A guide to Colour Theory & Colour Wheels for wargames terrain builders

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In this tutorial we look at colour theory and how the colour wheel can help you become a better terrain builder.
Produced with the awesome support of my Patrons! Want to help keep these vids coming as well? Just pledge $1 a month via Paypal on Patreon and help keep the tutorials flowing! - / theterraintutor
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[@gary5737]

Hello TT. I am a rail modeller and a watercolour artist (both hobby, not professional). One thing I like to use as a complimentary part to your excellent guide is transparency and layering. If you water down your paints so that it is very watery, let it dry fully and then apply another thin wash of a different colour, its transparency allows the previous colours to come through, resulting in an overall effect which is closer to nature as opposed to mixing and painting with one mix. Although the mix (using the colour wheel, tones, shades etc) will be close to the colour you were looking for, it will look flat when painted. Hope that helps.

[@bibbly1234]

Having grown up painting and doing art, knowing different colours and mixing paints to make them is something that I've done a lot off, but the video was really interesting, and even though my pride will take a hit, I might have learned one or two things. Keep up the good work Mel.

[@TheTerrainTutor]

***** I'll take that as a win any day, glad it helped mate :-)

[@MrBartononsea]

I've forgotten about this so brilliant vid. Easy to understand for us oldies.

[@TheTerrainTutor]

MrBartononsea Thanks, glad it helped you mate :-)

[@Burnsy021]

This is the first time I've fully understood the color wheel. You're amazing. another informative video filled with great content. Thanks buddy!

[@TheTerrainTutor]

Jon B Awesome sauce mate :-)

[@OleMenn]

Being pretty much useless at anything that incorporates colour (i.e my old gray city board) this was immensely helpful. I'll be printing out that colour wheel as soon as I get the chance. Cheers, Mel!

[@TheTerrainTutor]

Ole Bekkelund Glad it helped mate :-)

[@imarinobr]

Wow! What a great video! After read from a bunch o sites this is the first time I got a better understanding of the color theory. Thank you!!!

[@TheTerrainTutor]

+Marino (imarinobr) Glad it helped buddy :-)

[@johnkelley9877]

Very useful video Mel! It helps me a lot in understanding the science of color. Thanks for posting this and I look forward to more videos like this in the future. Good job.

[@TheTerrainTutor]

John Kelley Awesome mate, glad it helped :-)

[@BenjaminStewart6]

I really enjoy your videos on artistic basics like this. I've learned a lot from you, and I thought I knew quite a bit already. Thank you!

[@TheTerrainTutor]

Benjamin Stewart There's always room for learning a little bit more everyday, I'm glad you managed to pull some nuggets from the vids mate :-)

[@timdwilliamson]

I spent two decades in the printing business. The reason we add black to CMY is because there's no such thing as a perfect pigment. Real Cyan, Magenta and Yellow just don't exist. If you add C, M and Y together, you get a muddy brown-grey. The only way to make black is by adding actual black pigment.

[@TheTerrainTutor]

+T.D. Williamson Thanks for the heads up mate

[@kirkbrownridge]

Great information, mate! I've taken art classes and worked in the printing industry so I know the differences between RBY and CMYK, and as a web developer I also know how RGB works too. This should be very useful to people, especially those coming from the mini painting world who have relied on the dedicated paint systems from the gaming world and are now making the transition to mixing their own colours. Crack on!

[@TheTerrainTutor]

Kirk Brownridge Thanks matey, as someone who obviously knows this topic better than I, how did I do?

[@kirkbrownridge]

I could not have explained it better myself! And as Canadian, it would not have sounded nearly as awesome with my rather uninteresting accent.

[@TheHeritageLine]

Loved this video!! I have seen a few colour theory videos, but this is the only one that made proper sense to me and made sense of the colour wheel. Great stuff!!!

[@billd.iniowa2263]

Thanx Mel, very educational. Lots to digest there, but I think you presented it well. I'm bookmarking this vid for latter reference. Never understood painting..I can build stuff but painting is kinda mystifying still. Maybe now I can figure out the 100+ bottles of paint I've got! lol

[@TheTerrainTutor]

Bill D. in Iowa The more you understand it, the less paint you'll need, that's a big bonus in my book matey ;-)

[@jjab99]

Nice one Mel. This was interesting and very useful, Many thanks mate.

[@CLIVE5ART]

nice

[@TheTerrainTutor]

jjab99 Glad it helped matey :-)

[@TheTerrainTutor]

CLIVE5ART Cheers :-)

[@cyagen9782]

Thank you, now I get it. A very good explanation.

[@TheTerrainTutor]

Glad it helped mate

[@braggminiaturesAnthonyBragg]

Very true, people do need to have a better understanding of how colour works ,without being frightened of making a hash of it. For me to paint my brown hills I do not use any actual brown.

[@TheTerrainTutor]

2009braggminiatures Anthony Bragg That's voodoo stuff that is!

[@braggminiaturesAnthonyBragg]

Basecoat is dirty beige,then orange ,then yellow ochre,then some patches of grey,then drybrush chalk white,then blackwash,then airbrush black shadows.

[@StephanBeal]

Weird - that shirt perfectly matches your eyes, Mel, making them practically glow.

[@TheTerrainTutor]

Colour co-ordinated mate ;-)

[@Ksandros.M]

"Cos artists really like to be clever and rename things ye, it's science innit" hahahaha gold

[@andrewpackham8236]

If you are just painting greens and browns for terrain, you can definitely get away with buying red, blue, yellow and black, and mixing them to get what you need. For miniature painting, I wouldn't recommed mixing your own colours unless you are really confident, as it is unlikely you will have consistency across a whole army. You could of course mix a huge batch of colours and paint a whole army, but if you needed to revisit it later, it would be difficult to recreate an exact match

[@DerMartexus]

Another very important aspect of colours is how the colours match to each other. It's not a good idea to paint a big industrial building blue and put it into a green wood. Oh, you mentioned it in the last few minutes. ;)

[@TheTerrainTutor]

***** Yeah, at least I remembered it at the end! Typical me lol :-D

[@markmorris251]

CMYK is for printing ink and toner. These colors do not mix together to form a new color (yellow + blue = green). These colors are laid down as extremely fine dots side by side at different angles and the brain thinks it is seeing a different color. This process is called half-toning. There are cyan, magenta, yellow and black paints--these can be mixed together to form different colors.

[@TheTerrainTutor]

+Mark Morris They've always mixed fine when I've mixed them as acrylics mate

[@markmorris251]

Hmm, that is interesting, I am glad to hear it. I apologize if I came off as a "know it all." That was not my intention. I have worked in the printing business and paint minis but have never used those paints to mix.

[@TheTerrainTutor]

Mark Morris It's all different mediums and experiences mate, I wouldn't know where to start in the print industry lol

[@SebastienlovesCookieswirlc]

Great video man!

[@RedeyeX23]

I think colour theory can be quite tricky, it's half the challenge.

[@TheTerrainTutor]

Jon Simpson I takes some working out but when the penny drops, it becomes pretty simple, took me a while to get my head around it

[@DeadlyApples666]

Would you say learning this would enable me to buy stock paint colors and mix my own paints for painting miniatures. So instead of spending £2 per small tub of paint I could end up with what ever colour I want in a greater quantity for the same price!

[@TheTerrainTutor]

DeadlyApples666 Probably not to be honest, the problem is that unlike pure artist acrylics, our model paint is a bit of a mix of things, and so the colour wheel becomes more predictive than indictive mate.

[@DeadlyApples666]

Bugger! xD Your videos are really good, glad I found them as I just recently started getting into Warhammer and your videos have inspired me and helped me with quite a few things! :)

[@wyrdness1]

I'm so glad you got arround to the corrected colour wheel, but I would have to say that the kindergarden version is not even really useful to teach the basics, because it gives you information that you have to unlearn. Children are capable of understanding magenta and cyan, really.

[@TheTerrainTutor]

wyrdness1 They certainly are mate, it's a same the early years arts hasn't keep up with the times

[@paulgraddon2655]

I thought CYMK was short for "See you, okay?". 😜

[@TheTerrainTutor]

Isn't that CYOK? :-D

[@paulgraddon2655]

Guess I watched too much south park when I was younger.

[@DaytonaRoadster]

good vid mel, if you do anything Art, you best at least have an idea about color theory

[@TheTerrainTutor]

Foundation principles mate

[@SeaSwine9]

" If we mix red and green we'd get grey" No. Not with paint. You'll get brown if you're using paints, which your viewers will be.

[@TheTerrainTutor]

+amethystducky I've used this method to desaturate colours before mate, but you need pure colours, composite mixes do brown out due to the number of different colours in the original colour

[@SeaSwine9]

+TheTerrainTutor You might want to explain that your need pure compliment colours for it to work, else a lot of people are gonna get brown rocks. Plus it won't be a pure grey.

[@TheTerrainTutor]

amethystducky I'm sure I mentioned it in the vid mate

[@redgreen09]

UUUUUUGGG BRAIN HURTS to mutch book lernen must go back to cat vids and BMX bike tricks that dont work and go harbully rong me just ues what looks good can never figer it out

[@TheTerrainTutor]

redgreen09 lol, just play with it mate :-)