For those who may have been following my own work for a little while, you'll know that towards the end of last year, I had started work on my next project, which was to be a very sizeable Cities of Sigmar force, painted in The Living City scheme.
I spent far too long debating over which city I wanted to paint up, not knowing if I was being led by specific colours or the lore behind each city. I found that actually reading up on them all was causing more problems, as I normally just paint something in the colours that I like to paint, rather than look into the world behind them. But I felt The Living City was most unique, and the heavy leaning on the overgrown nature of...well, nature, sparked the most excitement in me to get painting.
So get painting I did, and I spent an even longer amount of time settling on the exact recipe that would be universal across the board of all the miniatures. I wanted to get a heavy amount of green across, with the differing tones and shades of it allowing the overall paint job to still look interesting. Naturally the main cloth was going to be some shade of green, with the armour having a green hue too. Because of this vast amount of green, I figured I would keep the main colour of the shield as a typical dark wood, despite how I did really quite like the look of a green wood. After using a mixture of different shades of green and washes to get the final look, this was the end result.
Now I must say, I do really like the look, and I think the greens do work well together. But after painting a couple of characters and a unit of Steelhelms, it got very old. Very, very quickly. And this was to be a massive problem, given the sheer size of the army I want to paint. If the colour scheme was becoming too overbearingly green just over these small amount of miniatures, then a big decision had to be made now, rather than slog my way along and hate every second of it.
This then put me right back to square one; where I just couldn't settle on a colour scheme or even sub faction that I liked the sound of. Lore and imagery wise, I think Lethis absolutely took the biscuit in this regard, but I couldn't come up with a colour scheme utilising the pinks and purples, in a way that I liked.
This then led me on to the idea of creating my own custom scheme and not worrying about it fitting a preexisting specific city. This process breathed new life into my enjoyment with these miniatures, as they truly are amazing sculpts, full of all sorts of details to keep the painter happy and interested. I was happy with this red, black and beige scheme, enjoying the way the colours worked off one another. My painting style has changed too since painting the green scheme, moving away from a reliance on contrasts, to painting 'properly', so it's nice to see the improvement on my ability. I painted two more Steelhelms in this way to make sure I was certain, and then moved onto painting an ogre that I've been wanting to crack out for some time.
I was then really happy with how this one came out, again enjoying how this new custom scheme applied to a different sculpt. And it does look truly good, especially with my improvements as a painter. But, and I can't believe there really was another 'but'....but, my dissatisfaction with the colour scheme had returned. That moment of clarity had disappeared as quickly as it had arrived, and now I was left feeling worse than the first time around.
So my final attempt at killing this complete indecision caused me to spray over a few models to do the one thing I probably should have done 200 hours worth of painting ago; paint a few different schemes at once. I tried to forget about the imagery of the cities themselves, as to not be led by anything other than how much I enjoyed painting a particular colour scheme.
In doing so, I seem to have landed with the scheme I feel has the most potential to take me further than a few paintjobs. And that has apparently taken on the form of Greywater Fastness and their yellows. I really didn't think I'd enjoy painting with the kind of palette, but I did. It's simple and effective, and I find the gritty style lends perfectly to the sculpts. And funnily enough, this scheme also leans into one I used very early in my painting journey on some Stormcast Eternals. If I was to lean fully into that scheme, it would allow a lovely deep pink accent colour, which will help ensure the interest in painting so many different models, and provide the pop that I do agree it's currently missing.
Have I learned anything from this experience? Do the countless wasted hours of painting schemes that have become irrelevant sting a little bit? Will I find myself in the same position in a few paintjobs time? Yes, probably yes to all three. But that's the long ol' painting journey we all love right? RIGHT!?
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