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Choosing an Army Colour Scheme in 10 Steps | ||||||||||||||||
| O.K. This months offering to the PPP can't be a step by step painting guide as my digicam committed suicide on me, by yelling "goodbye cruel world" and jumping off the dining room table. I therefore lack vital pictures needed to do a guide. But never fear! Petrus' extremely limited knowledge is here, as I present a guide on how to choose the best colour scheme for your army, in several easy steps. This is not a definitive method, so if you want take an armies colour scheme from history or other sources, feel free, just check out Daffrid's article on causing offence with various colour schemes. Step 1. Is your army Dark and menacing or light and good?This is simply a case of do you want to paint your army so that it looks like a light shining through the tide of evil, or an evil nightmare? You can always see step 2 and use that principle to help decide your armies overall colour.Also, another important factor is camouflage. Is your army using it? If so, what type of camouflage? If its desert camouflage, colours like vermin brown and vomit brown along with desert yellow work quite well. With arctic camouflage a pale blue, a white and a little dark blue look good. The main thing to take into account though is whether your army is good or evil. Evil armies should look menacing, so dark colours work best, colours such as scab red, liche purple, chaos black etc. good armies look good in bright colours like blood red, bad moon yellow etc. the other thing to keep in mind, is that it is often good with a good army to have small amounts of a dark colour in the colour scheme, for small bits of trim etc. and a few bright bits in a dark colour scheme, possibly at the top of a standard etc. You can also use step 2... Step 2. Is your army a summer or a winter?Crappy cosmetics industry inspired joke aside, do you want your army to be warm looking (good for good armies) or cold (good for evil armies)? Warm colours are typically colours such as red, orange, yellows, some browns etc. Then there are colours that are cool, such as blues, turquoise, some purples, very pale pink and white etc. This is most applicable in skin tones as a pale skin tone can compliment a dark army very well and warm skin tone is often good in good army.Skin tones are sometimes completely different in non human armies, such as orks for example, who have bright green skin, or tau with bluey grey skin. These skin tones are best left the way they should be without interference, but you are allowed to do whatever you want to. So, you may have gotten that all in mind. Now, the principle of colour theory. Step 3: Colour theoryIf you haven't already come across colour theory, it's the principle of using a colour wheel to show what colours look striking with each other. There are plenty of sites dealing with colour theory in depth, so I won't rehash it here, except to say that it is one of the main ways of choosing a colour scheme.Step 4: Examine a basic modelThis is pretty simple, but you'd be surprised how few people do this. Just take a model, or a picture of a model, that will form most of the basic troops in your army and study it. Here's an example:A fire warrior  There is a picture from GW of a fire warrior. Now you have your picture, look at it and write down the parts of the model that will be painted in different colours. Then, decide what colours you will use. Here's my example: Armour - vomit brown Under suit - mix of chaos black and codex grey Detail on weapon - shining gold View thingy on helmet - blood red Step 5. The test figurePaint a test figure of your chosen colour scheme. Don't worry about neatness or highlighting or shading, just paint it. If the colours look a bit pants, tweak it, change it, completely change the colour scheme, do whatever you feel you need to do. Then, when you’ve got a colour scheme your happy with, go on to the next stage. Also, don't worry about leaving multiple layers of paint on the test mini. After all, it's only a test mini...Step 6. Highlights and shades.Now you want to work out the highlights and shades to use with your model. If this is your first army and you have little experience painting, ignore this stage.Just work out one highlight and shade for your model. If you want to use more, go ahead, but painting a whole army that way will be very time consuming. Here is the fire warrior again:
Now, add these to the test model. If you aren't happy, try different shades. Step 8: SymbolsWhile this isn't essential, it's a nice idea that works very well. I usually have some symbols on my models to show what squad they belong to, and an army symbol. The symbols can be whatever you want them to be. If your army has lots of chaos hounds, what about a ferocious dog as your armies symbol? A dwarven army led by Joseph Bugman would be proud to bear the famous "B" of Bugman's any day.By using symbols you make your army even more unique. You can either paint them on a model, or use transfers, the choice is yours. Just apply a few to your test models. Step 9: Get painting!Paint that army! Move that brush! The key thing I emphasise here is paint everything, until you come to models which are different from your models original colour scheme.Step 10: Adapting your colour schemeEventually you'll get to a model that is different for whatever reason. There are two things you can do:1. Repeat the table process 2. Wing it. When I say "wing it" I quite simply mean do it however you want do it there and then. All I shall say is stick to the same set of colours to keep your army looking unified. And there you have it, an army’s colour scheme. | ||||||||||||||||
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