Chest of Colors forum

Good marrow to thee.

The first question is, how does one paint a mini with a diverse palette, but make it look unified?

Normally I work with a limited palette, so I don't usually run into this problem. I have some Adeptus Arbites I'm painting and about half way through I realized that I had prominent colors for brown, red, blue, gray, white and bronze. How can I unify these without making the piece too bright/busy (it's no harlequin) and maintain a darker undercity enforcer look?

Secondly, do most painters completely freehand striped black/yellow weapons? Is there some kind of painters tape that can be used for masking off solid lines on something that small?

there was an old trick of addding a little of one color to all the colors you used on a mini. for example a little brown to each color - which will bind them together.

a variant is to add a little of one color to another. so if you have blue and red - add a little red to blue, and a little blue to red

as for striped patterns - I think most people do it fully freehand. but it shouldn't be a problem to cut masking tape into thinner stripes and make your work easier...

Okay, thanks Mahon.

If I'm using a diverse pallette I look at the colours I plan to use and split them into two groups: the most similar to one another and the one that stands out the most.

In your case, I would say that the brown, red and bronze all fall into the same category, complimenting one another, while the grey and white would be good as small detail and feature colours, leaving the blue as your stand alone.

Use the blue as your majority colour, say if the miniature has developed armour or a long coat, and then use the red/bronze/brown pallette for the other larger details such as boots, trousers and gloves. The white and grey can be used on smaller details such as weaponry and insignia.

This should help give you a unified pallette with a large colour range without you going into Harlequin territory. Be sure to keep the colour choices moderately uniform throughout any group or unit you're painting too, this applies to things like Harlequins especially to prevent a complete riot of chaotic colour.