Just because they are canon fodder doesn’t mean they should look bad! Bird is the word in this method to paint quick and easy battle ready Kroot!
Kroots are an interesting part of every Tau army, at least on the hobby front. They offer unique challenges and opportunities for any hobbyists.
The biggest challenge is making the bird-people fit the rest of your army, as they are a different scheme than the rest of your gundam-looking force.
These challenges however offer interesting opportunities, as their unique scheme offers a break from painting the same color over and over. The models also lends itself well to line painting, so it’s easy to speed through painting your battle ready kroot.
The two most important aspects to make Kroot fit your army are the bases and an accent color.
Your Kroot’s bases should match your army’s, and you should pick an area, either the armor, hair or cloth details to match a color in your army. If you are painting a Farsight Enclave force for example, you don’t need to paint the whole Kroot red. But painting the Kroot’s armor the same red as your army’s will go a long way.
As such, you will probably need to change a color or two from this tutoral to fit your own force. Feel free to tag Hellfire Hobbies on Facebook or Instagram if you do, I’d love to see yours!
Battle Ready Kroot
We’ll start our Kroot by painting the skin. No matter what color you chose, pick one that you can spray. This is the bulk of our Kroot, so we can save the most time by picking one available in a shaker can, like Army Green in this case.
You can use an airbrush or a large brush to touch up the areas your can might’ve missed.
Next, our strategy, much like our speed painted Plague Marine, is to get one solid base coat on every surface before shading everything with washes.
Hair is painted Stegadon Scale Green
Cloth is painted Doombull Brown
The gun and other metallic doodads are painter Leadbelcher
Claws are painted any bone color you have lying around, like Skeleton Bone.
Our accent color, the Turquoise, is Ahriman Blue, on the gun and shoulder plate. We don’t have to match our Kroot with an army in this example. But this would work well in you army’s color, like white if you were painting a Vior’La army, for example.
Once everything has a smooth and opaque base coat, we move on to the washes. Instead of one wash to rule them all, we will break it down by surfaces.
We are using Agrax Earthshade for the green and the claws. The gun, hair and clothes are shaded with Nuln Oil, and our accent details are shaded with Drakenhof Nightshade, because we want something more vibrant.
Lastly, you need a base. Ours is a simple city fight themed one, but you should match the Kroot’s base to your army’s.
Alternatively, you can skip the washes and look at our assembly-line method to finish your horde of bird people even faster!