Whenever I start a new army I face a small dilemma before painting them; do I make my own color scheme or follow one of the studio color schemes? Having started many projects over the years I've fallen on both sides of the fence on this, but I sometimes feel guilty if I don't come up with my own color scheme.
There are times when I know right away what I want to do with an army. I'll have a color scheme in mind that's unique to me and get going on the models. My Tomb Kings followed their own color scheme because I wanted something that more closely adhered to the aesthetic of the sepia and turquoise pictures from the 8th edition Army Book. The same is kind of true with my Nighthaunt, but really I just wanted a quick and easy ghost look for them. The rest of my Death armies since then have branched off of the color scheme, sticking to black, purple, gold, and ghostly bits as the main staples.
On the other hand I come across stuff like Stormcast or Space Marines and I'm always tempted to do one of the studio color schemes. The Anvils of the Heldenhammer have such a cool scheme, but this also feels like the perfect time to do a bit of world building by creating my own Stormhost or Chapter. My Nurgle force kind of falls in the middle. I came up with the paint scheme and how they're painted on my own, but they were directly inspired by an example piece of art of a Plaguebearer in the Maggotkin book.
This may seem like a silly dilemma to some, but I really struggle with it. It's probably why I have so many test Stormcast and Space Marines in various schemes but no collection large enough of any one scheme of them to call a proper army. With all of the new Space Marine stuff coming out I'm tempted to do a Marine force. Part of me wants to paint more of my Sons of Dorn, since they were the Chapter I created over a decade ago on my own. Another part of me wants to do an obscure, yet official chapter, while yet another part of me just really wants to do Ultramarines. They were my first Warhammer army period, so they hold a special place in my heart and it would be nice to revisit them with the skills I have now. Yet I feel a little guilty painting something that I can just look at a GW book and see tons of painted examples of. It almost feels like I'm making the AoS and 40k worlds smaller by not expanding them myself.
Sometimes I can get around this mental block by adding a small twist to an existing color scheme, or even just some unique basing. Though my Nighthaunt scheme is somewhat unique, let's face it, an overall ghostly color has definitely been done before. I tried to offset this though with some more unique basing for them with the crystals and skulls.
In the end I think I just need to push past it and do whatever color scheme speaks to me the most. Have you struggled with this dilemma as well? Which do you prefer more, doing a unique scheme or replicating something you really like?
Until next time,
Tyler M.
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