soul-crushing struggle with color schemes

TouchMe

Member
Hello everyone.
I am in desperate need of advice from people with excellent painting skills, not so much from a technical standpoint but rather an eye for combining colors.

I have been struggling with this issue for over a year now and it has really taken a toll on my enjoyment of the hobby. I don't have anyone to play with so setting an aesthetic goal for an army and working towards it has been my only hobby-related occupation. This is in no small part due to the fact that I've consistently shifted my interest between various aesthetics or tried to tackle multiple things at once and of course failed horribly. But even since I've tried to settle on a theme I haven't had any luck.

Allow me to get more specific. I'm making a Hordes of Chaos army. It consists mostly of older metal models (RoC champions, the very old chimera, the 2nd edition of knights) and some a bit more recent (mainly the 5th ed. hunchbacks which make up the majority of my force). My main issue has been with figuring out a color scheme for those warriors. At this point I've come to believe that they are simply horrible models because I can't make it "work" no matter what I try. I'm not a good painter but I've painted metal characters that I've been reasonably proud of, and in those cases I enjoyed allocating the various colors over the surface of model. With those warriors however I've hit a roadblock that I can't get past.

What I need is basically for someone to give some insight on how I can overcome this issue, perhaps a similar experience or a straight forward color scheme suggestion. I would also love to see any pics you might have of those hunchbacks painted in an interesting way because I've spent many hours looking through plogs or even google images and there don't seem to be many. I guess they weren't favorites for the very talented people but they're the best choice for me as I don't have enough money to make the majority of my force consist of ebayed oldschool metal models and I absolutely detest the current version of the chaos warriors.

I also need to mention that the way I determine my goals in terms of aesthetics for the army are extremely abstract as I get inspired by various random things. I'm not definitely not looking to paint these in the traditional "black with silver/gold accents" or a variation of it (ie red with gold accents, etc). I have done that in the past for another chaos army but it's not the style I'm going for in this one.
 

ardyer

Member
No, your initial feeling is correct. Those models are pretty much just horrible ;) I've painted a lot of them and I can say that washes help substantially.

As far as choosing color schemes go, look up a color wheel online. There are 2 ways to go about it, pick 2ish complimentary colors (next to each other) or pick 2 opposite colors (across from each other). I don't know what colors you like, but I'd start there. Choosing complementary colors will look more unified but more bland, while opposites will be more garish but pop better. For the record, I'm also bad at color schemes and just usually choose colors that I enjoy painting.
 
I'm not sure if those hunchbacks were unpopular or not. I know they were a bugger to rank up due to their wide stance. I've got quite a few of them & I reckon they look fine, probably the last of the oldschool looking Chaos warriors IMHO.

I gave mine a basic paint job & dip. I'm pretty satisfied with the results for rank & file troops. I can post some pics up if your interested.
 

jon_1066

Member
Well they are not very interesting to paint since they have that - out of the rugged north clad in furs - look. What about using a bronze/verdigris for the armour. So the colour would be a turquoise/green wash. Combine that with leather boots, grey fur cloak, the odd glowing sword for a brighter colour splash. Should be quite quick to do and could look striking - almost like a bunch of bronze statues come to life.
 
First, I would look through a lot of pictures of various fantasy armies - doesn't have to be Chaos, but could be anything. Then pick a few armies that have color schemes that I like, and then try and imagine the Chaos troops having various combinations of those colors.

Also, maybe try and "reverse" the color-combinations, so that instead of (say) red armor with gold accents, try golden armor with red accents.

You could also choose to make a unit consisting of troops with maybe 4-5 different color schemes. But then I guess you should settle for a common vibe in that unit - it could be al bright colors or all camo-like colors.

Doing a little research, I stumpled upon this tool which could be helpful (Chaos Space Marines do look much like Chaos warrios, after all):
http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/csmp.php

You could also google "chaos warrior drawing", print a lot of copies of one of the more simple drawings and then color it with crayons or similar to try different schemes. I have done something similar sometimes, if I had trouble settling for a color scheme.
 
Zhu Bajie":2hsixh09 said:
I've no idea what models you're talking about, but if you want to play with colour palettes

https://color.adobe.com


Another, similar one: http://paletton.com/

I also like to just sit down with some paper and very quickly put different colors down (using the same paints as I use on the figures) to see how they look. Sometimes it's just little blobs of color, sometimes it's really rough "stick people," sometimes I might even take it a little further with a little detail -- but still not spending more than a few minutes on it.

I will also tear ads out of magazines, grab promotional flyers, business cards, stickers, etc., or take photos of toys & other objects if I really like a color pallet and think I may have some use for it. (For figures or other art/design work.) :grin:
 

Warburton

Member
I actually like those old hunchback chaos warriors and I have seen many versions I like. Sadly I don't own any myself but if ever do a chaos army I will be searching out that regiment box!

Why not just follow the schemes used by the Eavy Metal team? There were a few examples in the White Dwarf at the time, and in the 6th edition Chaos army book? They are all pretty standard schemes, nothing too exciting (red for Khorne, blue for Tzeentch, black for unaligned, etc, etc), but they all work nicely.
 

Suber

Member
You have been given quite wise advice, I cannot improve that. But I can share my experience, which is not that different from yours. I've been experiencing a complete block of mind about Chaos Warriors for ages. I've seen other people's minis in bright, different, challenging schemes, and I was drooling all over, 'Oooo, I wanna do that too'. But whenever I painted my own, I simply couldn't see them right. They looked clumsy to me, far from what I expected. I'm not talking about the paintbrush quality, but the concept itself, the very choice of colours.
I'm still trapped in there, so the only advice I can give is the same I'm trying to apply to myself, which is just dare to do it. The theme or the aesthetics is something purely personal and a matter of individual taste, so I can only encourage you to find something that visually pleases you and take it to the minis. Get a global view of the unit and don't get trapped into the individual warrior (which can lead you to higher levels of self-demand and consequent frustation). Envision the unit as a whole and go for it. I'm sure you'll get more tan decent results in no time.
 
Here's an out of the box idea if you're struggling with colour selection, look at something else to inspire you, comic books for example, comic Alliance has done a great series of articles on colour theory of super heroes:
http://comicsalliance.com/author/mclachlanhanson/
may inspire you to find a scheme you like, alternativly look at the various spacemarine chapters and pick your favourite scheme and try to adept it to chaos warriors
 
This book has been an invaluable resource for me in coming up with colour combos:

51q-9UfROvL._SX362_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg
 
Good advice given, it should give lots of helpful pointers to follow. The hunchbacks were not the prettiest of models ever put out by GW (started in 6th ed, and was surprised to see some Chaos Warriors through editions picture somewhere, where the metal warriors before the hunchbacks were clearly superior), and it's a tad hard to make them pop. I once painted a hunchback warrior as a way of gratitude for borrowing an unpainted WoC army for a mini-tournament, and due to the very few colours we had brought with us it ended up in a Tzeentchian colour scheme. Dark blue armour plates with bright blue highlights, lots of gold, some iron and a red topknot. It looked good enough on the quite ungainly model. Perhaps a little green or turqoise could have been thrown in as well, akin to the 40k Alpha Legion colour scheme. And maybe glowing eyes to distract somewhat from the miniature itself.

Will share some little wildcard ideas in case your search continues and you wish to strike out for something out of the ordinary:

You could try to paint the hunchback Chaos Warriors mostly in dark colours, with a bright eye glow to draw the eye in a cinematic fashion, like here and here.

Or you could strike out for a checkerboard pattern worked out across the whole unit, akin to how Jackswift here has done with his CD Infernal Guard. This is not to say paint the armour as a chessboard, but choose two main colours and use them differently on every second warrior.

Or go for bone-coloured armour plates with gold or bronze ornaments. It usually work on plate armoured miniatures. Perhaps you could even add, say, a few subtle dark red and light grey veins to the bone armour to mimic marble a bit.

Best of luck finding a colour scheme you'll end up happy with!
 
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