Indeed it's kind of as painting a wall, but first you must look what kind of wall it is !
Basic color genetics in a nutshell !
Every chicken haven a "ground-color" (= a base pattern), this is one of the 5 possibilities on the E-locus (= were these 5 can be located).
The ground-color can be "pure" (= homozygous).
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E/E is called Extended Black, ER/ER is called Birchen, eWh/eWh is called wheaten, eb/eb is called Asiatic Partridge, e+/e+[/FONT] is called Bankiva Partridge.
(The ground-color can also be "unpure (= heterozygous), I not go deeper on this to not make things complicater as necessary to understand the BASICS).
This ground-color (the base pattern) is based on gold
s+/s+ for males or
s+/- for females
OR on his mutant Silver
S/S for males or
S/- for females (this is a sex-linked gene).
Chickens with a ground-color based on gold have a base pattern consisting out of Black and gold, these based on Silver have a base pattern consiting out of Black and Silver (Silver we see as white)
This ground color based on gold or Silver can be affected by different other color-genes.
These other color-genes can be diluters, intensifiers, restrictors, inhibitors. Some of them inhirit in a Dominant way, others in a recessive way, or in an epistatic way, or in an incomplete Dominant way or in a sex-linked way.
So when you look at your chickens color/pattern always start by the ground-color (1 of the 5 "E"-forms) which is based on gold or Silver and ONLY THAN you look at the color-genes that affect this totality "E & S".
PS you could see "E & S" is the wall, the other color-genes affecting it are the different paints
