The Colour and The Shape

There is a joke about guys & gals and how they see color. It is an old joke. I much prefer the analogy of geeks and norms. Because when anyone asks me "what color does this look like to you?" I'm hard pressed to find any real name I might attribute it to.

You see, all my colors come from my hobby. Any time I'm thinking of color I'm using the silly names given to those colors by game companies. Mostly Games Workshop, but also Vallejo. I helped some family members paint their house earlier this month. Every time we had a discussion about color quality I had to give very brief answers.

"Yeah, those go well together" or "I like the contrast"

What I wanted to say -which couldn't be said- was stuff like "The accent wall is great in 'The Fang' and the 'Administratum Grey' along the rest of the living room and kitchen really pulls it together. Reminds me of painting crumbling ruins for my 40k table"

You might think to yourself that those colors are actually awful for painting a house. But they were both mixed 10:1 with white scar, so the whole first floor still feels very bright and the two 'The Fang' colored accent walls really tie the entire first floor together as a cohesive living space.

At any rate I'm sure I'm not the only one. In fact I have proof. I discuss paint schemes with my co-worker who plays Warmachine & Hordes. We had a literal language barrier at times because he references P3 paints and my lexicon only called for citadel or vallejo. Luckily citadel became our common tongue because we stock it and sell it the most. So when I look at him quizzically he can rush off to the citadel display and call out a color he's actually trying to reference. Luckily I'm picking up on the P3 dialect so this hasn't happened in a while.

Yet my point of reference is still the same. My origin in painting miniatures is citadel paints. That's my native painting language. So when I finally go to paint my own house I'm going to bring a swatch of paints I've made myself from gaming colors. The paint department at Lowe's can scan them all because that's a thing they can do. When I get home I can paint my house in gaming colors and everyone else will have to speak my language for once.