Been away for a couple of weeks and all hell breaks loose in the painting world as Citadel Contrast Paints hit the shelves. Unfortunately I was out of the country when they came out so I'm a little late to the party, but I've had them on my painting table all day and can't wait to share the results.
I decided to prime up some spare dwarf models from my slapdash dwarf project to see how the Contrast Paints compare to my usual process. Here's how they came out:
They were grey this morning!
I used Snakebite Leather, Wyldwood, Warp Green, Fyreslayer Flesh, Skeleton Horde, mostly neat without medium due to my laziness and to see what I could do with undiluted paints. (Primer was VMC Black with a generous zenithal highlight of VMC Desert Tan.)
For speed I'm really pleased with how they turned out. The Snakebite Leather came out a little patchy - I was trying to add texture by blotching it on but next time I'll just keep it smooth. The Wyldwood is a little dark - that paint needs to be thinned with medium! (Actually I have a better recipe for dark leather with contrast but it didn't really keep with the slapdash colours.) I'm really impressed with the flesh and the green is great, but I would have liked to use a darker contrast green.
I've obviously painted the metallics with ordinary paints. I've also used washes here and there to darken areas I thought needed it and to give the beards slightly different tones (although it's only obvious on the champion). The flames and highlights on the candles are also ordinary paints and I think they work well with the contrasts.
When painting the skin and green, I also mixed a little VMC Ivory into the wet contrast paint to build some highlights before going over again with more contrast paint (thinned with medium for the flesh). I'm really pleased with this effect as it means I can get even brighter highlights than the undercoat beautifully blended with the contrast, and also work out any blotches that might be forming in the contrast paints. I look forward to refining this with future models.
In addition to painting some dwarves, I wanted to try out Skeleton Horde for painting, well, a horde of skeletons. If you recall my bone recipe is painfully slow and, while I have painted all the skeletons I need for my 4500pt army, I still have a bunch more in need of some love and I want to try a new - and faster - recipe with them. I decided to prime a tester with some VMC Desert Tan to see how using contrast might look. A little drybrushing after that and here's the result:
I was skeptical about Skeleton Horde having seen some less than impressive results online and in stores, but was delighted with how this guy came out. The bone is just one coat of Skeleton Horde over primer, and a light drybrush of VMC Dark Sand mixed with Ivory.
As you can see, the model is actually supposed to be a zombie (of sorts), being made from a spare, old-style skeleton body and GW zombie bits. The rest of the model (apart from the metal) is also painted with contrast paints, drybrushed the same as the bone, and for just a few minutes work it looks pretty damn good. (The eyes and teeth were picked out with Ivory and washed with Sepia.)
Overall I am thrilled with how these new paints work and I am very happy with my investment. The best part is, there'll be more colours coming - I'm waiting for the rest of my order to come through when the "big sellers" come back in stock. Until then I'll just be toying around with what I have, and I'm sure I'll have more to show you soon.
Until next time, happy painting!
