Tau Piranha

I've bought Tau off and on over the years, just because I liked the style of the figures. I've always wanted a Piranha, and with my recent success at painting some vehciles and a Hobbytown coupon, I went ahead and bought one



This was still something of an experiment for me. I've never done a lot of plastic kit modeling. I didn't take any pictures, but I dabbled around with some seam filling. I used epoxy putty because I had some, and wasn't really impressed with it for that purpose. Buying some purpose-made Green Squadron Putty really helped, and the long seams down the sides of the model really disappeared nicely.
I painted it somewhat similarly to the GZG hovercraft. My original plan was to do two toned striped camo with soft edges by laying paper masks like before. However, it became apparent that the model was too small and crammed, and the task too fiddly to mess with. So, I decided just to use hobby tac and get hard edges. Here, you can see the Piranha panted the brown stripe color, with the initial masks applied.

The outline color, a very light tan, is painted over it. I knew this was going to take a while, but it really took a while. Unlike the hovercraft which I could affix and ignore the bottom, the Piranha had to be turned over. I had seen plastic kit modelers mount their vehicles on a stick, and now I can see why. In order to turn it over, I had to handle it. In order to handle it, I had to let the paint dry at least six hours to keep from pulling the paint off. This typically meant one, or at best two, coats a day. That's if I'm staying on the ball and don't forget. This thing took me two weeks to finish.

Here I've got the brown stripes light tan outline masked.

The final coat applied. This looked really cool! Here's a simulation of me waiting for the paint to dry so I can do the next step.
Is it dry yet?
No.
Is it dry yet?
No.
Is it dry yet?
No.
Is it dry yet?
No.
Is it dry yet?
No.
Is it dry yet?
No.
Is it dry yet?
No.
Is it dry yet?
No.
etc...

The mask removed. It's not bad, and I think it will end up looking good when I'm done. However, I'm just not a patient enough person to go through this again. I'll be looking for either an easier (I mean, shorter, really) camo scheme, or work in brush paints or something. Frankly, this was for the birds. However, I do look upon it as a learning process. I'd like to not be so intimidated from vehicles, which pretty much means I have to jump in and paint vehicles.

I also picked up a Devilfish at that sale...