Building a colour scheme

Quick and studio mode

Quick mode is areas and paints: armour, these two pots; cloak, that one. It takes a couple of minutes and is enough to repaint a squad to match.

Studio mode adds the craft: for each step, the technique, how far the paint is thinned, the consistency you are after, the brush, how many coats and roughly how long. It is what you want when you are writing something down for someone else to follow — including yourself in six months.

Sections

A scheme is a list of sections, and a section is a named area of the model: Armour, Cloak, Weapon, Base. They are ordered, and the order is the order you would paint them in.

In quick mode a section holds paints. In studio mode it holds steps.

Steps

A studio step is one instruction — basecoat this, shade that, edge-highlight the other — carrying its technique and the craft detail that goes with it. Steps are what a painting session walks you through one at a time.

Applying a scheme

A scheme can be attached to a whole squad or to one model inside it, which is how you paint a sergeant differently from the rest of the unit.

You can also build a scheme on its own, attached to nothing, from the Schemes hub. Those are reusable templates — apply one to as many units as you like.