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How do you invent your colour scheme? Are you looking for other? or spill some paints on and looks for result? Or may be use some art colour theories?

Most of my armies are painted in approved official colors.

I know just enough color theory to use a color wheel for helping pick accent colors and schemes. Usually run with a triadic pattern.

It also depends on what you're painting; a bright blue & crisp white of an Ultramarine scheme won't work as well for a regiment of ghouls.

I look at military regiments and heraldry from pre 1780s.

For me it often comes down to seeing a couple of color ranges that I like to work with right now and then trying to combine them on a mini and see if it looks good.

When I started my Admech dudes for example I knew from other minis that I wanted to work with Nagaroth Purple/Screamer pink, that I liked Khorne red with evil sun scarlet highlights and that Kaldor Blue combined with sotek green looked pretty good.

So I tried around until I settled for red armor plates, blueish pants/hats and purple robes.





But at times I also did it like Lathe Biosas and found inspiration in historic uniforms or pics from Dakkas Galery.

For my tanks it was mostly seeing some model in a store or online that I liked and trying out something similar

I find some colours quicker easier to paint than others. That probably isn't that uncommon I guess. This will influence my schemes for army painting. If I need a new scheme i will tend to make my life easier by restricting colours I struggle with to smaller areas.

If I am painting for skirmish games or individual models this doesn't restrict me as much and I will either modify official schemes or use the lore to reference real world schemes. I also use a colour wheel.

Whether it's for army painting or non-army painting I will always sketch in the colours on a test model first, just to get a sense of how they work together. You can't judge what a finished model will look like until all the colours are on.

You can always strip it at that point if you don't like it.

You can always look at professional sports teams. They usually have interesting color combinations on their uniforms.