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

[Okonomiyakimarine]

so, organic stuff with small-ish details will basically paint itself! I only wonder how well contrast paints can be blended? Like for having different colors on the belly, flanks and back of some creature... I assume one would have to wet blend in one coat, if you blend it by layering you run into the problem of having too many pigments in the area where the blend is. So let's say you have a horror (like mit avatar), a squig or a lizard man: Grey primer, white primer highlight, black wash and one coat wet blend(s) on top. Then, if you want to take the time, paint in a few details in the old way.

what I have a bit of an issue with, is that highlights – on most miniatures painted with contrast colors in the way as intended – will one have 'white' highlights. It is something you see in all GW videos and photos: highlights tend to me lighten up colors of the base coat and only very seldom lighter and more saturated and also warmer tone of the base coat. Of course everyone has the freedom to do that manually.

i am looking forward to getting some pots and try it, even though i usually paint with vallejo.

 

 

4 hours ago, SolomonHelsing said:

Well seeing how these g over leadbelcher and retributory armor I'm very glad my Path To Glory Slaves can wait a bit to get done as the purple should look great over leadbelcher, Got a few spare warriors to try the different shades with first before my initial warband. 

the metallic red looks awful. I hope i can make it work in another way though. How am i supposed to ever finish my 30k thousand sons without contrast points, now that i know that they exist...

Edited May 24, 2019 by Okonomiyakimarine

[SwampHeart]

4 minutes ago, Okonomiyakimarine said:

the metallic red looks awful. I hope i can make it work in another way though. How am i supposed to ever finish my 30k thousand sons without contrast points, now that i know that they exist...

I'm sure with a little experimentation and time you could get that red to pop just like 30k TSons. 

[ChaosLord]

I want to do something similar to the Stormcast linked above with trans blue over metallic. I want a more neutral blue tone though. There are tutorials on youtube of people doing this with Space Marines, so it's nothing new. Vallejo and Badger make glazes that are pretty well regarded.

This is a good little tutorial. Makes me want an airbrush...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsygvPilyvE

[Dragonsergeant]

These are going to save me lots of time and procrastination.

[Sleboda]

6 hours ago, Okonomiyakimarine said:

How am i supposed to ever finish my (insert long delayed hobby project) without contrast points, now that i know that they exist...

Amen.

[pseudonyme]

😂

[Lowki]

Must say, although most of the examples I have seen from people who tried them out looked very promissing, I am a bit disapointed by the examples they put on the warhammer community site. Some of the paintjob seem to be a bit, well I don't know, sloppy,?! Or is it just me?

Also, some of them seem to look a bit to glossy to my liking. Speaking of which...any sign of that varnish they announced yet?

 

Edited May 24, 2019 by Lowki

[Nin Win]

So on their citadelcolour.com website they have a video on going from "battle ready" to "parade ready" with a drybrush followed by an edge highlight.  Might I suggest an alternate/supplemental process.

Do all the battle ready stuff with contrast and then take a shade (nuln oil or agrax are likely your best bets) and recess shade wherever one colour meets another.  You might find it useful to keep a small drybrush nearby and feather away any mistakes as soon as you make them.  Then do the drybrush and edge highlight if you still want to.

I'm also thinking block painting with contrast and then varnish and then an oil or enamel wash and cleanup like scale modellers do might be pretty amazing if you're willing to put up with the drying time.

Edited May 24, 2019 by Nin Win

[RuneBrush]

For those asking about Zenithal undercoats, Richard Gray had a play with them and results are super solid (yes this has also received highlights).  I'll be honest and say that seeing this is making them even more promising for painting armies to a very good standard.

 

[Greyshadow]

Wow. That’s quite amazing.

[Skabnoze]

It is impressive that Richard Gray says he accomplished that in about 30minutes.  I expect he is leagues faster than I am, but that is still superb quality in a stupidly short amount of time.  If I could get that level at  4-5 times the time it took him then I would count that as a great success.

I like to think that I paint pretty well already, but I have been starting to look into a number of time-saving techniques and these look like they will fall squarely into that area.  The more time I can save while painting and hobbying the better.

Edited May 25, 2019 by Skabnoze

[Inquisitorsz]

Well he's also the kind of painter that takes weeks to paint a single showcase model. So I dunno if he's the fastest guy around anyway.
I think he said his Mortarion took the better part of 3 months. 

[Ungface]

Kinda misleading to say that red marine is a contrast painted mini, it recieved 3 different colors of red highlights after the contrast.

[Kyriakin]

2 hours ago, Ungface said:

Kinda misleading to say that red marine is a contrast painted mini, it recieved 3 different colors of red highlights after the contrast.

I think it's the time (i.e. 30 minutes without drying time) to quality ratio that is the key point for this figure.

I think it's more a call-out for higher-level painters about how - when combined with more advanced techniques - these paints can be used as a shortcut for high-level results, rather than just as a way for lower-level painters to achieve tabletop quality quickly/easily.

[Overread]

Yep, esp since it also helps pick out the raised areas so might even make it quicker for identifying key areas to do those extra highlight passes on, not just in providing a base to work from. 

[Nin Win]

From Pete the Wargamer:

Contrast over zenithal priming of wraithbone over black.  You can really see the grey and black through the contrast paint.  I like it, but some will find it too dirty looking.  I bet you could zenithal prime white/wraithbone/greyseer over a dark brick red or a dark purple instead of black and then contrast the red over that.

Full video:

 

Edited May 28, 2019 by Nin Win

[LoopyZebra]

Over the past week, I had an experience with a very different but in some ways similar paint to Contrast.

I've been repainting and remodeling one of the rooms in my house. The home improvement store had a new line of latex paints, called Behr Marquee, which claimed to only need 1 coat (sound familiar?). I was skeptical but picked it up for some of the colors, and got the regular paint for other colors which were a closer match to the existing paint coat. The Marquee worked beautifully, only needing 1 coat with some touchup, while the other regular paints required multiple coats, despite being a very close match to existing paint color. 

Obviously, Contrast paints are very different in application and chemical makeup than the Marquee house paints, but I felt that there was a lot of comparison. The Marquee still required good application - sloppy brushwork still would have produced bad results - and was not a magic cure-all for all of the different ways house painting could go wrong. But it saved me a ton of time, which I was able to put into other parts of the project. 

I was already excited for Contrast, but I am even more excited based on my experience with the Marquee paints, as I can see how being able to produce results faster allows for more time to be put into other finer details. I do not think I will leave many of my models at the one-coat "battle-ready" standard, but Contrast should help me get to highlighting and other detail work sooner. 

[Soulsmith]

I think that's the key take away from this, beginners can go to having decent battle ready forces with a more forgiving painting process (nothing like making a mistake brush stroke on a finished multi layer area...), And those of us with more experience can use these to jump to more complex parts of the process or experiment with their properties. 

Pete the Wargamer has done one on their use over metallics, snakebite leather over leadbelcher looks like an excellent pain free way to get a quick bronze.

[Minis by Night]

There's a few videos on YouTube about using Contrast paints with an airbrush, and, surprise surprise, it looks like an ink, i.e. it tints with a lot of saturation.

Some people look disappointed that it doesn't do the shading/highlight, but I think that was to be expected. What you could do is spray the contrast paint with an airbrush to give you a nice even coat on flat surfaces, and then add a more controlled layer of the same contrast paint in the recesses to get the a shading with a color that matches perfectly and probably won't stain anything. A bit more work, but I expect great results.

Also contrast paints are fairly liquid so you probably don't even need to dilute it in the airbrush, so you can use the same paint with both the brush and the airbrush without having to rely on either heavy dilution or the Air range (which is generally a bit lighter than their Base/Layer counterparts).

[RuneBrush]

Have just seen the rumour/confirmation via the ProPainted Twitter feed (aka @Cowboy Boots Matt) that pots of contrast paint are going to be £4.75 per pot.  So about £1 more than I was anticipating.  Doesn't look like there's a bundle set either.  For me this probably puts them into the "buy the colours I want" rather than buying all of them (which I was contemplating).

[Minis by Night]

Ouch. The paints look cool, but not 10 canadian dollaridoos per pot cool. Particularly when you're supposed to use a lot of it every time. I understand that for some people it does the job of 3 differents products (a base, a wash and an highlight) but... ouch.

[Sleboda]

Yeah, at that price I've gone from a guaranteed 'buy the range at launch' stance to 'probably won't get any' stance, unfortunately. 

I was really very excited to get them, but now they are just too pricey for what they are. Remember, to use them as designed you are going to burn through pots very quickly. So, not only do you get paint jobs that are lower quality than if you used standard paints and a traditional set of techniques, but you pay much more per model in paint cost.

Pass.

Edited May 30, 2019 by Sleboda

[SwampHeart]

1 hour ago, Sleboda said:

Remember, to use them as designed you are going to burn through pots very quickly.

I've read from folks like Vince and Mengle that this isn't really the case, you're not actually supposed to just glob the stuff on. 

[Sleboda]

14 minutes ago, SwampHeart said:

I've read from folks like Vince and Mengle that this isn't really the case, you're not actually supposed to just glob the stuff on. 

That would be counter to everything GW has said. Not saying those guys are wrong, but the "official" word has been one thick coat.

[gjnoronh]

Joe for a painter like you I think you can get some really cool fast effects  using them like a wash in the amounts you would use a wash.  Some of the videos linked are basically doing that they don't seem to be gobbing it on.

I don't know how far this stuff is going to stretch per pot - I've watched videos of people putting it on and it doesn't actually seem excessive (it's not like the old school dip method!)  but we're going to have to try it out.

Will you need 2-3 pots to paint an entire 2K AoS army even if so that's probably worth it for the time savings - but that's me.  

For say a Blood Bowl team (I'm planning on doing  the halflings in metallic Contrast green to match the dice) I would guess a pot would be way more then enough.  And I will try out the Contrast White on them as it's such a pain in the ass to paint normally. 

https://www.games-workshop.com/en-US/Blood-Bowl-Halfling-Team-Dice-2019