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I was in a discussion with an artist friend of mine who is a professional paint shop person. I asked him about contrasting colours for a good paint scheme and he told me that instead of making contrasting colour what they usually do is cheat and "harmonize" the colours so that you get just one spectrum. Sort of like a good pencil drawing is all in white/grey/black or shades of yellow brown.

Now he obviously does it in a paint shop filter. What I wonder if we who use subtractive colours can do the same.

would it be possible to take all the painting pots I am gonna use on a colour scheme and add 5% paint to each pot from one colour to add that shade to them all. Say I was going to paint a vampier count in blood red, then blood red would stand out as a pure colour while all the other colours would have a shade of red in them. (Perhaps not the white as it will turn pink, and the same with black perhaps.)

What do people think, does it work or do you have a technique that is similar?


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Edit: One could potensially also add some grey to the colours?

This is sometimes done by using a yellowish highlight to everything (representing a natural 'yellowish' sunlight) coupled with bluish or purplish shades (the complement to the yellow). It was pretty common in the 'French style' of a few years back. Also worth looking up 'temperature contrast' as opposed to 'colour contrast'. Bear in mind you nevery have a pure white / black anyway, and the technique works.

It does open up a huge amount of technical differences in how you can approach miniature painting.

Adding greys / pure whites / blacks to colour reduces the saturation, and can leave things looking lifeless. On miniatures, we are often exaggerating - a well painted miniature face (on a tabletop 28mm) examined at several times magnification can look like it's caked in makeup. We need the exaggeration to trick our eyes into believing a small thing is actually bigger.

Thanks very mutch!

However, do you have a link to some theories, tutorials or models painted like this?

Asking again.

do anybody have any experience with it?

I was going to make a joke about insane paint, but then I saw you are not in an English speaking country.

As for shading down colors, I don't think it would work all to well as we deal with very small amounts of paint that generally has high saturation of pigment.

You could try it, but my gut says it won't end well.