Pathfinder

I promised an update on a Pathfinder I was working on.  Here it is.

He is the first in the squad, so he's the guide for the rest of them.  But what did I do and why did I do it?  Let's jump in.


First, I wanted my Pathfinders to be different from my Fire Warriors.  I wanted the same urban camo theme, but I felt it could be done differently.  That is why I chose to do the inverse of the scheme on the Fire Warriors.

The typical scheme I chose for te Fire Warriors was Urban Camo Armor over dark (black in this case) clothing.  I thought it might be a good idea to switch this relationship for the Pathfinders.  Not only does this give a distinct difference in appearance, I feel it changes the feel of the model as well.

Pathfinders are supposed to be the scouts of the Tau Empire forces.  They are the units that sneak into enemy territory or deploy on the front lines and identify/designate enemy targets.  Other than actual stealthsuit teams, I would imagine that Pathfinders are the masters of stealth deployment and operations.  The obvious notion was to display this on the model.

Thus, I chose a dark color for the armor (a mix of Adeptus Battlegrey and Chaos Black), and switched the camouflage to the cloth combat uniform underneath.  I think it is a concept that turned out quite well.

Also from the picture, you can see that I actually painted the pathfinder before I did the base.  It was an odd undertaking for me.  It felt very awkward.  I didn't know how to handle the hole in the base and the metal insert underneath the feet, so I just decided to try doing it like this.

Doing the base after the model was a little frustratignas I now had this huge obstacle in my way when applying the materials.  Indeed, I had done this before with the donated Fire Warriors, but this felt clunkier due to the weight of the model.

Thus, I decided to add the mud trench down the center to make it look like he was walking along a path that water had begun to soak/wear through the debris as it drained.  Throw in some thick grass and voila!!!!

I feel it looks like shoddy work due to my inexperience painting on the metal.  I found that washes just did not seem to work as well on this model for some reason.  The imperfections in the model really prevented me from using the same techniques that I use with the plastic.  It has a lot of promise, though.  So I'll definitely be reading up and picking the brains of some fellow artists.

So, what do you think?  Any advice and comments are welcome!