was not as blue as I'd hoped.

I then added PVA to all top surfaces and used the snow flock.

I can almost hear the crunch of fresh snow.

I had left a small area behind each hoof  bare of snow to represent hoofprints of crushed/melted snow, I then added a layer of 'ardcoat to give it a wet look.

Unfortunately I also added a Lothern Blue/Lahmian Medium 10/90 to the hoofprints... which failed miserably as it seeped almost instantly into the surrounding snow.

Hmm... more experimentation is called for!

I've seen some snow bases that show more of the earthy ground beneath, that is what I'll work on next.