After all the comp discussion last week, I feel like relaxing a bit.

So I'm going to put on my art

teacher hat and talk about one of my favorite subjects: Color!

Now you might think: "What is there to learn?" But in fact color is a huge subject, and learning a bit
about it can have a very positive impact on your miniature painting choices. So I'm going to do a
series of posts on what color is, how to mix it, and how to choose effective color schemes for your
minis.

First off...

In Reality, There Are No Primary Colors

Yes, I know, that's heresy. But in practical terms it's true. Consider the traditional colors, as listed by
Issac Newton when he first looked through his prism way back in 1665.

He listed seven colors total, which traditionally trained artists still swear by. But that's just 7
arbitrary points on what in reality is a continuous spectrum of possible colors within the range of
visible light. With an infinite number of possible points you could choose from.

What's that color between the blue and the green? Why it's Cyan (or Turquoise), which Newton
never named, but exists nontheless. And what about Magenta (Red-Purple)? You won't see it
through a prism, but it exists too.

Here's some examples of how we see various shades and colors as light is reflected off of the
surfaces of the objects around us. When we see the entire spectrum at once, we get white. If the
whole spectrum diminishes in brightness equally, we get gray or black. If one part of the spectrum
is brighter than another, we get a specific Hue in the red to blue range. And as for Magenta, it's a
combination color made from seeing two parts of the spectrum (Red and Violet) at once.

When we combine the visible spectrum with the colors made by it's ends overlapping, we get a
continuous circle of all the visible colors, as shown above. If we then pick out the traditional colors,
you can see how fixated we are on certain portions of the spectrum to the exclusion of others, as
shown below.

Now we can discuss the so-called "Primary Colors". Meaning the 3 or so colors that cannot be
mixed using other colors, and can, in theory be used to mix every other color in the color circle.
In Newton's day, this was determined to be the colors Red, Yellow, and Blue. Which you'll still hear
about in High School art classes. Problem is, while these primaries can be mixed to create pleasing
flesh tones, there's colors like Cyan and Magenta that just cannot be mixed this way.

You can try this yourself with some Citadel Paints. See if you can create Blazing Orange using just
Blood Red and Sunburst Yellow. Or Ice Blue using Ultramarine Blue and Yellow. The Orange will
be close, although noticeably less intense than the bottled stuff. But your Ice Blue will end up
looking more like Dark Angels Green instead of a Cyan-ish color.

Truth is, you can't mix the entire spectrum from those 3 colors. Which is why printers use Cyan,
Magenta, and Yellow instead. These produce a wider range of possible colors, which makes them
very useful for printing. But even they can't reproduce all the colors that your computer monitor
can. The issue is one of pigmentation.

Every paint is made up of a base medium (Such as the Acrylic used in most miniature paints.) and a
small amount of colorant, called pigment. In the olden days, these pigments could be bits of
minerals or even crushed bug parts. But these days most are made using chemicals extracted from
petrolium.

Every point on the color circle (called a Hue) has a pigment found somewhere that can be used to
get the most intense possible version of that Hue (more intense even than a computer monitor can
show). But professional printers and other commercial imaging businesses don't want to reproduce
every possible Hue. Just a reasonable subset that gives the biggest bang for the buck. It's far cheaper
to print using 3 or 4 inks than 6, 12, or 18. So that's why everyone in the industry at large thinks in
terms of color primaries. because it's cheaper/easier than the alternatives.

Computer monitors have this problem too, but the possible range is wider than with print due to the
technologies used. If you visit say, a national art gallery and see some original works by Dali,
Monet, or other great artists of the past, you will be blown away by the colors they used that printed
books and computer images can't come close to reproducing. Because they only limited themselves
to the pigments available instead of trying to mix everything using the so-called primary colors.

Lessons To Take Away

Don't Cheap Out And Only Buy Just The "Primary Colors".

You may think that you're being smart and saving money by only purchasing Red, Yellow, Blue,
White, and Black. But in reality you can't mix every color you need this way. Not by a long shot.

When Buying Your Paint, Explore Other Options

Citadel makes a good range of hues, but these do tend to cluster around the named colors from the
image above, which are based on the traditional fine-art hues that largely ignore Cyan and Magenta.
If you go to an art supply store (a real hard-core art store and not a hobby or craft store), you will
find many more choices of acrylic colors available. Don't be afraid of mixing some of these with
your Citadel paints to get some choices that you wouldn't have otherwise.
The neutral tones can all be mixed using the pure hues, plus black and white.

More on this in a later article. But if you're going to cheap-out, do it by not buying browns and
other neutral colors. These can be easily mixed using a selection of 6-8 pure hues, plus white and
black.

Here Is A Good Minimum Citadel Paint Set:

Blood Red
Blazing Orange
Sunburst Yellow
Snot Green
Ice Blue (Actually a Light Cyan)
Ultramarine Blue (This name is actually a traditional one that predates GW by a couple of hundred
years.)
Liche Purple
Warlock Purple
And to mix your other tones:
Chaos Black
Skull White (Buy 3 of these for every one Chaos Black)

And there you go. You can mix almost any color you need with those 10 bottles.

Make Sure Your Painting Table Is Neutrally Lit

Most standard light bulbs give off a slightly yellowish hue, while most florescents give off a slightly
bluish or greenish hue. You can either spring for daylight bulbs (daylight being the most neutral
white light), or you can do what I do and mix standard fluorescent and incandescent light bulbs to
even out the light.

That way, you won't paint something that looks great under an incandescent bulb, but flat and
lifeless under a fluorescent fixture, and vice-versa.
 The Munsell Color Wheel

In "A Little Color Theory - Part I", I talked about the color primaries, pigments, and how we
perceive the colors we see around us. So now it's time to build on that information and learn how to
properly mix the colors we want.

First, A Little History

Back in 1991, when I went off to art school, I was taught the Munsell Color System. Which was
developed in the 1930's as a way of trying to formally explain what traditional painters had been
doing on their own for hundreds of years. This system used Red, Yellow, and Cyan (called "True
Blue" by my instructor) as the color primaries. That color wheel (shown above) is very traditional in
that it compresses the Cyan/Blue and Magenta ranges while extending the rest. But it's still an
advance over Newton in that it does at least include Cyan and Magenta. Even if they're toned down
a bit.

This, by the way, is the color wheel that most of your Citadel colors are based on. There are newer
paints out there that have a more modern selection of colors. But you'll have to visit an art supply
store to get them.

Professional Printers used to use the Red-Yellow-Cyan primaries, but they've since switched to
Cyan-Magenta-Yellow, with Black added for contrast. If you ever wondered why printing in the
90's and 00's looks so much more vibrant that printing from the 60's, 70's, and 80's, that's one reason
why. The CMYK color model produces a much wider range of colors than the old RYBK model.

Now, compare that traditional wheel shown above to the color wheel that a computer graphics artist
like me uses. Which is based on mixing Red, Green, and Blue light.
 The RGB/CMY Color Wheel

Pretty vibrant eh? You'll notice that Red, Green, and Blue are equidistant from each other, and so
are Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow. This is the color wheel I'll be using for the rest of these articles. As
it matches up well with both the print and computer graphics industries. It's also continuous, as each
Hue smoothly mixes into the colors next to it. So you don't get any strange, sudden Hue transitions,
like you do with the old color wheels, where purple is sitting right next to Magenta with nothing in
between.

The HSV Color Model

Now let's discuss the HSV color model. HSV stands for Hue, Saturation, and Value. Let's define
these terms:

Hue

A color's hue is it's position on the color wheel. Blue and Yellow are both Hues, for instance.

Saturation

This is the intensity of the color. Maximum Saturation can be thought of as the purest form of the
color as it appears on the color wheel. Minimum Saturation is pure Gray.

Value

This is the lightness or darkness of a color. Maximum Value is pure White. While Minimum Value
is Pure Black.

Graphically, it all looks like this:

In this example we've selected a point on the color wheel (Red) of pure color. Which is shown on
the tip of the triangle to the right. At the top and bottom of the triangle we have white and black.
Representing our maximum and minimum values. Between these 3 points, we have every possible
tone of Red. The pastel Reds are up near the top, and the Brownish Reds are down near the bottom.

Here's the same chart for Green:

And another for Yellow:

At the top of the Yellow chart, we have the shades of teeth and bone. Which are just high-value
shades of Yellow. At the bottom, we have our Yellow-Browns.

So as you can see, every color you see around you is just a shade of a pure hue mixed with white
and black. This means we can show the entire range of visible colors as a 3D shape made up of
these Saturation/Value triangles combined with the Color Wheel.

Like this:

You can mix any color then by first mixing up it's pure form, and then adding White and/or Black to
get the specific shade you need.

So with all that in mind, here's some color mixing tips.

1) You can't have maximum Saturation and maximum Value at the same time. Adding White
or Black will always Desaturate your Colors.

Everything is a trade-off. That's just how it is.

2) To get a more realistic or neutral color, like say a Khaki version of Dark Angels Green, you
need to add both White AND Black.
Most people just grab a pure bottled color and add white OR black to it. But that means that you'll
only ever travel the top and bottom edges of the Saturation/Value triangle. Adding Gray gets you
into the mid-tones, where the more realistic colors reside. It also lets you mix browns using Reds,
Oranges, and Yellows.

Plus, most colors in the world around us aren't as saturated as the comic book style that tends to be
popular with GW minis. I like that style myself, but if you want a more realistic look, try adding
Gray to the basic GW colors. When I say Gray I mean White + Black, not Space Wolves Gray,
which is actually a light Cyan-Blue.

3) Make Sure That You Shade Within The Same Hue.

Here's a pic of my General and his Advisors:

They look pretty natural, right? That's because I start with a base color and apply 2-3 lighter shades
on top of it to pick out the lighter details. To get those lighter shades, I mix white with my base
colors.

Now here's some Space Marine Minis from the GW catalog:

They're well painted, but look a bit odd. Why? Because whoever painted them used Ice Blue to
highlight the Ultramarine Blue he used on their power armor. But Ice Blue is a light Cyan, not a
Blue. So they look oddly electrical instead of natural because of the difference in Hue.
This is a long-standing problem with all paints, by the way. The actual colors of the paint will never
match up right with the names given to them because there's so many different color wheels and
color traditions floating around in the art world. So learn to look at the paint, not the label.
Especially when buying tube paint. Take off the cap and look because the printed color shown on
the label won't match up either. You have to use your eye to look at the paint itself.

Here's a mini from the BoLS lounge that has the same Hue-clash problem:

The same goes for mixing Snakebite Leather and Dark Flesh. Snakebite leather is a desaturated
mid-tone Yellow. While Dark Flesh is a desaturated Dark Red-Orange. Be careful of the flesh toned
paints as well. As you don't want to use a light desaturated Yellow to shade a desaturated mid-tone
Red. Or people will look at your minis strangely. They may not be able to put their finger on what's
wrong, but it'll look odd to them.

So, unless you have a special effect in mind, try and stay within the same Hue by mixing your own
custom shades. Or, if you want to add in a bit of color, say yellow + white for your lighter tones,
then be sure to add that color to ALL the lighter shades you use on the model. Not just one like
these models do. That way it'll look like the model is standing under a colored light, rather than a
radioactive skin condition. :)

To aid in this, you should buy some empty paint bottles at your local hobby store and mix up large
batches of your commonly used shades in them. This way you'll only have to actually mix paint a
few times a year or when you're painting something unique. I have pre-mixed shades for all my
Tallarn colors.

4) Make Sure That You Use A Full Range Of Values.

Here's a mini from Admiral Drax's blog that's quite well painted technique-wise, but is very dark
overall, making it look muddy and indistinct:
And here's some Marine Models from a recent local tourney that, in keeping with GW's strange new
dark style, have the same problem:

The reason that the minis in both of these pics don't "pop" is that they have (intentionally or not)
been painted using only a small portion of the overall value range visible to the human eye. It's as if
you took one of the Hue/Saturation triangles I showed you above and cut it in half horizontally,
using only the bottom half to paint your figures. Few, if any of the colors used rise above 50% in
value.

Here's a comparison pic showing what my minis would look like if I painted this way instead of
with a more full value range:
So what's the reason so many minis turn out this way? There are a couple.

a) Most People Use Black To Undercoat Their Models

GW always tells everyone to do this, but I can't fathom why. Black sucks the life out of your colors
and makes them darker than they otherwise would be. Use White, Gray, or Brown instead. They'll
preserve your colors better and are easier for the lighter paints to cover.

Personally, I use Gray spray enamel with a brown ink or Devlin Mud wash over it. This is what my
undercoated models look like before I apply any colors:

The brown ink accentuates the model's details while not overpowering the colors. The raised bits
receive less ink and therefore start off about 40% brighter than a black undercoat would be. The
details are also much easier to see this way.

When I paint, I then start off with the base color for the clothing, skin, or whatever. Being careful
not to paint into the brown cracks of the model where I want to accentuate the model's details. I
then come back with 2-3 lighter shades of the same color to make it pop.

b) Most People Use Saturated Colors With A Wash Applied Over Them.

If you start with say, an Ultramarine Blue or Blood Angels Red, and then apply a Devlin Mud wash
over them, then you've just put yourself in the bottom half of the Hue/Saturation triangle. To lighten
back up, you'll need to do some dry-brushing or shading work using the original color plus at least
one lighter shade to get back up into the mid-tones.

So if you only want to throw a wash over you model and call it done, you'll need to paint your
initial colors on brighter than you want them to look when you're done. That way the wash won't
pull you down into the dark tones.

Or, if you like dark-colored models, you can make sure that some detail on them is light-toned.
Which lets your viewer know that you MEANT for the rest of the model to be that dark. :)
Colour Combination and interaction

You may not have realized it, but visual artists have been deliberately manipulating your emotions
and perceptions with color for at least 500 years now, and in an undisciplined way for many
thousands of years before that. We do this using color harmonies mixed with specific value ranges
to evoke exactly the mood we want you to feel.

In this post, I'll show you how it's done.

First the preliminaries:

In A Little Color Theory - Part I, I talked about the color spectrum and primary colors.

In A Little Color Theory - Part II, I talked about the Hue/Saturation/Value color model and how to
mix any color using a pure hue, plus white and black.

Now we're going to talk about how to choose effective color combinations. If you haven't yet read
my first 2 color posts, go ahead and do that now. The following post won't make much sense
without that grounding. :)

What's a Color Harmony?

A color harmony is a specific set of color rules that an artist follows (or doesn't) to achieve a certain
mood in the viewer. Basically it means that he or she chooses a specific subset of colors to use
while ignoring all others. This focuses the emotional message that they want to deliver to the
viewer.

If you don't use a harmony, you run the risk of sending an emotional message to your viewer that is
garbled or contradicts the message that you intended to send. When this happens we start saying
that a painting or photograph looks cheap or sucks, even if we can't rationally explain why.
Take these two miniatures, for instance: The Space Marine on the left has been painted just as
cleanly as the Space Marine on the right. Both are colorful too. But the Marine on the left has been
painted with every single hue on the color wheel. While the one on the right was painted in a
Triadic harmony that used just 3 hues. So we cue in to the harmony on the right and are at peace,
while our feelings about the mini on the left become garbled and incoherent.

Or for the 3D animation example:

Consider how PDI/Dreamworks' "Shark Tale" looked visually cheesy compared to Pixar's "Finding
Nemo". PDI's artists concentrated on making the individual fish look cool. While Pixar made it's
choices based on the whole image that the audience would see.

By the way, I'm going to use stills from 3D animated films to help illustrate the various harmonies
we cover. Because hey, that's my other major interest besides 40K, and nobody consistently does
color better than Pixar anyhow. :)

Now, on to the harmonies!

Analogous Harmonies
Just to repeat what the slide says, Analogous colors are hues which are close together on the hue
wheel. They're great for conveying intense moods and emotions. This is also the harmony of choice
for realistic camouflage schemes and the like, as no individual color stands out more than any other.

My Tallarns are analogously painted. The majority of the army is painted in the red to yellow-
orange range. With accents done in a yellow-green so that they're noticeable, but don't stand out.

And that cool Ork army that I posted pics of a couple of weeks ago? He's using the exact same
analogous range that I am!
Here's some Death Company and the Nightbringer from GW's online catalogue. Lots of value
contrast there, but they're still painted analogously.

Here's some Pixar examples:

Whether you want to communicate sheer terror or warm fuzzies, Analogous is the best way to
communicate an intense feeling or unify a large number of elements like miniatures.

Complementary Harmony
Two colors are complementary if they occupy opposite positions on the color wheel. This is the best
way of showing contrast and drawing attention to a specific element in a painting or a particular
feature on a miniature. Particularly if you paint most of your image or miniature with one color and
some important detail with the other.

One feature of true complements is that they scintillate. Which is an optical effect that we see as a
dark line between two complementary colors when they touch (you can see it in the slide). This
effect is caused by our eyes not being able to tell where one color ends and the other begins.
Because the two colors trigger opposing color receptors in our eyes.

Opposite colors on the older, more traditional color wheels don't all scintillate, by the way. Which is
one way that we know the newer digital/print wheels are more accurate.
Besides a straight-up complement, artists will also contrast an analogous range of colors with a
complement to that range. Or even use 2 complementary ranges. This allows for more color
variation and interest at the expense of diluting the color contrast a bit.

Here's a Terminator that's been painted with a Split-Complementary color scheme. Notice how the
armor pops out at you.
Here's another mini that's been painted using a split-complement. But notice how out-of-place that
green is. It's way too noticeable because it doesn't fit the rest of the scheme that he's using.

Here's a Valk that was painted by Goatboy (Complements are his favorite harmony). It's something
of a bad example because the complement isn't really used to draw attention to anything important.
It's screaming LOOK AT ME! But once you look there's not much there. Sort of like BoLS itself. :)

This one's much better, as it uses the complement to really accentuate the liquor this guy's carrying.
But the complement is broken by the grass and earth used on the base, which dilutes it somewhat.
 Here's some of my old Dwarfs from the 90's. The Lord with the winged helm is painted in a
straight yellow-blue complement. It should have been orange to blue, but I was still using the wrong
color wheel. :)

The old Bugman's models (my first minis, their 3rd paint job) are painted in a split-complement of
blue against a range of red to orange.

And finally we have my Slayers, which were painted in a double-split complement of red to orange
contrasted with cyan to blue.

Some Pixar Examples:

Notice in these two images how your eye is drawn to specific spots that accentuate the emotional
message. Also notice how evil the barracuda looks because it's very desaturated. If it was friendly
like the sharks that show up in the film later, it would be more colorful.

Yep, can't help but look at the eye of that robot. In the second image the whole environment is
against Mr. Incredible.
 Triads and Tetrads

What Triads and Tetrads allow you to do is to show lots of different hues while still controlling the
image somewhat. Basically, if you use these harmonies, you'll have to rely a lot more on controlling
the saturation and value of your image or miniature to attract attention to a particular element.

Here's some Triad examples:

Red-Green-Blue for the Space Marine on the left. Magenta-Cyan-Yellow for the Daemons on the
right.
Here's another Red-Green-Blue scheme, it's just more desaturated and subtle.

And for Pixar:

And some Tetrads:

Sorry, but it's amazingly difficult to find any minis that use Tetrads. While a lot of people will
stumble into the other harmonies, this one really requires you to know what you're doing.

Color Psychology

Lastly, I want to show some images that illustrate some Psychological effects that you can get with
color. This is only the tip of the iceberg, of course. But it should get you thinking. We need more of
this in the miniature painting realm.
Mr. Incredible is having a bad day. We know this not only by his performance, but because all the
colors in these scenes are desaturated to an almost-gray.

You can see this in the world around you too. Look what happens to colors on a rainy day compared
to a sunny one. The picture on the right is saturated and full of life. Even though they're sitting in
the mud. :)

Notice how gray the environment on the left is as the lifeless defensive machines attack him. While
in the image on the right we get warm fuzzies contrasted with the color of his old uniform to unite
the two thoughts.

And lastly... Did you realize when watching Finding Nemo that Dori and Gill both had the same hue
combination? Dori was introduced early on, so when Gill came around they were able to use her
colors to make you like Gill without spending as much screen time on him. We also know that he's
more hard-edged than her because he's got a lot more value contrast going on.
You could use this in 40K to make your commander stand out, whilst visually tying him to the rest
of your force.

Neat eh? GO PAINT!!!

Color Theory and Citadel Paints

by SandWyrm

Hello,

I just discovered your blog through SandWyrm's excellent series on color theory. I enjoyed it
immensely and will now have to try some Analogous and Complementary harmony (I always
wondered why my color combinations never quite satisfied me).

My question is: how does the untrained eye discern where individual citadel
paints fall on the color wheel and determine analogous hues? Is there a
table somewhere that shows this or is it simply something that you have to
play with until it 'feels right'?

Thanks for any help,

-Harding

Oh, are you lucky.

I had to learn to see the hues in any color by painting chart after chart of hue/saturation triangles.
Then I had to paint self portraits using each of the various color harmonies. Then it took 10 more
years of working for it to really sink in.

But since you're not in one of my color classes, I can't torture you. So I'll just have to make a chart
that you can save and reference.
 P.S. I'm not charting out the foundation paints or the washes. You can do that yourself! :P

Color Isolation: Avoid it

Color Question: Tau II, Electric Bluegaloo

by SandWyrm
In my last Tau color post, CaulynDarr commented:
I'd like to know what you think of the color scheme I've chosen for my Tau.
I didn't use exact contrasting hues from the color wheel, and ultimately chose colors that I thought
looked good together. I wanted to use a darker color for the base armor, and a contrasting lighter
color for select portions. My fluff reasoning for this is that the lighter color would naturally draw fire
from vital areas to better armored nonessential ones. I used white sept markings on both armor
sections to link them together, and used green for specific details as it seemed to pop more than any
other colors without being too distracting.

SandWyrm's Reply:

Your pics were a bit dark, but fortunately I was able to brighten them using my Photoshop-foo. :)
Overall, I like what you've done with the colors. So I'll talk about color isolation.
Above is your original mini. It's got a good complementary scheme, but the Orange is isolated in
one big block. This draws a lot of attention to that area, but it also comes off as a bit simplistic and
cartoony.
Here is your mini with some modifications I made. As you can see, I broke up that big block of
color and distributed the orange around the mini a bit. I also reintroduced the Cyan into some parts
of the gun that had all been orange before. I also introduced some desaturated orange into the base,
which had all been a light Cyan.

The result is some additional visual complexity that reduces the cartoony feeling quite a bit and lifts
the visual interest in the mini as a whole. I know this may compromise your fluff a bit, but don't
ever let fluff get in the way of a good paint job (or army composition).

I've got similar "rules" for what gets painted green on my tanks. Basically all guns get green accents
because on the barren world of Tallarn "Guns preserve life". But I'm not afraid to bend or break that
rule if the model requires it.