Painting A Tau Hammerhead for Warhammer 40K

This was a bit of an experiment. I was looking for a tan-colored spray paint that I could use to very quickly paint a Tau Hammerhead. I found a Rustoleum product that was designed for spraying outdoor furniture and decided to give it a spin. My only two concerns were how it took a wash and how it would match up to the palette of Citadel colors.

Step-by-Step

1. Clean and assemble the major pieces of the Hammerhead. This was the part that took the longest amount of time. Do not put all of the moving pieces on yet.
2. Prime with Rustoleum Specialty Textured Plastic. This is a textured spray paint that is made for outdoors equipment. It provides a fine grain finish that replicated the texturing real tanks have to prevent crewmen from slipping. The color is an almost perfect match to Citadel Deneb Stone (Foundation).

3. Edge line with a mix of Citadel Bleached Bone and Citadel Skull White.
4. Add secondary colors as desired. I used VMC Black to paint grills, landing pads, and main parts of the guns.
5. Prepare the base whenever you feel like. For skimmers, it doesn't really matter when you handle the base.

6. Paint the hatches with Citadel Snot Green and the lenses/vision blocks in Citadel Ultramarine Blue.
7. Wash the hatches, lenses, and vision blocks with Citadel Badab Black (Wash). Make sure the wash flows into the lines between the green and tan. This will give you a nice black line around your green hatch
8. Use a 000 brush and some Citadel Devlan Mud (Wash) to line the rest of the tank.

9. Highlight the black with a little bit of Citadel Codex Grey
10. Seal

Post Mortem

In hindsight, I was pretty happy with the way the spray coat worked. It saved me a bunch of time and looks pretty good. What I really should have done was spend more time on the assembly and cleaning. However, this was my first large vehicle and there's a bit of inexperience to blame here.

Notes

Last updated	6/21/08
Author	Michael Kan
Pre-requisites	None
Related Articles	Tau Broadside XV-88