Painting Tau Fire Warriors, inspiration from nature

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I was looking through my box of prepared miniatures for something to paint as its still raining and I can't get my Nazi Zombies ready.  And I found a Tau Firewarrior I picked up ages ago.  Its an interesting model, the Tau weren't released when I used to play WH40K so they have some novelty factor for me.

I really like the insectoid look their armour has and the single eye/rangefinder.  Add the more dynamic pose this one is in and I couldn't resist painting it.

When choosing a colour scheme I knew I wanted to go for a yellow and black Tau so I looked at photos of insects for inspiration.  I liked the idea of natures warning colours of yellow & Black which I hoped would give the figure an air of threat.  

I didn't want it to look too orange though so I highlighted it quite heavily.  I also used a brown wash to low light and pick out the deeper lines.  I wanted a shiny black look for the cloth trousers and gloves which kind of worked but I think i'll need to get some gloss varnish to make them look the way I want them to.

I also liked the way the yellow on the bug in the above photo looked with the green background so I chose that for the contrast colour.  Overall i'm pleased with it although the barcode rank markings just didn't come out that well.