Gaming in plastic #3: Uniforms and selecting a colour scheme
by Bob Barnetson
While the primer coat on my figures was drying, I finally sat down to think through what colours to paint them. Selecting a colour scheme for historical figures can seem daunting. One of the reasons I prefer gaming ancients is that most reasonable gamers will acknowledge that even the most authoritative source on uniforms is, at best, educated guesswork. This gives me some license to experiment and choose paint colours that I think look good together.
Sources
To get some ideas for colours schemes, I often start by looking at the artwork on the box the figures came in. I then turn to the Internet. My search skills are weak, so a trip to www.fanaticus.org is often my first step. This website is dedicated to the DBA (De Bellis Antiquitatis) ruleset. In its eye-candy section there are photos of armies painted by many different gamers. While most of these armies are 15mm metal figures, they provide some indication of which colour schemes go together (and which don’t).
Gamers with deep pockets or a well-stocked library can also turn to books published by Osprey Publishing. Oddly, these books can often be found in the children’s section of the library. Ospreys normally contain a series of colour plates that can provide inspiration. Ultimately, though, you have to choose your colours based on what you like.
Colours
While the concept of colour might seem too intuitive to warrant discussion, it is helpful to understand what colour is when you are painting. Colour originates in light and, although we perceive sunlight as colourless, all the colours are present within it. Think back to the tedious school experiments you conducted with prisms and the like.
When light hits an object, the object absorbs some portion of the coloured light rays and reflects the remainder. The reflected light is perceived by our eyes as the colour of the object. So a blue pen is reflecting blue-coloured rays and absorbing all of the other colours present in sunlight.
This approach to colour is called subtractive: colour is generated by the subtraction of the absorbed light rays. In the subtractive approach, the three primary colours are red, blue and yellow which, when mixed, produce all of the other colours. If all three primary colours are mixed, all of the coloured rays are absorbed and the result is black. This differs from the additive approach to light normally found in television screens or video monitors, where the primary colours are red, blue and green.
The colour wheel is often used to show the different colours that can be produced by mixing the subtractive primary colours (red, yellow, blue).
The colours we see vary in several ways. Colours vary in hue (red versus blue versus yellow). When we talk about different colours, we are usually talking about differences in hue. Colours also differ in terms of saturation (the intensity of the colour), brightness (its luminescence) and gloss (how shiny the reflecting surface appears).
Complementary Colours
Complementary colours are pairs of colours that are opposite one another on a colour wheel. When combined in the correct proportions, these colours should create a neutral (i.e., white, grey or black). When placed beside each other, complementary colours make each other appear brighter.
When putting together a paint scheme, I start with the predominant clothing or uniform colour for the figures. I then select a nice contrasting accent colour by finding the main colour’s complementary colour and then moving to the left or right on the colour wheel. So if my figures’ primary colour is blue, I find its complement (orange). Moving to the left or right on the colour wheel nets me yellow and red, either of which is a nice accent (yellow being the better choice to my eye).
Colour Shift
One of the tricks to painting miniatures has to do with colour shifting. When your mind sees a miniature soldier, it assumes it is seeing a life-sized soldier at a great distance. Things viewed in the distance tend to experience a colour shift. That is, colours appear lighter in the distance than they actually are up close because of light refraction—light rays are scattered by the atmosphere. This effect increases as distance increases or as the size of the miniature decreases.
The point is that miniatures painted with full-strength colours do not look as realistic to your mind as miniatures painted with lighter-than-true colours. Full-strength colours give miniatures a cartoonish look. A slightly lighter shade of a colour is more consistent with what our mind expects when it views the small (and thus distant) figure.
Consequently, when I choose paint colours, I tend to choose slightly less intense colours than I might otherwise. This mimics the effect of the colour shift. An alternative (covered in a future article) is to paint with washes. A translucent wash lightens the colour you apply in a similar manner.
My Colour Choice
For my army, I decided the main colour (shields, tunics) would be red. This choice reflects both my Hollywood notions of how Roman Legionnaires dressed and distinguishes my units from my friend Dave’s blue Romans. A good contrasting colour with red is yellow and this will be the colour I’ll use for markings on the Roman shields.
Having chosen red at the main colour for the army, it is important to note that the entire army will not be arrayed in it. Roman armies often used light troops drawn from allied tribes. These units would not be issued uniforms and would likely simply be dressed in their everyday apparel. This means significant variation in clothing colours and shield designs. Different colours can also be useful in denoting different unit types (e.g., green colour scheme are light troops, red colour scheme are heavy).
At this point, I also pick a selection of drab colours to use for these troops. Mostly browns but also some greys, greens and purples which will be used for things like leggings, tunics and capes that would normally be subdued. Some of the lighter browns are reserved for things like wooden spears (I’m fond of a caramel colour) and leather straps.
Up Next
Having chosen some colours, the next task is applying them to the figures. Next week, we’ll cover a basic painting technique suitable for beginners: block painting over a dark primer.