Unified Paint Scheme for your Dark Kin

So I was looking at my DE vehicles, and it really hit me how they reflected the change in my taste, painting style and (to a lesser extent) skills.

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And I started to wonder, does everyone do this? Or am I weird?

Like to hear back from people wether they stayed true to a single scheme or like me, just painted whatever felt best at the time.

Cheers!

Nah happened to me too but I contained different tastes and styles in different frames.

When I first created my army I wanted to get done with them rather fast and stick to a simple scheme wit only a fw colors and not much details.
As I got better I expanded my army and used different styles and colors for my trueborn and 2nd Archon and if it ever strikes me to do something that will never fit in with the style of the rest, I just make it an allied Cabal.

I don't have any pictures to share, but my Kabal started off as dark blue/dark purple and then I had a test model to practice painting white on. That then evolved into bone and so now a chunk of my Kabal goes marching in bone coloured armour along with their dark blue/purple friends.

I started out trying to make mine look like the Kabal of the Obsidian Rose, but I wasn't skilled enough to pull it off. They all ended up scab red, which was a nightmare to paint, with loads and loads of coats that made them look progressively worse. Since then I've improved and picked up the Raiders of Commorragh painting guide, so have been painting to the scheme for the Kabal of the Flayed Skull. I've gone back and stripped my old warriors to unify them with this scheme. I am beginning to wish I hadn't gloss varnished some of the vehicles too...

When I got my first warriors I wanted to try different schemes to see what I would like best. I ended up keeping all three that I tried since I like the idea of different factions getting together to form a raiding party / being corsairs.  I have one in dark blue/grey/red that form the bulk of the army including wyches and scourges. One faction in liche purple and bone, they are fewer and include my trueborn. And finally the faction containing mostly the coven elements but also some warriors, are painted in red, bone and black. It keeps the painting from getting boring.

My Kabal/Cult/Coven/Shrine all have different schemes, but within those groups they're unified, as with Mr Believer I've started again on models that didn't fit

In truth I'm only just starting out with my Dark Eldar but I'm going with 3 basic colours that I'm using in different combinations. the three colours are red, bone and black (the classic J Blance pallet). With these three colours one squad of Wyches has red body gloves and black armour one will have a black body glove and red armour, then my Kabalites one squad is red armoured with bone helmets the next will be bone armoured with red hats (both have the same black body gloves) next after that maybe red body glove black armour and bone helmets or well you get the idea. I like to think that the Dark Kin are too proud to wear all the same they just paint their gear in the kabals colours in any combination they choose and then band together with those of a similar taste.

My Kabal/Cult/Coven/Incubi all have their own color schemes. The Cult and Coven utilize purple in their vehicles and the wyches armor. Also I have all my DEldar have a pale flesh with a purple tinge to it. My Kabal was originally painted in a green and gold scheme. I only had one unit painted like this but with the new book I expanded on that and changed it to the Dark Eldar spray color (incubi darkness?) I believe its called. I plan on touching up all of the stuff to tie it together with little details.

I realised I never explained my colours , just put the pic up. Originally, like many others, I intended my forces to be colour coded, Kabal to be red, Wych cult to be Blue, and Hamon to be redish/black.
I ended up not liking the red, I never got further with wych cult than a venom and a raider and a razorwing, and Haemon ended up red. Then I painted Iron Warriors, and discovered a love of metal.
Lots of re-painting followed, all my new stuff is metal too.

Back when I started DE (~2001), I went with the split. Warriors were black, grey, and dark, dark red. Wyches were metal and purple. Haemys were brown.

But I found after a while that it pissed me off. What if I wanted to use more warriors than usual and no wyches? Suddenly my warriors were in purple rides.

So, when the new models came out, I decided to unify the colour scheme. Now all of my guys are done in a brighter red (Red Gore), grey and black, with occasional purple or bone accents. They're much more versatile, and I prefer it. There is still scope for variation between Kabals, Cults and Covens, but I use the same colour scheme.

I find it looks more effective on the table top, too.