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Hi all, I’m seeing lots of videos of people making their own version of Citadels Contrast Paints. My question is for people who make their own.

I see it’s basically a Matte Medium and Flow Improver but what would I use for the colour?

Can I use Citadel paints or do I need acrylic ink?

Thanks

To the best of my observational skill, when I use Contrast paint there appears to be two (chemically) different paints in the single bottle.

It seems to me like an alloy. Two parts that form a whole. They do not combine, but do mix within each other. Except these materials separate, as they dry.

I suspect that one part of the mixture sinks to the bottom and quickly binds to the primer (the lighter colour). The second part then “slides off” the bottom colour and more slowly congeals in the recesses.

It makes sense to me, as once Contrast starts to “gel”, if you keep working it you destroy the effect. It would also seem reasonable that you need “one thick coat” so there is enough of both mixtures... and they separate if you leave them long enough. They need semi-frequent shaking or stirring if you use one pot for a length of time. The yellow/brown colour is particularly noticeable.

So people are not making a directly comparable product to contrast. They’re probably making very dense washes, that can achieve a similar but not identical effect.

I'm not sure what greatbigtree is witnessing, but that's not what I see when working with contrasts. My observation is that they are thick, highly pigmented, semi-translucent paints that have something in them that prevents the pigment from moving as it dries. The effect is a smooth transition from highs with low pigment to recesses with heavy pigment.


After some research and experimentation, I've developed a recipe for homebrew contrast paint that very closely mimics the real deal.

I use a mix of Matte Medium, Matte Gel, and Flow Improver as a base, colored with Acrylic Ink. I wouldn't recommend using paints for color, they don't have the pigment density required.


My personal mix for the contrast base is :

4 parts Matte Medium
2 parts Matte Gel
1 part Flow Improver

Add ink at 1:1 ratio to base.


When making a batch, I use a reference 20ml dropper bottle marked at 250 drops of water and 500. I fill another bottle to the 250 drop level with my contrast base. It then takes about 200 drops of ink from a dropper bottle to reach the 500 drop level (ink makes larger drops than water). Using this method makes it easy to record custom pigment ratios to recreate batches in the future.

 Arstahd wrote:
I'm not sure what greatbigtree is witnessing, but that's not what I see when working with contrasts. My observation is that they are thick, highly pigmented, semi-translucent paints that have something in them that prevents the pigment from moving as it dries. The effect is a smooth transition from highs with low pigment to recesses with heavy pigment.


After some research and experimentation, I've developed a recipe for homebrew contrast paint that very closely mimics the real deal.

I use a mix of Matte Medium, Matte Gel, and Flow Improver as a base, colored with Acrylic Ink. I wouldn't recommend using paints for color, they don't have the pigment density required.


My personal mix for the contrast base is :

4 parts Matte Medium
2 parts Matte Gel
1 part Flow Improver

Add ink at 1:1 ratio to base.


When making a batch, I use a reference 20ml dropper bottle marked at 250 drops of water and 500. I fill another bottle to the 250 drop level with my contrast base. It then takes about 200 drops of ink from a dropper bottle to reach the 500 drop level (ink makes larger drops than water). Using this method makes it easy to record custom pigment ratios to recreate batches in the future.

are you still using this as your contrast base?

Ive been messing around with different versions for a while and I havent quite dialed it in yet. I don't have any Gel Medium, so I've just been using 6 parts matte medium. What do you think the gel adds and how do you measure it given the paste like nature of it? Are you using liquitex, W&N or something else?

Easiest, fastest and cheapest way to do all this is to purchase our Alpha line of paints and our Water+, 1 drop of alpha to one drop of water+ instantly makes a contrast style paint.

Also as well, you can turn the Alpha paints into Glazes and washes by adding further drops of water+ as well as use them neat from the bottle and get a superb finish and coverage thanks to its ultra thin solution.

Effectively, you get more bang for your buck than a one trick pony!