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So I'm about to paint my gravis captain, and I'm thinking of giving him a bronze helmet to further distinguish my successor chapter from the Blood Angels. However, I'm wondering if bronze might not complement the red of the main armor segments well, since bronze is kind of like a metallic orange and colour theory seems to suggest that orange & red don't go together well. Am I understanding colour theory correctly?

My alternatives are mainly brass and gold, but for fluff-related reasons bronze is best so long as all things are equal aesthetically. Whichever one I go with will also probably be used for the crossguards on power swords.

Colour theory gets kind of weird, in that things that are close look good together (red, orange, yellow = fire) because they meld into each other.

But things that are opposite also look good, because of contrast. And things that are equilateral triangles on a colour wheel look good, and so do squares...

Something that can be hard to balance is brightness. If you have a model painted in 80% dark colours, and add some spot colour that is bright, it can overpower the rest of the model.

I’m not much help... I can’t make up my own scheme to save my life. I just modify existing schemes ever-so-slightly to make it my own.

Which is my very round about way of saying Red, Copper / Bonze, and Gold can work well together. You’ll have a warm colour palate, so icy blues will really pop out. I use icy blue for power weapons on my Red Marines to help the CCW upgrades stand out.

Thanks for assuaging some of my doubt at least. My marines each have an ever-so-slightly blue-tinted steel arm, ala Deathwatch. So yeah, if the bronze doesn't mess up my overall palette, I think imma go for it and see how it turns out

It can depend on the shade of bronze as well. Just visualizing it, I don't see any reason it would clash. Its not like its a weird neon color or something.

If you are up for mixing it, I made up a very nice bronze by mixing Mournfang Brown with Auric Armor Gold. I am not super satisfied with most of GW's bronze paints, they just don't have the same coverage that some of their other metals have.

I don't see a problem with it, the Romans had a similar sort of colour scheme centuries ago and it got them an empire (Though that was for totally different reasons)

I'd just go for it, at the end of the day it's your miniature

If its a dark enough bronze to contrast the red it should look quite good.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
If its a dark enough bronze to contrast the red it should look quite good.

So something like what Duncan showed here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96RYPJIbJ_k), or maybe using warplock bronze as a basecoat instead of balthasar gold to make it a little darker?

Bronze and red almost blend into each other; it's a tough one to paint right. Definitely bright red with warplock bronze to start, and light highlights from there.

Took a picture of my table top painted bloodwarriors. Works or not? You be the judge. Personally I have no problem with it.

Looks good!

For me, I’d like the metal a bit brighter or shinier to help with contrast to the red armour, but it looks good and that’s just a personal preference and not a critique. The darker metal looks aged, and that’s cool too.