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Hey all!

I've been in this hobby for 10 years now. I was in middle school when I started with assault on black reach, and have never stopped.

I've built and painted over a dozen armies, and hundreds of single models.

The one thing nobody ever told me? My painting was mediocre. See I'm colorblind, and I have a very hard time differentiating between colors on the red spectrum.
I've worked very hard to label my paints properly in an attempt to improve my painting, but it is frustrating work.

These new paints are a chance for me to make something I'm proud of without worrying about somebody thinking my work is poor or mediocre.

Anybody else have this experience or outlook?

If it works, cool, but I'm not following how this is any different from normal paint in that regard. As far as I'm concerned if it means a 10-15% rise in the amount of actual painted models put on the table top...I support it.

I don't use GW paint products and I won't be starting now, but it's good for the hobby because unpainted models fething suck.

The colors are designed to be layered on top of similar, slightly darker colors, and that is very easy for my eyes to pick up on.

Traditionally mixing and high lighting has been VERY hard for me because of my color blindness

Contrast paints are just inks. Funny thing is GW used to sell inks, about 15 years ago, and dropped them in favour of washes.

They aren’t a silver bullet to half decent painted armies though, it actually takes a bit of practice to get results that aren’t messy, and although GW are advertising for their use for detailing when you start detailing with inks it’s actually a slower and more fiddly process then old school layering.

I think for established painters they will have some targeted uses. I really like what I’m seeing for faces, for example. I think they’ll be good for things glazes are already good at, but I’m curious if they’re better enough to replace washing and glazing for quick batch painting.

I've dabbled into painting with washes with my Ork army and the results have been more than adequate for tabletop. My only grievance has been that washes and glazes are not very vibrant nor opaque so they require several coats with their associated drying time. If contrast paints achieve the same effect (and more vibrance as far as I've seen) with a single coat I'm more than psyched about them.

I consider myself a decent painter and I love to paint certain individual models to a good standard, but I do not have the patience nor time at this life stage to do that for each and every model so every tool to make painting an ARMY easier is a godsend.

Simply put, saying that no experienced painter needs or wants Contrast Paints couldn't be farther from the truth as far as I'm concerned. You don't have to love them, but they seem to be a good tool to have in your toolbox.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Contrast paints are just inks. Funny thing is GW used to sell inks, about 15 years ago, and dropped them in favour of washes.

They aren’t a silver bullet to half decent painted armies though, it actually takes a bit of practice to get results that aren’t messy, and although GW are advertising for their use for detailing when you start detailing with inks it’s actually a slower and more fiddly process then old school layering.

They're not just inks. Inks, whether those be the old GW ones, or something I buy from the art shop, are much less viscous. in fact, they're less viscous than the Shade paints. The Contrast paints aren't much less viscous than the Layer paints.

Also, unlike proper artists' inks, I doubt the Contrast paints will seep up through layers of paint applied over them and discolour what you're painting.

I'd love them too if they were available. Seeing people using them long before I can makes me extra impatient.

It will be interesting to see how they do.
A strong competitor already on the market for a while is high pigment acrylic "inks" which I suspect the contrast paints are.
I may compare them against my Liquitex ones and see how they do.

Ah, looked at a video of their use, pretty sure it would be ink, matt-medium, tiny bit of flow-aid and slo-dry.
Best I can tell is make sure you do not get a huge build-up anywhere, a "run" shows up quite strongly.
It really is a much stronger version of "shade", acts suspiciously like the "dip" out there.
The high transparency can create some interesting blending effects a little bit like airbrush.
Looks like you definitely want everything to fully dry before you add another layer or a neighboring coat.

I tend to be a black prime guy.
I could see putting on a very light shade of your base colour and then "smearing" this stuff on and it would look good.
The end results look little different to what inks did in the past, though the medium viscosity looks quite different.

 Redbad wrote:
The colors are designed to be layered on top of similar, slightly darker colors, and that is very easy for my eyes to pick up on.

Traditionally mixing and high lighting has been VERY hard for me because of my color blindness

I thought they were designed to go over a light colored white or off-white base.

In theory they can be applied over any base colour, but yes the only way you're getting a one stop finish for a particularly colour would be over a lighter undercoat. They will not show heavily over a dark primed model. If, however, you want some very dark colours, a darker undercoat would be suitable.

 AndrewGPaul wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Contrast paints are just inks. Funny thing is GW used to sell inks, about 15 years ago, and dropped them in favour of washes.

They aren’t a silver bullet to half decent painted armies though, it actually takes a bit of practice to get results that aren’t messy, and although GW are advertising for their use for detailing when you start detailing with inks it’s actually a slower and more fiddly process then old school layering.

They're not just inks. Inks, whether those be the old GW ones, or something I buy from the art shop, are much less viscous. in fact, they're less viscous than the Shade paints. The Contrast paints aren't much less viscous than the Layer paints.

Also, unlike proper artists' inks, I doubt the Contrast paints will seep up through layers of paint applied over them and discolour what you're painting.

They are no silver bullet that’s for sure but they clearly aren’t just a rehashed product either. In gw own video on contrast paint they say the range of contrast paints use a mix of pigments some like inks some not and the challenge is getting so many colours to perform the same way. Having been painting for decades as both an artist and a miniature painter and having used these paints they aren’t the same as there old inks, just because something has similar properties doesn’t make it the same, i even have some of the old gw inks around, I stopped using them because of how poorly colour fast and water retardant they were, I look forward to adding a few contrast paints to my kit.

Spray metallic, grey contrast (possibly thinned with the medium), drybrush necron compound, nuln oil recess shade (if it's even required) = most of iron warriors or silver skulls done in a very rapid fashion. There will be certain colour schemes that the paints will work amazingly on.

For cloaks and cloth, a contrast paint over white/wraithbone and then a glaze of the highlight colour will look awesome.

 Redbad wrote:

1: See I'm colorblind, and I have a very hard time differentiating between colors on the red spectrum.
2: I've worked very hard to label my paints properly in an attempt to improve my painting, but it is frustrating work.
3: These new paints are a chance for me to make something I'm proud of without worrying about somebody thinking my work is poor or mediocre.

I don't want to micturate on your chips but I can't really see Contrast Paints helping too much with your issues.

1: GW already has a very easy to use, straight from pot colour system with plenty of examples on base, wash, layer, wash, highlight 1, Glaze, highlight 2. or whatever order is prescribed.

2: They are already very clearly labeled.

3: You mention nothing in your post about speed and I think that the above steps can be abbreviated with Contrast Paints with mediocre results.

I'd love to be proven wrong and will try to paint an army with them but I can't really see CPs being the advertised wonderpaints.

Tone can be difficult to pick up. I was using mephiston red as a highlight to khorne red and it took me a while to realise it was off. Redbad, if you're not already, try following the colour recipes in the GW Paint app.

I could see Contrast helping here though - if all Redbad is aiming for is a battle-ready (TM) finish with no glaring colour clashes, it sounds like he should be able to achieve an acceptable finish with them.

 frozenwastes wrote:
Spray metallic, grey contrast (possibly thinned with the medium), drybrush necron compound, nuln oil recess shade (if it's even required) = most of iron warriors or silver skulls done in a very rapid fashion. There will be certain colour schemes that the paints will work amazingly on.

For cloaks and cloth, a contrast paint over white/wraithbone and then a glaze of the highlight colour will look awesome.

Actually, Black Templar over the cool grey primer followed with a silver drybrush will probably work better for a dull metal. Using a metallic base is likely to give you a "shiny" effect.

You're probably right. Save the base metal spray for the silver skulls.