Well, despite intimidation by all the mind-boggling details you folk can put on a two-inch plastic space ship, (How on earth do you highlight cockpits? Black magic, say I!) I decided to try laying down a bit of paint on one of my T-70s. Red Ace is a go:

Nothing exceptional - you may be able to tell I don't paint much simply due to my "professional" photography setup - but it will help me tell apart my T-70s for now.

Also tried to smudge up a TIE a bit with watered-down paint wash and colored pencil but...

...I'll have to come back and try that again a bit more seriously.

Still, going forward: I've got matching pairs of TIEs, TIE-FOs, and TIE Strikers. The simplest and most commonest way to tell these apart would be wing stripes, and this also would keep in the same theme as the stock TIE-INTs I have. But how do I ensure the lines are crisp as possible? Will I be fine with just very careful taping, or are there other tips I should be aware of?

Great start there! Red Ace stands out nicely.

Taping is fine. You should get good results with that.

I have been happy with the results using Tamiya's yellow tape:

https://www.tamiyausa.com/articles/feature.php?article-id=222#.WVVe9GllDqA

Well, gang's all here now. Been a productive week for me - huzzah, long holidays!

Happy with the blood stripe on the TIE Striker, though I did scrub and repaint once because I put it on at a wonky angle.

The stripes on the old TIE... Not so happy. Tape absolutely refused to work here for some unknown reason, so I spent awhile scraping and painting to make a somewhat level line, then gave up and gave it a rough sand. If I claim it's because of a long, rough career, I can excuse the lack of crispness, right?

TIE-FO just had a couple panels in front and grey panel on one of the wings. Nothing extreme, though I'll want to touch up the wing edges some other time after practicing my strait edges some more.

On 6/29/2017 at 3:12 PM, nitrobenz said:

I have been happy with the results using Tamiya's yellow tape:

https://www.tamiyausa.com/articles/feature.php?article-id=222#.WVVe9GllDqA

I probably will need to track down some of this at some point - really wanted some thin tape when doing the interior faces of the TIE's wings. But there's no decent hobby store for hours, so I'll probably have to order.

Really nice start, nice and simple modifications are often the best !