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So, I'm getting a miniature for a D&D game. The character is a swashbuckler. I intend to do most of his clothing in black with accents (feather in his hat, maybe his cloak) in red.

How do y'all go about figuring out just what the feth to paint various other bits that could be... any color? This is pretty easy with stuff like Space Marines or Tau, but with all the freedom in the world, I have no idea what to make of that.

Character will probably be blond, so there's that. I think I may use gold for buttons and such.

Well, one answer is "a bit of logic and the color wheel", with the various triads and tetrads and complimentary colors and all that coupled to "okay, I can do the leather as red-brown or tan depending on if I need a more red or more yellow..." or the like, but a lot of it is just "what do you feel like painting color wise?" and looking at random pictures of minis or paintings of similar dudes and thinking "oh hey, that looks cool, lemme borrow that color set".

Also a lot of screw ups where I pick the wrong color set and get good feedback on why it was a bad combination. A lot.

That said, yellow gold, blond hair, red cloak, and a blueish-black for the rest of it sounds like a good set of colors. Maybe a reddish dark brown for any pouches and leather and stuff? Would be with the red-yellow-blue triad you'd have going, without being bright and attention grabbing...

Too much time on the pinterest

otherwise color wheels and trying new combos out instead of just doing the same black white grey and red.

Personally I'd say skip colour wheels and colour-theory unless you're painting for commissions or painting stuff to sell.

Everyone has their own aesthetic likes and dislikes. You know, even subconsciously what colours you like. You'll paint something better if you like it. The inspiration can come from anywhere. The appearance of a character in a film, the colour combination on your car, the colours of a sports team you find attractive, the colours of a race car or flag that you like. You already know what colours you find attractive, and what colours you feel go together. You'll find yourself drawn to certain colour combinations regardless of what army you do.

Just as you know what you like, intrinsically, you know what you don't like. You know what you've seen and go "ugh, no". You don't need to justify it to anyone else. It's just colour.

You don't need artists' schooling to tell you stuff like this - that stuff is best reserved for people who need to please others (i.e. they're selling a product, or doing commercial design, etc.). If you love the combination of pink, pale yellow, and mud brown...go after it. You'll get some of the usual internet "Well I wouldn't have..." but that's just someone else's opinion.

I'd start by looking around in your life at the stuff you find attractive - figure out why, and if it has something to do with the colours, go from there. Over time you'll figure out you really like X, Y, and Z. Everybody has preferred palettes.

The best paint jobs I see on models use 3 or 4 colors. There may be lots of tints / shades of each color, but they really stick with a small set of choices.

If you're concerned about how to paint every little detail on a model, think about that. The real challenge is to decide what kind of paint job for each bit - i.e. you paint a jem a lot different from an epaulette.

I'd say there's two ways to go about this:

1) Paint all the parts you're sure about, then look at the model and decide what colors to use for the rest or

2) Take a picture and mess with it in Photoshop or whatever the image editing software of your choice is to try out different color scheme.