WIP: Commander Shadowsun

The leader of my Tau force is going to be Commander Shadowsun, my choice was made after reading the excellent Novella Shadowsun: The Last of Kirus Line from Black Libary. Females as a whole are pretty absent in the 40k universe, but the way she was portrayed in the book as a stern warrior but still having a fragile side, which fuelled her strength really caught my interest.

As I had painted my Cadre Fireblade in the test colours for the force, I decided to just plunge headlong into transferring that scheme to the Shadowsun model.

The first step was to decide what on the model would be classed as 'undersuit'. On this model there seemed to be very few areas, which made it easy to paint in a way. I started with Mechanicus Standard Grey and worked up through a wash and two highlights.

The biggest part of painting this model is the white armour, I started painting this Celestra Grey, then gave it two washes of Nuln Oil. After this had dried, I then took Kantor Blue and started to basecoat the areas on the armour that I wanted to be blue, before working back on the white, layering with Ulthuan Grey and White Scar. Once this was finished, I went back to the blue and finished highlighting it.

I tackled the metallics next, the Tau symbols were painted gold, and various points on the armour were painted in steel colours. What struck me during the painting of the model is the screw-like areas towards the lower area of the chest, it was very much like the Marine armour that you see being constructed at the start of Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty. I wonder if Blizzard had borrowed it after seeing this model?

With the main bulk of the model done, all that is left is to paint the weapons, skin and base. Then we move on to the monstrous Riptide.