Librarium Online Forums banner

How do you stick with one paint scheme?

1K views 13 replies 11 participants last post by  Nhyx 
#1 · (Edited)
It's been several months since I last touched a brush to my minis for several reasons, such as needing the tablespace for college artwork, busy working, the lack of incentive to paint an army given how I live in a boring small town with a lack of visible tabletop gamers, that sort of thing...

...though what's probably the main reason is I simply can't decide on what to paint "them" as. Take my Tau, purchased once upon a time when I thought that following the instructions was a good idea so I glued the weapons to my crisis suits. (Oops.) Back then I thought grey armour with blue glowing lines might be a good idea, but since then I've been indecisively muttering about painting them white, or maybe white and blue, or even the snazzy desert camo colours just because it is a pretty snazzy scheme. Basically I look in the back of the codex, like 80% of the offered colour schemes, as well as get depressed that my models look nothing like them. (Since everyone knows that to get good professional results, all you need is just three coats of paint with no practice. :D )

What's a better way to avoid this sort of indecision? I'm thinking this probably all started with trying to get a whole army done at once. Sure, overall painting a unit is faster than painting a single model at a time, -but- as I type this, I have a hunch that what I should be doing is pick a guinea pig, paint it up while ignoring all the other primed models until that single solitary model is done, and if I (theoretically) don't like the final scheme I'd just be out one model instead of a whole 35$ unit.

(As for the desert camo scheme for the Tau, sure it looks snazzy on the cover, but I have a hunch that 75% of other tau players think the same thing. And white is such a nice clean "futuristic" colour... and an absolute pain to do it seems.)
 
See less See more
#2 ·
I guess I can consider myself lucky that I always liked the overall look of a squadron compared to only one or two units. You should always pick a model to test your colour scheme out. I find that just putting together as many spare parts as you can to resemble a model is your best bet since you are not going to mess up the look of the squad by having one unit that doesn't really fit in.. Easier said then done for Tau I imagine, it always worked for me with Chaos and soon to be 'Nids, but any amount of putty can make anything from either of those races look acceptable.

You seem to be interested in a light colour scheme, whites,greys etc. Have you thought of going with both grey and white? Maybe there is some sort of middle ground, White torso and grey helmets for example. I agree with you about a lot of people going with desert camo but remember it's about what you want, if you want something desert storm-esque then by all means, they're your models after all.
 
#3 ·
I don't ..

I play chaos, so there's lots of option to do within an army that doesnt necessarily break any schemes..

i paint the units up to match their job in the army.. infiltrators go black, noise marines go pink-ish etc..




Getting a small box of another army to paint up in some far-out scheme i find helps with the boredom of doing the same scheme over and over.
 
#14 ·
Getting a small box of another army to paint up in some far-out scheme i find helps with the boredom of doing the same scheme over and over.
I do this, but while totaly plastered
So I wake up in the morning and wonder why I tried to fingerpaint those damn Cadians
 
#4 · (Edited)
I think you have spent too much time thinking about this and have come up with numerous ideas and can't decide. I suggest that you consider who your models are and try to imagine where they live and so on. As you do this picture them in your head. What colour scheme they have could be the one you really want.

There is also doing your own thing. The dessert scheme of Taau is well known but do you want it. Your own army in your colours (blue-lines and grey). This may be more original and I personally am strongly in favour of people doing things there own way. Once completed it will feel like your army and not another clone of GW's painting style. Also if you do your Tau your way you will never look at the models in the codex and feel bad your's aren't as good. your's will be unlike theirs. You will be the only one to decide if they are good.

I would also suggest you stop thinking about what colours you want. You've probably thought about this so much you are sick of it. What I do when I tire of my Tyranids is that I paint something else. I recently selected a Champion of Slaanesh on a Boobworm. I don't do Slaanesh or WHFB but I like the model and it's giving me a break. I would suggest you pick a model from another army that you aren't doing and paint it. The excersize of choosing it's colours will help to clear your head about your Tau.
 
#5 ·
The dessert scheme of Tau.

Get them with your flan. Now the custard! ;)

Like Leech, I have several armies and many 'bits' that I use to make one off models.

So, I have a theme for my dwarfs, if I get bored of that, I have a scheme for my SoBs, and if I get bored of that I can make a model from scratch and paint that. And so on and so forth. Simple, interesting and united.

Plus there is nothing (bar the fluff police) to stop you painting each model in your army differently.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Pixie
#7 · (Edited)
Well, usually when I think of my models, I usually think of a nice crisp clean white scheme, with grey underneath, though I've heard all sorts of horror stories about trying to paint in white, and I'm having issue ensuring that the white stays nice and smooth... though... eh, I'll practice away for the next two days, see how my guinea pig firewarriors turn out, and work it out from there. If white doesn't work, urban grey should.

(And of course there's already plenty of advice on how to do whites around, just... eh, it's kind of advanced sort of ish...)

I did pick up a Warhammer starter set, which just means now I have a bunch of (really really cheap) dwarfs that I need to worry about (damn it red! Why do you have to be finicky to work with?), though when it comes to the gobbos, it's a lot less stressful when all you need to do for a bunch of them is green, green washs, and dot the eyes, with some black robes. :p

(Personally I'm hoping for an overall unified army, just seems more impressive to have your blues versus their reds for example. Though since I need to reinvest in a bunch of new Tau units anyways... means I probably shouldn't worry about having a few spare odd coloured Tau hanging around. Call them the local militia or something.)
 
#12 ·
Well, usually when I think of my models, I usually think of a nice crisp clean white scheme, with grey underneath, though I've heard all sorts of horror stories about trying to paint in white, and I'm having issue ensuring that the white stays nice and smooth... though... eh, I'll practice away for the next two days, see how my guinea pig firewarriors turn out, and work it out from there. If white doesn't work, urban grey should..)
The trick with white is too apply an even coat over an area. Once the are is white just leave it, the more attention it gets the bigger the chance of something going wrong. The white needs to be applied so that all the brush strokes are going the same way so that they will blend with each other. Because the white gets no highlight or shading any distortion in it's surface will be very easy to see because it is the only thing there. This coat must not be thick in any way as that will dry lumpy or distorted. As I'm sure you know a white undercoat is also helpful.

Also you should be aware that the crisp, clean look that GW gets is produced not entirely by expert painters. It is produced by photographers who know how to take a picture in lighting that complements the subject. This is the same thing that is done taking photo's of models (fashion, live human models). You should not be worried if your results don't look as perfect as pictures of GW's are in a book.
 
#8 ·
This is a REALLY good question...
With my old IG army I painted them at least 3 times (the whole army!) and I still wasn't happy! And now with my Dark Eldar I'm thinking of repainting the lot of them.
But as said before, make some fluff that goes well with your paint schemes (or even better paint schemes that go well with your fluff) and you should be good.
 
#9 ·
Well it took me a lot of test models to come up with a scheme I liked enough to paint 120+ times. When I finally settled on one it was because I had an overall concept for my army and also a scheme that I could use to improve my skills.

I actually just posted my "final" shot of my infantry: http://www.librarium-online.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1355022#post1355022

Now, that being said, you are "thinking" about painting white but what this tells me is you haven't actually tried it. Until you break the Analysis Paralysis of picking colors, you will never stop procrastinating.

So take at least part of Andusciassus's advice and actually sit down and PAINT. Once you get past the inertia, you may find white isn't so bad... or that it sucks and takes so many milk-thin layers that you should really try something else. Then paint another model, and another until you get the schema down to what you will want to do for the whole army.

I'd like you to meet three of my oldest friends. They are from the 2nd edition boxed set:


The layers of paint on these lads are so thick in places that I'm pretty sure they are bulletproof. I use them to test colors... a lot. Now, if you don't want to blow models on this, test your painting on sprues. I just tossed out a sprue that looked like a series of stillborn rainbows. It helps a lot, especially when you aren't even sure how the colors are going to work together.
 
#10 ·
I agree with Leech, if you choose some kind of background or theme you will be able to break your indecision.

Once you decide a theme, start painting and converting something... I usually start from the bases, just to have a kind of frame for my models. Paint a test model or two, see if you like it and if you can paint it in a decent amount of time or not.

I am a fan of uniform-looking army, but painting 100 model using the same color scheme can be boring... you can paint something else or try some variation of the color scheme.
For example, my Saim-Hann models are red (with black and white details), but I have painted some models black (with red and white details), or white (with red and black details).

Don't waste too much time on each and every model... a complete army painted at a decent standard using a coherent scheme will always look great on the battlefield.
 
#11 ·
Haha! Recklessfable, that one on the right is the absolute spit of my first marines! I don't know why, but black, grey and purple just looked great, I still want to make an army like that one day.

With some armies its easier to do than others and still make it fit with the fluff -
Take IG, you could have your troops, storm troopers, conscripts and hardened veterans all have a different colour scheme and with a single unifying colour it would still work.
With chaos you can paint each squad any colour you want and make it work, even without a unifying colour. They even have pink marines. And orange ones. You could even make some orange and pink, with green trim if you wanted...

Space marines give you less option, but its still workable. There are instances in the fluff where a chapter has sent aid to another chapter in the form of a single tank, a scout squad or a speeder squadron or something. So if you want a Dark Angels army but don't want to use Ravenwing models, paint them blue and say the Ultramarines lent them to you.
Or you could make it half and half - an allied force of half Blood Angels and half Flesh Tearers for example.

For the tau you could have that your force happened across Commander Farsight and after a bit of delegation, like the tau like to do, Farsight converted them to his agenda, so you could paint them two different ways representing Farsights cadre and your own. Then, with Kroot and Vespid you could have two more different schemes, making a colourful but still somewhat viable fluffwise.

With apocalypse it matters far less. All 40k battles are considered to be part of a larger unseen battle and you just fight out one portion of it. Taking that a bit further, you could make an apocalypse battle the same - for marines there might be ten chapters trying to take an objective, so paint up ten chapters. Same for tau, many different septs may be attacking a particular region, so paint each squad a different sept colour.

The last thing is - its your models, your paints, your time, your money and your fun. Do what you want. :)
 
  • Like
Reactions: Pixie
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top