Colours

Hello again...

Hectic week... very few time spent painting. Very few... as in "none".

But, as this is still a new blog, I have a huge stockpile of material I can post about, and here it goes; a few 28mm fantasy (old metal empire soldiers from Games-Workshop) without a base... yes yes, I know:

The thing I wanted to show here is that there are, in my opinion, other methods of producing nice miniatures than obeying the rules of the wheel of colours. Where the wheel will help you pick opposing colours for a maximum, yet harmonious contrast effect, the same can be achieved by using two methods:

One: the contrast effect is achieved by opposing two colours with very different brilliance, or brightness. Here, we have a rich red, contrasted with a bright yellow. The eye perceive the red as dark, when opposed to the yellow.

Two: The harmony is created by using a simple trick: linking the colours by a similar tone during shading and/or highlight. In this example, The yellow is shadowed by adding a darker orangy-brown to it. This orangy-brown is then used to basecoat all the leather parts of the miniatures, and then a dark reddish brown is used to shade the leather. This reddish brown is also used to shade the red, and is also present in the darkest recesses of the skin. This way, all the colours seems to "fit" well one with another.

Sorry to all the "formal artists" out there who may know these thing as very common knowledge... But I was quite proud to figure all that by myself, and I think it may be useful to many peoples!