Choosing a Colour Scheme

 Whether box art or other great painters around the world, there are always colour schemes to copy for every miniature on the market. At some point though, every miniature painter feels an urge to branch out and come up with something all their own. 

Colour Theory

Colour Theory is a broad body of practical information on colour; how colours combine, visual effects, and more. It helps us understand what colour combinations people find pleasing. It may be controversial, but I believe in the context of miniature painting, you can choose to ignore it as long as you like the outcome. Research has shown there are cultural differences between humans on what music we find harmonious or discordant. There’s not reason to assume non-human fantasy or sci-if species would enjoy the same colour combinations we do.

If however you don’t already have a colour combination you like, colour theory can be a useful way to find a colour scheme. The part of colour theory we are specifically interested in is that which describes how to pick a set of colours that will work together. This is best described by using a colour wheel:


Colour Schemes

Colour theory defines specific types of colour scheme based on this wheel. Let’s have a quick look at the shapes of each of the colour schemes, then briefly discuss each.

Monochromatic: uses a single colour, varying the tone (how light or dark it is). Old black and white movies, or sepia photographs are monochromatic.

Complementary: uses 2 colours that are directly opposite each other on the colour wheel. In technical terms complementary colours cancel each other out to produce a grey.

Split complementary: uses 3 colours. One of the colours is considered the base, with the 2 complementary colours being located at 150 and 210 degrees around the colour wheel from the base.

Analogous: uses 3 colours located beside each other on the colour wheel. Analogous colour schemes are less striking than the contrasts created by complementary schemes, and favour an overall warn or cool tone.

Triadic: uses 3 colours even spaced around the wheel. Triadic colour schemes have much of the contrast and striking visuals of a complementary colour scheme while being slightly more forgiving to work with.

Tetradic (square and rectangle): uses 4 colours arranged as a square or rectangle on the colour wheel. Tetradic colour schemes are hard to pull off as the colours have high contrast and compete with each other.

It doesn’t matter which of these schemes you use, the key is to choose your base colour. Whatever base colour you choose it should dominate most of your model. The other colours, regardless of which colour scheme you follow, should be applied sparingly. Use them to pick out details that you really want to stand out.

In addition to the colours directly selected by your chosen scheme, you can always add neutral colours. Neutral colours are browns and greys, including metallics. Regardless of your scheme, you can always paint metal silver and leather brown, if you want to. Using neutral colours can be a good way to avoid overdoing it with a colour scheme, especially higher contrast schemes.

Examples

The classic Space Wolves colour scheme is triadic, utilizing blue as the main armor colour, with red and yellow (including gold) for accessories and detail.

This Tau warrior uses a split complementary scheme. The base colour is blue, with the split complement being red and yellow. You can see the red dominates the model, with blue only being used for the ground and feet, providing a good contrasting colour for the red armor. The yellow is then used as a spot highlight with neutral greys and blacks filling in the rest.

This wraithguard uses a tetradic square colour scheme. The purple and yellow, complementary colours on their own, are used for the main parts of the model, with blue coming in as the energy colour for the weapon. The blue continues in the grass on the base, and the red ground provides a striking contrast.

In Conclusion

A final observation, choosing an awesome and complex colour scheme can be extremely frustrating once you’ve painted a couple of units. There’s much to be recommended in choosing one of the schemes that only uses 2 or 3 colours for army painting. It keeps the process simpler, and on smaller models, you’re not making as many colours compete for space, which can produce a confused final look to a model.



Colour wheel image attribution: Crossover1370 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=92880308


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