2nd Step in Starting a New Army: Picking A Color Scheme

2nd Step in Starting a New Army: Picking A Color Scheme

So you got your models and are ready to build your new army. However before you paint your next master piece there is a step not often talked about and that is choosing your color scheme.  It is very important to pick your color scheme and to take the time to find one you that you really like.  The time you take to pick your color scheme can be the difference between an amazing army that your friends will be jealous of or an alright army that no one looks twice at. 

The first step in choosing a color scheme is to read your codex to get a feel for the army’s personality and any other black library books as well if you want.  In the codex, GW has pictures of the models the Heavy Medal Team painted and these can give you some Ideas for a paint scheme.  After that another good way to get ideas for the color scheme of your army is to go online.  Look through forums, blogs and other websites and you can find all different color schemes people have come up with.  Another thing you can do especially if you are doing a space marine, ork or tau army id go to the bolter and chainsword forum and use the painter it is a good way to try out different color schemes without ever having to paint anything.  I haven’t been able to find a Necron one but you can use the ones they have to get a general idea of how the colors will go together. Or they have a Necron one on the dawn of war games for pc I believe but you can’t go into a lot of detail if I recall.

 

After you come up with a color scheme it’s a good idea to test it out on a model.  I generally try a couple different color schemes out to see which one looks the best.  After you find the one that you like try a couple different variations of it.  I’ll give an Example say you decide to paint your Necrons blue and silver try different colors for the energy weapons and cables.  The different colors can make a big difference on the overall look of your army.  One very important thing to remember don’t just figure out your color scheme in your head and go straight to painting your army.  Because if are like most people and paint groups of models at a time you might find out after you are finished that it looks terrible and you wasted all that time.  Also just because something looks good in your head it might not look good in real life or the color scheme you see on the internet might not look nearly as good when you do it.

For my Necron army it took a week for me to figure out my color scheme.  I really wanted to do purple however it just didn’t look right.  Then I tried blue, green and finally red which I was really happy with and ended up sticking with.  For the silver parts I tried to do it how I painted the medal on all my other armies but it didn’t look good.  I tried a couple of different ways that I found on the internet and ended up using a variation of one of them.   One of the problems I tend to have with painting armies is that I am a perfectionist when it comes to my painting for some reason and that is the only thing I am a perfectionist about in my life.  Everything else I do half ass except when painting my models.  This is good but at the same time it takes longer for me to paint my army.  One thing I noticed I always tend to use the same colors on all my armies for the most part.  The colors I usually use are red and gray.  I am not using grey for my Necrons but I am using red. I don’t know why that is maybe because it is my favorite color.

I will be posting a picture of my Necron color scheme hopefully tomorrow I have to try and find a decent camera or I’ll have to use my phone or ipad.  The next step for starting a new army will be modeling and then painting and hopefully I have those up by the end of the week if not sooner.  How do you guys come up with a color scheme for a new army?

  Thanks for reading let me know what you guys think.

Grizwald

Here is the link to the B&C SM painter: http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/index.php?autocom=pages