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I just bought a little 500 point army of Dark Eldar and I'm trying to nail down the color schemes before I start batch painting them.

I know the edge highlights need some serious work but prior to this I've only ever painted orks. I'm lucky to even know what an edge highlight is.

Planning on painting my wyches in the red scheme and everything else in the purple.
Not sure about the vehicles yet though? Do I want to do them all purple or will purple with red accents look okay?

Ps. I actually do have a wash and highlights on the wych's flesh and hair but the photos kept coming out super washed out on my phone and I didn't feel like getting my actual camera out

They look good.

Personaly I just don't like mono-red cokourschemes, but that is just me.

The pruple is good. Purple and green makes them very 'toxic' or 'evil', I suppose that is a good look for them. You could also use a contrast colour for the purple, like a warm yellow or orange instead of the green.

I really like the red on the gun to the left.

 Niiai wrote:
They look good.

Personaly I just don't like mono-red cokourschemes, but that is just me.

The pruple is good. Purple and green makes them very 'toxic' or 'evil', I suppose that is a good look for them. You could also use a contrast colour for the purple, like a warm yellow or orange instead of the green.

I really like the red on the gun to the left.

Thanks! I'm somewhat in agreement with you about the red wych. I was thinking about putting some purple on her to make the army look more unified but I'm not sure what specific parts would look good purple. Or perhaps there is another, third color I could use to tie the two schemes together. A dark green perhaps? I'm really not sure

Hmmm.... I can't remember what colour theoriest it is, so I am gonne sound like a mad man here.

But there is a colour theory that labels colours after how intence they are. Purple had a 1, light blue a 4, green and red had 5, orange was a 6 and yellow was on top as a 9. The idea being that if you wanted to compose a harmoneus balance you would need 9 times more purple, then yellow.

So if you paint a model say, yellow with some purple detail it will look very extreme. But if you make purple with a bit of yellow it will look very balanced.

Putting that theory into praxtice we can see the lime green balance very nice with the orange. However if you add green to the red wytch they are very well harmoniced, but I find them very booring as they do not generate a lot of contrast between them.

This is odd, because on the 'regular colour wheel', red is opposed to green, in theory they contrast each other, but I stil find them bland.

I would avoid contrasting the red with a yellow or blue. Those colours are very often used in 'cheap' products, like McDonnalds and Burgerking. I made that mistake with my first tyranids, thinking 3 primary colours would contrast ecah other. But instead it looked like a cross between McDonnals and toy soldiers.

If you want to contrast the red with blue or yellow I would choose a blue and yellow that has a lot of white, black or grey in it. Or have the red have a lot of white, black or grey in it.

I'll disagree. I like the red model, but as I say frequently it needs a decently contrasting base --- and all of the wyches would need white hair (as white/brass/metal is an excellent opposite to a red model). I think the purple works well too - but could use an occasional contrasting colour.

My colour schemes are all often pretty simple. I try to keep 1-2 main colours, one major contrast colour and then the rest of the colours are chosen as long as they don't "wtf!?" the rest of the scheme.

Both look great to me, purple better though. Something about red & green just is too christmasy for 40k though.

Personally I like the purple and green one. It is a very striking combo and eye catchy. the red armor is kinda washed out when paired with the semi-tanned flesh of the wych.

It may also be because the green on the Wych looks to be the same tone as the the armor (as in, if you made the color greyscale, the green would be a similar shade of grey as the armor). If you can darken it, it may stand out more as a contrast.