Massive props go to Jas for his continual tuition (both in person and via my steady stream of messages)
The technique I’m using (as taught by Jas) is “preshading” based. The process goes like this:
1. Prime (I used Tamiya Surface Primer rattle can which is grey)
2. Airbrush a black coat over the entire model
3. Airbrush a white coat, heavier on the upper surfaces (and almost non-existant on the lower surfaces) but avoiding the panel lines.
4. Coat the entire model in the base colour. The pre-shading should leave subtle variations.
5. Mask off alternate colour areas and airbrush them
6. Hand paint dark grey “metal” areas
And that brings us to where I am now. Well kind of – I’m yet to do the alternate colour areas for the legs assembly. The upcoming steps will be something like:
7. Coat with a gloss clear (wanted to use Pledge One Go but it’s not available in Oz anymore 
)
8. Use oil paints to do all of the panel lining and vent areas.
9. Apply decals
10. Gloss clear coat again
11. Chipping and final detailing
12. Matte clear coat
Anyway I actually did a lot of agonising over the weekend trying to decide what secondary colour to use on the SAW. I had a look through IA3: Taros Campaign, paying particular attention to the Tau aircraft colour schemes.
There was one I liked with white detail panels, but I decided that in order to pull it off the desert yellow colour would need a brown camouflage pattern applied (as per the Barracuda in question in IA3). I really wanted to avoid doing camo on this model if I could help it (would rather practice on something else first!) so I was leaning back towards brown detail panels (from another Barracuda). In the end I bit the bullet and picked up a pot of Tamiya Nato Brown. I masked around some panels with Tamiya tape (seriously, the most awesome tape around!) and hit it with the airbrush late this arvo (yes, after spending Mothers Day with my dear Mum).
I’m definitely pleased with the results:
And that’s us up to date! I’ll get the legs assembly taped up over the next couple of nights and then hit them with the brown too. Then I have to track down a decent gloss varnish that I can airbrush. Jas was kind enough to offer some of his Pledge but I do need a more sustainable solution…