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So, what do we think of the new Contrast paints?


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Vallejo Primer is fine. Is it the very best? Maybe not, I generally prefer Stynylrez, it flows a bit better, although I've had a few problems with the white. You can get a bad bottle of either product, Stynylrez in particular becomes completely useless if it freezes, which can happen in warehouse storage or during transport in the winter. Vallejo White is a bit thicker. Stynylrez Grey is amazing though.

I've primed a few hundreds mini with both. If your Vallejo primer rubs off, then either you didn't wash your model properly, or you didn't shake the bottle before using it, or your bottle went bad.

 

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1 hour ago, GeneralZero said:

Too bad I bought 3 200ml vallejo primers (black white light grey). I'm super beginner with Airbrush (never touched one before). So, your advice is not to use the vallejo primers?

Sorry Mecha is a Vallejo line.

You can try adding flow improver directly into the bottle if you are having issues. I find you really have to shake it but I've never had problems with it rubbing off.

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Primers are one of those things I've always felt is largely down to personal preference.  I always have some Vallejo on the shelf and quite like the MiG one shot white to run through the airbrush if I need to, but I prefer the adherence I get from one of the GW spray cans.  My own experience has been that they take around 24 hours to cure fully.  From the aspect of contrast, providing the under layer is light, they shouldn't make too much difference.  If they feel rough to the touch you're going to have issues though (this also applies to spray cans).

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The (very) interesting thing is that the recipe given can be used in the whole range of contrast colors. His theme is "pink/purple". But you can do the same in the tan/red them or grey, or blue  or green (not for FEC hum!!! 😜 ) etc....

More of this, it is clear that there are mostly (at least) main steps in his painting procedure. 

First, you can paint the main colors (first coat). You alredy have a table top ready miniture.

Then, you do more contrasts, more coat of paints, shadows, highlights etc... And you're done.

That means that you can be tabletop ready quickly without sacrifying the painting quality.

Edited by GeneralZero
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So I felt like I should share my thoughts as a rattlecan zenithal enthusiast:

So Mechanicus Standard Grey is the darkest color seems to be you can put it over and still get the intended effect. So use that instead of black, swap in Grey Seer as your mid tone and use Wraithbone or Corax White as the final bright (I used Corax White on my test models). To compensate for heavier nature of the other primers I then varnished the models with Munitoroum Varnish.

In short it worked perfectly. I'll likely be a bit more proactive with the prep work following the varnish to get details to pop a bit more (wash and drybrush of Pallud Wych Flesh), but this opens some more options on priming models for those of use using rattlecans.

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     @Charleston (sorry for the slow reply, I’ve been super busy with work so haven’t had the energy to get online) I don’t do anything special; I shake it well and drip it directly into the cup. I use roughly 4 or 5 drops at a time so I have to add more quite often but that’s about all I do. I do have a dedicated (cheap) airbrush specifically for priming and vanishing which has a .05mm nozzle but have used it with my other brush  (.03mm nozzle) as well. Actually, all of the models I’m currently painting were primed with my primary (non-priming) brush because I lent the varnishing brush to my cousin who’s currently painting up some tank and car models with it. 

     Also love/hate that khorgath you’ve painted/painting up there. You’re making me want to get my hands on even more of those paints now. Quick question: what do you mean by drybrushing shades? I’m a bumbling idjit when it comes to painting techniques and haven’t heard of the term (but then again I don’t know the terms for many of the techniques I try to attempt).

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11 hours ago, Lior'Lec said:

     @Charleston (sorry for the slow reply, I’ve been super busy with work so haven’t had the energy to get online) I don’t do anything special; I shake it well and drip it directly into the cup. I use roughly 4 or 5 drops at a time so I have to add more quite often but that’s about all I do. I do have a dedicated (cheap) airbrush specifically for priming and vanishing which has a .05mm nozzle but have used it with my other brush  (.03mm nozzle) as well. Actually, all of the models I’m currently painting were primed with my primary (non-priming) brush because I lent the varnishing brush to my cousin who’s currently painting up some tank and car models with it. 

     Also love/hate that khorgath you’ve painted/painting up there. You’re making me want to get my hands on even more of those paints now. Quick question: what do you mean by drybrushing shades? I’m a bumbling idjit when it comes to painting techniques and haven’t heard of the term (but then again I don’t know the terms for many of the techniques I try to attempt).

Thanks a lot for your response! :) I will give it a try with smaller ammounts and maybe this will help.

Sorry if I confused you with the "Drybrushing Shades" term, is is actually bollocks. I am an non-native speaker and sometime I get things messed up. I´ve ment just drybrushing to lighten the bright areas up and to keep the black primer in each edge and corner as seen in the picture. All by all I also try to keep a downwards brushstroke so the darker areas a in similar places like shadows would be in zenithal lightning (at least in a rough manner).

Edited by Charleston
changed 'someone' to 'sometime' in line 2
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Forgive any amounts of potato this brings, I took quick pictures with my phone while I worked and then cropped them down later.
 
So some background: I wanted to have an easy side project while I work on my #Everchosen entry that I could make large amounts of progress with in a short amount of time, and this turned into me working on a Feral Orks army that will also be playable as a Bonesplitterz army in AoS. The thing is that the Contrast paint definitely has a layer of depth in the color, but I wanted a higher quality result that helps pull the highlight and shadow further than the paint can do on it's own over a flat primer coat. This lead to me treating the paint more like a heavy glaze and doing a bit of prep work on the base coat to get the effect I wanted.
 
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I started with a base coat of Mechanicus Standard Grey out of a rattlecan, followed by a layer of Grey Seer applied from a 45 degree angle to the top of the model and finally a straight down shot of Corax White to hit the highest points.
 
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Here's a bottom shot to try and illustrate the way the paint creates a gradient of shadows to highlights.
 
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The first step washed out the model's texture so I gave the model an all over wash of Nuln Oil, keeping it thin so it wouldn't pool on the high points.
 
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To pick out the high points I did a directional drybrush of Pallid Wych Flesh, only flicking the brush over the model in a downward direction to hit the highest points and leave the recesses darkened so the texture has more contrast.
 
This was followed by giving the model a coat of Munitorium Varnish to smooth the texture of the model and give the Contrast paints a smooth surface to move over.
 
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This was followed by a layer of Ork Flesh, applied starting at the high points and working down to prevent it from pooling at the top of the model. You can see the recess shading is more pronounced, in part due to how the higher points are a much lighter color where the dry-brushing picked the texture out.
 
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A back shot to show how the color gradient from the successive layers of primer create a natural shading effect that simulates shadow being cast by the Ork's upper body onto his legs.
 
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Another low shot to show how the Ork flesh looks over the torso, and how the wash helped give the recesses some extra contrast for the darker flesh color.
 
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A Wurrgog Prophet model done at the same time in the same way. Due to how recessed his body is under his cloak his skin is darker than the Savage Warboss model, but this fits the natural shadow his body would have.
 
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Final example is a Wardokk. His more exposed skin shows off the way the highlights have helped create more texture for his skin by pushing the contrast over the other high points, allowing us to look like we spent more time layering green than we actual did.
 
I hope this helps some people who are trying to get a little bit higher quality result out of their Contrast paints while keeping the whole project from becoming too much of a time sink.

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On 6/24/2019 at 11:37 PM, flemingmma said:

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silver and bronze are old gw paint, as is the base, otherwise contrast paints, it was extremely easy to get a rich yellow and a nice cloth

Oh my gosh that is beautiful - looks like it has hoped straight out of a John Blanche painting! That is truly fantastic well done.

Edited by Greyshadow
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2 hours ago, Greyshadow said:

 

Oh my gosh that is beautiful - looks like it has hoped straight out of a John Blanche painting! That is truly fantastic well done.

When i bought my contrast paints i bought browns blacks and yellows to do some blanchitsu stuff :) thanks for the kind words friendo

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10 hours ago, Mutton said:

Do we know what the contrast paints look like over a base that isn't white or grey? Does it simply not show up at all? Does it tint the base color?

Don't know if it's already been posted but I saw these on fb before and they've been my go to reference. 

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Super quick tip about an interesting use for contrast paints. The high pigmentation lets the paints work incredibly well as tints for already painted models. I recently started disliking the color I had on my troggoths it was too bright and not swampy enough but instead of repainting completely I thinned Snakebite leather contrast in a 1/12 ratio with contrast thinner and slapped it very thinly on my troggoths without letting it pool. It gave them a very nice brownish yellow tint over the super bright ogryn camo I had on them. 

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2 hours ago, lare2 said:

Don't know if it's already been posted but I saw these on fb before and they've been my go to reference. 

I think I posted one of the earlier versions on an earlier page of this topic.  They've been done by the manager of Warhammer Chelmsford.

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I picked up a few pots of Contrast paint last week and then stopped by the GW store and grabbed some more this week. Observations that I haven't read elsewhere.

Not all of the Contrast paints go on the same. By that I mean they have a wider range of tone (i.e. how bright vs. dark the color is). The Ultramarine Blue I used almost had no "tonal range", it almost went on as a flat blue (it did pool a bit in the crevases, but not anywhere near what I expected given other pictures I'd seen online). This was after I spent about 5 minutes shaking it. While the Basilica (sp?) Grey did pretty much exactly as reported, it gave a good "tonal breadth" with the highpoints being a very light grey and the low points being almost black.

So when I went the second time and looked at the display/paint rack in store (I can't find a picture of the display GW sent to stores online), I noticed that the color swatch for the Contrast Paint in the display (under the color name), was a gradient. That gradient was very close (if not exactly the same) as what I saw when I used the paints. So the gradient for Ultramarine Blue wasn't very much, while Basilica Grey was more severe.

This might be obvious to most, but if you're trying to pick out colors in store and want a rough idea of what the high-points vs. low-points will look like with Contrast, that gradient gives a good idea (and they aren't all the same).

 

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8 hours ago, Eevika said:

Super quick tip about an interesting use for contrast paints. The high pigmentation lets the paints work incredibly well as tints for already painted models. I recently started disliking the color I had on my troggoths it was too bright and not swampy enough but instead of repainting completely I thinned Snakebite leather contrast in a 1/12 ratio with contrast thinner and slapped it very thinly on my troggoths without letting it pool. It gave them a very nice brownish yellow tint over the super bright ogryn camo I had on them. 

Just to follow up/echo -

I recently painted a beastie with magos purple. It turned out I didn't like the color as his flesh. I then went over the whole thing with Plaguebearer Flesh. It turned into a good tanned caucasian fleshtone. One color straight over the other created a new color.

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