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    Dark Ages Color Palettes

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    jp
    The document discusses color palettes for painting miniatures representing armies from the Dark Ages period including Anglo-Saxons and Vikings. Common colors including greys, tans and browns made up 60% of fabrics, with yellow, blue, brown and green being less common at 30%. Red and purple were rare colors found on only 10% of fabrics. The author provides sample matches between historical dye colors and hobby paints from Vallejo and Citadel paint lines. Finally, the author creates four seasonal color palettes to represent generic Dark Ages armies on the wargaming table.

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    Dark Ages Color Palettes

    Uploaded by

    jp
    61 views4 pages
    The document discusses color palettes for painting miniatures representing armies from the Dark Ages period including Anglo-Saxons and Vikings. Common colors including greys, tans and browns made up 60% of fabrics, with yellow, blue, brown and green being less common at 30%. Red and purple were rare colors found on only 10% of fabrics. The author provides sample matches between historical dye colors and hobby paints from Vallejo and Citadel paint lines. Finally, the author creates four seasonal color palettes to represent generic Dark Ages armies on the wargaming table.

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    The document discusses color palettes for painting miniatures representing armies from the Dark Ages period including Anglo-Saxons and Vikings. Common colors including greys, tans and browns made up 60% of fabrics, with yellow, blue, brown and green being less common at 30%. Red and purple were rare colors found on only 10% of fabrics. The author provides sample matches between historical dye colors and hobby paints from Vallejo and Citadel paint lines. Finally, the author creates four seasonal color palettes to represent generic Dark Ages armies on the wargaming table.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    61 views4 pages

    Dark Ages Color Palettes

    Uploaded by

    jp
    The document discusses color palettes for painting miniatures representing armies from the Dark Ages period including Anglo-Saxons and Vikings. Common colors including greys, tans and browns made up 60% of fabrics, with yellow, blue, brown and green being less common at 30%. Red and purple were rare colors found on only 10% of fabrics. The author provides sample matches between historical dye colors and hobby paints from Vallejo and Citadel paint lines. Finally, the author creates four seasonal color palettes to represent generic Dark Ages armies on the wargaming table.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 4

    Dark Ages Color Palettes

    I've been noodling the idea of starting the Dark Ages / Norman Conquest / Normans in Italy /
    1st Crusade period, but since it's on the back burner I'm taking my time and planning out
    how I want to tackle Yet Another Period. I read some really good posts on Model Dad's blog
    about dark ages dying techniques and color schemes. Using that as a base, I've decided to
    work out the color schemes for the various armies I might be painting up for my 10th - 12th
    century Normans, Anglo-Saxons and Vikings. This is a pretty massive post where I go into
    historic dyes, hobby paint equivelants, color schemes, and samples. All this and more after
    the jump.

    Fabric Colors of the Anglo Saxon World


    I've just started researching Dark Ages color schemes, but I've found Jenny Dean's website
    a great resource (thanks to Model Dad for pointing me there). Jenny has a number of posts
    dedicated to Anglo Saxon dying techniques. Along with descriptions of her dying methods
    and examples of her experimental results, she also drops cool tidbits like this:

    "The analysis of dyes in textiles of the early Anglo-Saxon period seems to indicate that reds,
    like purples, were mainly used for narrow woven bands, headdresses, embroideries and
    accessories, such  bags, rather than for larger fabrics. Where dyes were used in larger
    fabrics (and dyes were detected in only one-third of the larger fabrics analysed) these were
    mainly dyes that give shades of yellow, blue and brown, plus green from blue and yellow
    dyes used in combination. It is also possible that, at least in the early Anglo-Saxon period,
    reds and purples were colours reserved for people of high status."

    Ms. Dean seems pretty reliable regarding natural dying techniques of early Britain, so I'm
    going to assume her description of colors and their frequency in the archeological record is
    accurate. This gives me a good place to start for planning out color schemes (dyed textile
    images from Jenny Dean's site).

    Common Colors(60% of cloth)


    Undyed Fabric in Off-white, Gray, Tan, and Brown
    Uncommon Colors (30% of cloth)
    Yellow, Blue, Brown, and Green

    Rare Colors (10% of cloth)


    Red, Purple

    I had read a bit of wargamer wisdom that said the color green was not available as a dye
    color during the dark ages, but based on the examples above I feel confident that nearly
    every color of the rainbow could be produced during the 11th and 12th centuries, and only
    the saturation and frequency of various shades need to be adjusted on our figures to
    recreate accurate clothing.

    Historically Accurate Hobby Paints


    With these Anglo Saxon color samples as my guide, I've tried to find suitable color matches
    in the Vallejo and Games Workshops line of paints. I'm working from images from the web,
    and comparing them to the paint samples from the two manufacturers, so I can't promise an
    exact correlation, but hopefully it's good enough for the tabletop. The Games Workshop
    colors appear to be more vibrant on the whole, so many of these GW colors would probably
    need to be desaturated by adding some white or brown to the shade.

    Sample Vallejo Games Workshop

    Common Colors

    883 Silver Gray Rakarth Flesh

    918 Ivory Ushabti Bone

    837 Sand Light Karak Stone


    916 Sand Yellow Zamezi Desert

    877 Goldbrown Balor Brown

    876 Brown Sand Mournfang Brown

    Uncommon Colors

    953 Flat Yellow Tau Light Ochre

    915 Deep Yellow Yriel Yellow

    961 Olive Green Loren Forest

    833 German Camouflage Caliban Greent

    907 Pale Greyblue Celestra Gray

    963 Medium Blue Kantor Blue

    Rare Colors

    959 Purple Xereus Purple

    817 Scarlet Wazdaka Red

    911 Light Orange Jokaero Orange

    Creating Color Palettes for Dark Ages Armies


    Now that I've narrowed down the colors I'll be using for my dark ages figures, I've combined
    them into a few color palettes.  Although information about warfare during this time is limited,
    it's unlikely vikings, normans and anglo saxons adhered to any sort of uniform, each man
    providing his own gear, painted and dyed to his own taste.

    On the wargame table though, I find treating each figure as an individual turns the board into
    a visual mess. My goal was to create a color palette for each army that would visually tie
    them together, without implying that they were wearing uniforms or livery. I wanted these
    color palettes to be fairly generic so I could assign them to armies at a later date, so I've
    gone with four simple color themes based on the seasons of the year.

    The common colors will appear most prevalently within each army. One or two uncommon
    colors may appear as well, with the rare complimentary colors reserved for decorative items
    and borders on elite figures.

    Winter

    883 Silver Gray 918 Ivory 907 Pale Greyblue 963 Medium Blue 916 Sand Yellow
    Rakarth Flesh Ushabti Bone Celestra Gray Kantor Blue Zamezi Desert

    Spring

    918 Ivory 837 Sand Light 915 Deep Yellow 961 Olive Green 959 Purple
    Ushabti Bone Karak Stone Yriel Yellow Loren Forest Xereus Purple

    Summer

    916 Sand Yellow 918 Ivory 961 Olive Green 833 German Camouflage 817 Scarlet
    Zamezi Desert Ushabti Bone Loren Forest Caliban Greent Wazdaka Red

    Autumn

    877 876 Brown 953 Flat 911 Light


    918 Ivory 817 Scarlet
    Goldbrown Sand Yellow Orange
    Ushabti Mournfang Tau Light Jokaero Wazdaka
    Balor Brown
    Bone Brown Ochre Orange Red

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