Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Hey Dakka!

So I've made the jump to AoS, and I'm painting up some Skaven from the Spire of Dawn set. I've decided to (against the fluff) make a clan of albino Skaven. I want some help with colour theory when I'm picking the colours for the armour and the two tunic colours.

I'm thinking a brass/bronze colour for armour, which is pretty classic for Skaven, but the tunic colours are really throwing me off. I found a few schemes I like, but how will they work with Light/White Skaven as opposed to Brown/Dark?



Thanks for the input! Any suggestions on what will work or how to approach the colour theory behind it?

Cheers,
Jpog

Hey mate

Not sure if it helps but my initial instinct was something on the purple end of the spectrum - before I looked at those links where you had a purple option.

Thinking colour theory, white fur tends to be a bit yellow (look at polar bears for example) which would make purple a great complimentary colour.

I would say that though, because my eldar are purple and bone haha.

I wouldn't use a rich colour for the cloth though as they are dirty manky underground rats after all - maybe they greyish purples would work (Daemonette hide / warpfiend grey I think).

Or if you mix a light but quite saturated purple colour 50/50 with black, you'd both desaturate it like the greys above but keep it dark so it contrasts nicely with the light fur?

All the above would go well with brass / bronze, especially if you also add verdigris (again biased, see my eldar with the gold & turquoise spot colours).

Hope it helps!

Now we're getting into biology. Polar bear hair is actually clear. White rats tend to have very white hair. If anything, it would have a very faint brownish tinge to it.

For the purposes of how it would look painted on a mini, I'd lean towards a light brown wash anyway, as a yellow could just look like a badly aged paintjob. Then the cloth parts done in a warm darker brown would look good, and you could use purple for a spot colour if you're set on having it in there.

 hungryp wrote:
Now we're getting into biology. Polar bear hair is actually clear.

Ninja'd! But on the subject of white rat hair, it might be prudent to ask the rats themselves. Or the next best thing.

White rat hair is variable in hue, probably dependent on lighting and surroundings, etc. It ranges from yellowish to warm grey, and almost slate/blue grey. Which you want to go for depends on the rest of your colour scheme, and what kind of lighting effect you want. (Colour scheme's probably enough to go on. )

For the robes, at least, taking what I assume are the established colours of your scheme - yellow-orange for the brass and pink for the albino accents (nose, eyes, ears, paws) - and plugging those into a basic colour wheel gives you a few possibilities. Yellow and red gives you a triad with blue, or yellow-orange and red-violet (warm purple or cool pink) with blue-green (cool blue or turquoise). Not too far from the robes of your first two examples.
A yellow-orange/red-orange, or orange/red combination gives you split complementaries with the same blues. Or you could tie it all together with analogous colours (= orange robes), or mix it all up again with a cool, yellow-green brass...

After all that, I'm not entirely sure how to tint the fur. My gut says to let one of the stronger colours be the complement, and tie the more subtle fur colour in with the others. I.e. if you go with warm metal and pink, and cool blue, tie the fur tint in with the warm colours. Use some variation of yellow, warm brown, or warm grey.
On the other hand, going with a cool purplish pink and cool blue, with warm metal as the comp, could let you try cooler fur. Something tells me that making the metal cool, with cool robes and fur, could make warm pink bits pop too much. Unless you want to make everything cool...

I'm doing a lot of brainfarting here. Maybe the best advice I can give you is to break out your paints and a piece of paper or card, or a painting app (I like Artflow) and see how different splodges of colour look beside eachother.
On that note, here's an article that might be interesting or helpful - hopefully both - and if you're interested in colour theory in painting, you could do worse than read the rest of the man's blog. Particularly, in the context of this topic, the other posts tagged with 'gamut'. Here's the full page for that triad link, too.

If you haven't seen this already...

Ha, I knew the hair is clear but I was talking about 'to the human eye'.

Y'aint going to be painting them clear that's for sure haha!

 Aryllon wrote:
Ha, I knew the hair is clear but I was talking about 'to the human eye'.

Y'aint going to be painting them clear that's for sure haha!

Or maybe...



Looks pretty good to me!

I did albino beastmen, and one thing I remember about it was that you could do great things with thinned inks - pale blues to suggest veins, browns for dirt and filth, etc. Very thin washes or it quickly overpowers the white though.