 Hello everybody and welcome to another hobby cheating video and today we're going to talk about color schemes Namely complimentary color schemes high contrast color schemes We're gonna talk about how to take two colors on sort of the opposite sides of the color wheel But they're both bright that both might seem poppy and how to make them work together Let's get into it. Let's strict techno man sir. That is Vincy V. Let us get to the technique and learn it Vincy V style All right, so the first thing I want to say about Complementary color schemes is that you already know this concept whether you know, you know, it doesn't really matter If you've ever seen anything Christmas oriented, you've seen red and green red and green are traditionally sort of complimentary colors and Of course, we all seem to like Christmas colors. It's pretty popular in a recent video on turquoise I mentioned the orange and teal or orange and turquoise tint That is often applied over the top of movies and that shows up in movie posters But of course the these things are everywhere all around us many classic Space marine schemes contain these sorts of Contrast high contrast complementary colors. You see them a lot in various different designs, whether it be Flags of countries in the world sports teams space marine designs whatever and They're used because they pop so much But if used poorly they can end up looking cartoony. They can end up looking pretty bad So let's talk about how we make these things work What are the tricks and tips we need to do and to do that? Let's get into one of the brightest of all potential factions with some of the goofiest color schemes space elves All right, so here we have our little warlock who's gonna be the subject of our painting today very fun figure I always thought these guys were like bigger heroes, but hey, I never played Eldar We're actually gonna start by undercoating him in just a nice dark blue and then doing a zenithal in an ivory A more yellow infused tone. I want cold shadows and warm highlights. You can always vary your zenithal There's no reason you can't use alternate colors and the blue and ivory will act as very good Already sort of setting up our complementary colors here for the undercoat The deep blue cold shadows and the ivory highlights will suit the turquoise blue greenwell And obviously that ivory which I'm focusing in a lot. You'll notice at the top of his head will suit the orange well Before we get into the model, let's talk about color wheels. Now the first thing here is this is a red blue green color wheel Just means RGB as opposed to a CMY K color wheel. It's fine. We're gonna be today working in blue green orange complementary colors directly across from each other and In general, you will have different Complementaries depending on the color wheel you use Which color wheel is appropriate whatever you want as we work on it We're going to talk about Dissaturating the colors and that can be adding black or adding it sort of opposite, right? So if we think about adding something like red or red orange into the blue green we'll get this desaturated purple But when we're working with the colors, we can also add tints, which is the lighter versions of the color You see there Dissaturation is just adding gray black white something like that either to increase the shade the tint or the neutrality of the tone and That's part of the secret to Complementary color work is that you actually want to make sure your shadows and highlights are fairly pronounced So that you're not dealing only with shocking overpowering versions of the mid tones one of the ways to sort of avoid a clown fiesta situation is to Make sure that you have good highlights pushing into the high tints or adding effectively white or Deep shadows adding black a complementary color of dark brown anything like that that basically makes the color a shade a darker version All the paint I'm working with here will scroll up top, but it's very very thin layers That I'm doing if you're curious about how To do layering you can check out the video linked up in the top so But as I build this up You'll notice that I'm very much focusing on creating a lighting scheme coming down from his left basically where the sword is So trying to really focus the light in that area while still working these folds on these large flat areas Like this cloak working in very thin paint and multiple layers is a really important key to getting a good result So everything you see here is thinned It has a drop of flow improver in it and It's thinned at least One to one more likely two to one with water It's just pretty thin paint So I'm only showing you one layer on camera, but keep in mind in between shots I probably did one or two more layers So yes, we are effectively using two to three thin coats You caught me doing it But and you notice that every time as with the layering I cover less and less But by punching the turquoise up into this brighter color scheme I Help to soften it some because we add this brighter color Now turquoise is still going to be the main sort of poppy color So I'm going to leave it still a fairly true representation Because turquoise is still soft. It's bright. It's eye-catching, but it will follow the background against our orange Alright, let's talk about the orange and let's talk about the second very important lesson when we're working with Complementary colors other than make sure that you use your De-saturation your tinting and shading correctly The next most important lesson when you're working with complementary colors is balance The color that you're using especially if it's eye-catching and bright warm colors like orange red and yellow are often more eye-catching than almost anything Else you can put on a model So in this case, I had to balance the colors around the model So notice his helmet the portion of the bottom of his gun. I understand they're normally uniform colors I don't care. I want the model in balance. He's my space elf So the bottom of his again is orange and then his belt And that creates a sort of Triangle of color Right. So yes, it's not a perfect triangle But there's sort of a line across the middle and then it comes to a peak At the bottom in his belt So think of a line between the gun to the helmet to the sword And then the line of the sword and the gun both point down to the belt You can see how it actually compositionally forms almost a perfect triangle By balancing the color out around the miniature, especially when it's a bright poppy color and especially especially When you're working in a high contrast complimentary color like this You need to make sure that it's balanced across the miniature You'll notice with the orange i'm pushing very strongly into volcanic yellow on all the highlights The sword will go higher than anything else because it's meant to be sort of this non-metallic metal So it will go all the way up into ice yellow to really desaturate it But notice how much i'm pushing the highlights of the orange And i'm doing that so that the surface isn't just a flat orange tone By desaturating as we talked about we create a softer version to the eye Of the color So not only do we create more visual interest as we always do through highlighting and shading But we also soften the impact of the color and make it feel more in balance When combined with being evenly spread around the model You can then use extremely bright powerful tones Without them overwhelming the viewer or it feeling strange or unsettling somehow Which is what happens when you have one area on the miniature like if i just made his helmet orange, let's imagine This model would be completely out of balance and feel strange because you couldn't look anywhere but the helmet That orange being so attractive is that poppy warm Color would lock your eye in one place By using a color triangle or a color square or something like that and balancing the color around the model You then keep the eye moving and it's easy for your viewer to subconsciously work their way around I'm not going to stop there. I also do some desaturation by mixing in Some of the deep blue with the orange to create a deep brown shadow color This is there's no brown on this miniature. It's just a mix of the two colors and I actually then use that to Further shade down the orange and create some dark shadows Especially lines between the belts and in the gun and stuff like that To further reduce the impact of the orange and create more balance I really want to hone in on one point here And that is remember just because you've chosen to use a color Turquoise and orange is what i'm using here Doesn't mean you're only allowed to use the normal version of that color Just like how we see in christmas where it's not green in the sort of normal middle of the color wheel green In fact, it's more of a hunter deep forest evergreen and that's because it softens that color out And it makes it more appealing to our eye when one of those two parts is softer But you can do the same thing You can pick more desaturated versions of the color maybe slightly off to one direction or another in the wheel That's perfectly fine. Remember your paint jobs your own and your best guide as to whether or not something looks good Is to take it to someone who doesn't know about miniature painting and say what do you think of these colors together? Because humans have a sort of innate sense of what works From a color perspective and what doesn't and so oftentimes just the people in your life around you can be your best judge All right time for tip number three when it comes to working in these bright colors Things that don't have to be In the two bright colors should drift toward neutral So things like the center of the area of his mask. I am doing mostly in white. There will be like same with his shoulder pads So keeping them very white gray. This isn't all white. I'm actually working in a gray tone here But I'll layer up to white Same with the shoulder pads When we come to something like the gun the pistol the hilt on the sword his little booties Uh the bag at his waist all of these things will be black or white basically extremely neutral tones Whites browns blacks grays those sorts of tones are what you want to Focus on because that helps keep the These other colors from overwhelming in other words when you've already got a bright poppy scheme You really want them will avoid adding more colors into it Now as I looked at the miniature I realized we still really hadn't achieved balance And these warlocks always have freehand on their cloaks So I thought what a great chance to add some more balance to the miniature So what I'm doing now is tracing some thin white lines If you want to see a video on how to do sharp thin lines that will be linked up above With some little designs and stuff like that I'm going to paint them white first because this has good coverage And will brighten away from the blue into a neutral tone And then we're going to cover them with orange and I just made little versions of eldar designs I'm going to paint these orange so that then the triangle continues and it's sort of Buttressed by another orange triangle on the bottom the line across leading up to the belt Creating even more balance across the miniature If you mess up with freehand you can always just go back in with your tone Don't worry about how well it blends here. I just took some of the base turquoise And re carefully cut out this my triangle so it was well aligned I'll do that again later because I overstep with some of the orange With the orange I then retrace all of my thin lines If you don't like painting sharp thin lines doing this kind of freehand is excellent practice Because you have to paint every single line you paint Like four times So it's real good practice I start in the exact same layering as I did earlier starting from a very deep orange Adding in shadows into the deeper part of the cloak because your freehand has to match The lighting scheme of everything else you've done So where there are shadows you better have shadows in the freehand where there are highlights on the turquoise There better be highlights on the orange And so I'm just using the exact same color scheme to highlight those back up as well and create light in the areas There should be light and shadow in the areas where there should be shadow But by the addition of this bright orange in the low part of the cloak even with it being Very sort of small we again reinforce the balance and create another color triangle across the model Which is in the end going to help to again keep the eye moving even if the eye drifts down to the bottom part But of course some things need another color. So let's talk about pop colors He had these little gems I can't make them a neutral tone and they shouldn't be orange or turquoise because they will then blend in too easily So we pick purple Which is effectively a complementary color sort of a split complementary to the two colors. I'm using Again, you can use either wheel to kind of find these but if you look up a split complementary You can select them, but here's an easy easy rule of thumb Find a color you're using in this case the the blue green of the turquoise Go two steps on the wheel in one or the other direction. That's your pop color The key with a pop color is it needs to be extremely minimal. Notice how little of these is actually purple So the fourth tip is use a third color as a pop color, but keep it extremely minimal extremely basic and extremely desaturated So there we go All set all painted. Remember our four important lessons one Desaturation one of the colors should be desaturated in one way possibly both desaturations is achieved through the addition of tint i.e. white or gray and making it brighter Or shading i.e the addition of black or its complementary color to make it darker By increasing the amount of desaturation in the color we lessen the overall impact of the color And make it more pleasing to the eye Next neutral tones Neutral tones are very important. Don't go for the clown fiesta Your miniature if it's in a couple very bright colors is already fine when you've got other components of the miniature Feel free to make those neutral tones whites blacks grays browns Those types of things are effectively zeros in the calculation of our color scheme and can always be added Finally your pop color remember to pick something Uh that for a pop color that's going to be interesting that's going to set off well against both of those colors You can often find this by looking at something like a triadic or split complementary third in the color wheel But either way as long as it's a small bright color That will help to break up the other ones and used only in a minimal amount Then you're fine and that leads us to the fourth point Balance your colors need to be balanced. Remember color triangles or squares Have the color existing equally in various and different areas of the miniature to keep the eye moving So with that i'll say thank you so much for watching. I very much appreciate it I hoped you like uh liked our journey here to paint up a space elf I really really appreciate you watching hit that like button subscribe if you haven't already If you've got questions drop them down below. I always answer every question down in the comments, but as always We'll see you next time