Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 Shadenuat wrote:

How many models from your 200 will one bottle last though, and what would the price be?
{snip}
Painting hundreds of models with a brush and using GW white primer, oh, sorry, special Citadel Contrast Spray Primer TM and washes I mean Citadel Contrast Paints TM would probably be the most expensive and time consuming way of doing it.

Back when the Devlan Mud/Badaab Black series of washes was first being previewed, GW's promotion was to prime a bunch of eldar weapon sprues white and slather each weapon with a different color using a tank brush. I saw the bone effect achieved with Gryphonne Sepia and was immediately glad I never primed my Deathwing black. I used pretty much the entire promo pot of Sepia painting these 25 terminators with the "1 heavy coat" technique GW is advocating for the Contrast paints, did the main bone color on all 25 in a few hours and did all the accent colors/detailing the following day, it took me longer to do the Land Raider and 3 Dreadnoughts than it did the infantry. So a 12ML paint pot did 25 complete large infantry head-to-toe in a single color heavy coat. I'd assume a double-sized pot would do twice as many models, so you could reasonably expect a single pot of Contrast to do at least 50 or so infantry. If you needed multiple colors becuase they have pants or shirts or flak armor etc then each pot will go that much further. If they retail for $9 a pot and you get 50 figures painted in a couple afternoons worth of work, I'd say that's money well spent.

The people saying these aren't revolutionary and that the old washes did the same thing are only partially correct. While the old washes (and current AP washes) did do the exact same thing, they only did it for a few very specific pastel effects. The Gryphonne Sepia/AP Light Tone over white is still my favorite way to do bone, so I'm looking forward to trying these out and maybe adding a few here and there where it's appropriate. I've never liked the blue-over-white or the green-over-white washed out pastel colors that most of the wash effects gave you, so having these much darker browns and blues and true reds and such have me tentatively excited.

Most of my stuff nowadays is aribrushed and then washed with oil paints or enamel washes, but there's some armies like my Tohaa that don't have a single major color that can be airbrushed. I'm looking forward to trying these Contrast paints on the 60 Tohaa I have primed pale green

 Shadenuat wrote:

Danny76 wrote:
For every pot of this used. Let say you only use half a base colour. So you have to buy two contrast pots.
But by the contrast descriptor, you know don’t need to buy a shade or layer in question for that colour.

Only if you follow Citadel paint guides. Acrylic Medium, Black and White/some other colors (depends on the color) can be your "Shades" and "Layers".

If you know how to do that. If you have the time to do that once you do know. If you can be bothered doing it even if you do have the knowledge and the time.

I will happily pay GW a bit extra over a bottle of something else if it means I don't have to fanny about with mixes and five different types of medium and artist inks each time I start a new project. These do all the hard work for you and you can mix them together like normal paints, so with the selection of colours they have available I should be able to pretty easily make any colour with any level of saturation I like.

 Kalamadea wrote:
I saw the bone effect achieved with Gryphonne Sepia and was immediately glad I never primed my Deathwing black

Picture is pretty small.

But yeah, bone is something you can do with white primer and a Wash. I personally find layering bone color over brown and highlighting it much cleaner and attractive.
As for all the ML counting (I don't think 25 models is that much), IDK, medium + paint is still less expensive than Washes I think, since paint is paint and you can use it however you want, and Medium is cheap and having it allows you to get infinite amount of glazes by mixing it with any paints you want.

 Yodhrin wrote:
If you know how to do that. If you have the time to do that once you do know. If you can be bothered doing it even if you do have the knowledge and the time.

I know people are afraid of mixing paint, but it's pretty much the basics of why painting is fun and its best quality.

I am not sure why would you need 5 types of medium, provided you stick to one brand of paint. But whatever, this is closer to talking about how far are people ready to go with painting than discussing if actual Contrast is worth it or not.

 Shadenuat wrote:


I am not sure why would you need 5 types of medium, provided you stick to one brand of paint. But whatever, this is closer to talking about how far are people ready to go with painting than discussing if actual Contrast is worth it or not.

Realising that I could buy empty pots on ebay was a nice discovery for me. For anyone that's at the stage of writing down ratios or having to remember what amount of each colour to mix for every painting session yeah it can be a huge headache, but once you start mixing full pots together the reward far outweighs the effort required (can't say I've ever added pure black or white to a colour though. Maybe a touch of black to a dark blue wash, but even for extreme hilights I much prefer adding something like very light grey as opposed to pure white).

JWBS wrote:
can't say I've ever added pure black or white to a colour though. Maybe a touch of black to a dark blue wash, but even for extreme hilights I much prefer adding something like very light grey as opposed to pure white).

Depends on color you're working with. White to red is whatever, but white to blue can work. I even saw very well painted miniatures with edges highlighted by layering actual white paint.

As for pots, I think you can buy them also at craft stores, I've seen some.

But I digress.

 Yodhrin wrote:

 Shadenuat wrote:

Danny76 wrote:
For every pot of this used. Let say you only use half a base colour. So you have to buy two contrast pots.
But by the contrast descriptor, you know don’t need to buy a shade or layer in question for that colour.

Only if you follow Citadel paint guides. Acrylic Medium, Black and White/some other colors (depends on the color) can be your "Shades" and "Layers".

If you know how to do that. If you have the time to do that once you do know. If you can be bothered doing it even if you do have the knowledge and the time.

I will happily pay GW a bit extra over a bottle of something else if it means I don't have to fanny about with mixes and five different types of medium and artist inks each time I start a new project. These do all the hard work for you and you can mix them together like normal paints, so with the selection of colours they have available I should be able to pretty easily make any colour with any level of saturation I like.

That’s also arguably more purchases.
So take out ‘shade’ and ‘layer’ for other pots of something. That’s still a purchase of more pots.
Vs the Contrast number.

I think people that want to just need to try them.
Those that like them, switch over to them, or start out with them if new.
Much like at various points people made the switch to whatever brand they now back over GW ones.
I like the method I do. Will try this. It may get added to my repertoire, won’t replace everything, but a welcome extra perhaps.

More pots that do more things. You can always use some Black and White. Like, hell, you might need Black just to cover up some mess on model's base.

I wonder if some of the darker colours or desaturated colours could work directly over the top of the grey plastic? For that extra lazy approach

My guess from experience when working with inks is that you might have some trouble with adhesion.

 Yodhrin wrote:
Or for noise reasons, I'm not sure my neighbours would appreciate hearing a compressor running at 2am("But but but" I can already here someone rushing to post - there are quiet ones, yes, and ones with big tanks, and they're both a lot more expensive than the basic cheapie import jobs that most people will buy and which airbrush advocates can use to say "it's cheaper than buying citadel"). Or for simple preference reasons. Something airbrush evangelists tend to forget is that's it's actually perfectly OK to simply prefer painting with a normal brush.

I don't mean to evangelize, but I often see hobbyists be oddly anti-airbrush for spurious reasons. Space? My cheapo Harbor Freight airbrush and compressor fit in a shoebox with room to spare. Noise? It's quieter than my microwave; I have no idea where people get the idea that airbrush compressors are loud. Ventilation? Cheap spray booth, doubles as a paint station for normal brushwork. All of it together cost the equivalent of about a hundred quid, which has paid for itself by eliminating the need for spray primer or varnish.

Personal preference is one thing, but for certain tasks (like mass undercoats, or zenithal highlighting) it really is the best tool for the job.

catbarf wrote:


I don't mean to evangelize, but I often see hobbyists be oddly anti-airbrush for spurious reasons. Space? My cheapo Harbor Freight airbrush and compressor fit in a shoebox with room to spare. Noise? It's quieter than my microwave; I have no idea where people get the idea that airbrush compressors are loud. Ventilation? Cheap spray booth, doubles as a paint station for normal brushwork. All of it together cost the equivalent of about a hundred quid, which has paid for itself by eliminating the need for spray primer or varnish.

Related story - the first time I brought home a f2.8 70-200mm lens the front of the lens was MASSIVE. It was insanely huge and I was scared as anything taking it out hte first few times. It was huge, impossible to control, I was likely to smash it into a million things.

Today I consider it quite a modest lens, big but not huge. In fact I'm really used to the size and if I go a while without using it sometimes I'm amazed how much "smaller" it appears when I get it out of the bag.



Perceptions on what we are not used to are different from what we are used too even if the item itself has not changed one bit. A new air compressor is going to be loud; an airbrush require huge amounts of space etc... in those early days when a person is unsure of the new setup.

catbarf wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
Or for noise reasons, I'm not sure my neighbours would appreciate hearing a compressor running at 2am("But but but" I can already here someone rushing to post - there are quiet ones, yes, and ones with big tanks, and they're both a lot more expensive than the basic cheapie import jobs that most people will buy and which airbrush advocates can use to say "it's cheaper than buying citadel"). Or for simple preference reasons. Something airbrush evangelists tend to forget is that's it's actually perfectly OK to simply prefer painting with a normal brush.

I don't mean to evangelize, but I often see hobbyists be oddly anti-airbrush for spurious reasons. Space? My cheapo Harbor Freight airbrush and compressor fit in a shoebox with room to spare. Noise? It's quieter than my microwave; I have no idea where people get the idea that airbrush compressors are loud. Ventilation? Cheap spray booth, doubles as a paint station for normal brushwork. All of it together cost the equivalent of about a hundred quid, which has paid for itself by eliminating the need for spray primer or varnish.

Personal preference is one thing, but for certain tasks (like mass undercoats, or zenithal highlighting) it really is the best tool for the job.

Best tool for the job n your opinion. Spray cans work perfectly fine for those jobs in my experience, and the long-term additional expense is, like these new paints, a price a lot of folk are willing to pay for convenience - rattlecans don't need to be cleaned or otherwise cared for beyond a quick inverted blast to clear the nozzle when done, they don't require equipment to use at all, nor do they require any appreciable degree of skill to use, or need you to fanny about thinning and mixing stuff.

You're very much operating from a place of "these things are not problems for me, so they are not problems at all", a common attitude among airbrush evangelists.

Surely wargames fans pick the stranger subjects to be divisive about.

It's not an opinion when most comission work and speed painting is done with a help of that exact tool.

Also, rattle cans, especially cheap ones, are all kinds of not fine in comparison, starting with what you breathe in and level of quality and control, and the fact that, well, they don't come in all the colors you want.

 Shadenuat wrote:

 Theophony wrote:
The speed and. The videos of a plaguebearer being painted to a great tabletop (in my opinion) level

It is not a great tabletop level.

No, it's a fantastic tabletop level.

A 'great' tabletop level is fully painted in basic colours. Any sort of shading and highlighting is an extra.




This is one of the downsides of the internet giving people such free and easy access to pictures of superbly painted mniatures - it skews our opinion of what a bog standard paintjob should be expected to look like. There is no shame in having an army that's just block painted in basic colours. The Contrast range lets you do that with shading and highlighting. The end result is no more messy than many of the 'traditional' paintjobs I've seen out there in the real world, and a darn sight better than many.

YMMV, obviously.

 Yodhrin wrote:

catbarf wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
Or for noise reasons, I'm not sure my neighbours would appreciate hearing a compressor running at 2am("But but but" I can already here someone rushing to post - there are quiet ones, yes, and ones with big tanks, and they're both a lot more expensive than the basic cheapie import jobs that most people will buy and which airbrush advocates can use to say "it's cheaper than buying citadel"). Or for simple preference reasons. Something airbrush evangelists tend to forget is that's it's actually perfectly OK to simply prefer painting with a normal brush.

I don't mean to evangelize, but I often see hobbyists be oddly anti-airbrush for spurious reasons. Space? My cheapo Harbor Freight airbrush and compressor fit in a shoebox with room to spare. Noise? It's quieter than my microwave; I have no idea where people get the idea that airbrush compressors are loud. Ventilation? Cheap spray booth, doubles as a paint station for normal brushwork. All of it together cost the equivalent of about a hundred quid, which has paid for itself by eliminating the need for spray primer or varnish.

Personal preference is one thing, but for certain tasks (like mass undercoats, or zenithal highlighting) it really is the best tool for the job.

Best tool for the job n your opinion. Spray cans work perfectly fine for those jobs in my experience, and the long-term additional expense is, like these new paints, a price a lot of folk are willing to pay for convenience - rattlecans don't need to be cleaned or otherwise cared for beyond a quick inverted blast to clear the nozzle when done, they don't require equipment to use at all, nor do they require any appreciable degree of skill to use, or need you to fanny about thinning and mixing stuff.

You're very much operating from a place of "these things are not problems for me, so they are not problems at all", a common attitude among airbrush evangelists.

Rattlecans run out of paint really fast and are incredibly wasteful of paint.

catbarf wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
Or for noise reasons, I'm not sure my neighbours would appreciate hearing a compressor running at 2am("But but but" I can already here someone rushing to post - there are quiet ones, yes, and ones with big tanks, and they're both a lot more expensive than the basic cheapie import jobs that most people will buy and which airbrush advocates can use to say "it's cheaper than buying citadel"). Or for simple preference reasons. Something airbrush evangelists tend to forget is that's it's actually perfectly OK to simply prefer painting with a normal brush.

I don't mean to evangelize, but I often see hobbyists be oddly anti-airbrush for spurious reasons. Space? My cheapo Harbor Freight airbrush and compressor fit in a shoebox with room to spare. Noise? It's quieter than my microwave; I have no idea where people get the idea that airbrush compressors are loud. Ventilation? Cheap spray booth, doubles as a paint station for normal brushwork. All of it together cost the equivalent of about a hundred quid, which has paid for itself by eliminating the need for spray primer or varnish.

Personal preference is one thing, but for certain tasks (like mass undercoats, or zenithal highlighting) it really is the best tool for the job.

I got an airbrush for mass under coats, and I much prefer a rattle can. Spent much more time cleaning the airbrush than anything else.

 insaniak wrote:
No, it's a fantastic tabletop level.

A 'great' tabletop level is fully painted in basic colours. Any sort of shading and highlighting is an extra.

Not sure if serious.

I love these arguments.

"Ugh, GW paint is going to be soooo expensive and you can ONLY use it with the proprietary spray paint, and how much do you even get? It'll only cover like the foot of a single model even if you use the whole pot!"

It's like there's a group of trolls in here trying to convince people not to buy this paint? What does anyone care if someone else buys a paint?

A. yes GW paint is expensive. It's expensive paint for expensive toy soldiers. If you don't want to pay the money, then don't buy it, nobody is holding a gun to your head.

B. You do NOT need their specific spray paint. The key is that you need a smooth coat of primer on the model, which is difficult for many white primers to do because they can come out chalky or gritty. Airbrush primer will be great for this because it can go on real smooth. Contrast also works over metallics, greys, and other colors, but the key part is to have a nice, smooth coat of primer.

C. You get slightly more than a regular pot of paint and slightly less than a shade. One pot of shade can easily cover the entire chassis, very liberally, of two Imperial Knight models, including their bases, and still have some leftover. The Contrast paints will likely be similar in coverage. You'll be able to get dozens of infantry done without worrying about running out of paint, and if you run out... buy more? See point A if you're about to open your mouth about the money.

But anyway, people that are adamant GW haters won't be convinced by this. I'll be called a GW fanboy or whatever and I don't care. I'm going to get these paints and I'm going to have a nice easy time catching up on my backlog.

Noone called people who want to use these paints a fanboy or a troll.

But those which don't think these paints are worth it are:
- Black Knights
- Airbrush Evangelists
- Elitists
- Gatekeepers
- Trolls

...just from the some of the comments previously.

Anybody else mentally queuing up potential projects and uses for these paints? I'm up to four with just the blacks and greys already

 Shadenuat wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
No, it's a fantastic tabletop level.

A 'great' tabletop level is fully painted in basic colours. Any sort of shading and highlighting is an extra.

Not sure if serious.

Very serious.

You're not likely to win awards in a painting competition with wash-painted models... but 'tabletop level' isn't about winning awards, it's just about having coloured models on the table. So if your models are painted in appropriate colours in more or less appropriate places, it's 'tabletop level'.

There is a reason why minimal level for tournaments is three colors. Usually, it pretty much means painted in base colors. Anything less is closer to unpainted model, so does that mean that unpainted model is less than "great"? What is then good, average, mediocre or bad? Should we aspire to only having models covered in basic colors and think of ourselves as "great" at any level?

I don't think so.

 Shadenuat wrote:

Danny76 wrote:
For every pot of this used. Let say you only use half a base colour. So you have to buy two contrast pots.
But by the contrast descriptor, you know don’t need to buy a shade or layer in question for that colour.

Only if you follow Citadel paint guides. Acrylic Medium, Black and White/some other colors (depends on the color) can be your "Shades" and "Layers".

Which of course adds price for acrylic mediums etc and consistency will be lot harder to archieve. Especially after months or even years. I have stopped doing custom mixes precisely because trying to get shade just right after 3 years of not painting for that army can be royal PITA.

The people who want to do that are NOT main target group for the paint. Not everybody has interest nor skill to do the custom shade 100% matching shade over and over and over again. Even after long gaps.

Didn't main group had trouble when Citadel put some of their own stuff out of production though?

I think it goes both ways here. I never used any prepared washes, and so never had a panic attack if one of them went out of production or my local store stopped shipping them. If your whole army depends on one of those though, and they stop producing them, and you never mixed your own stuff, aren't you at worse position?

But I see your point, i.e. consistency is important.

 insaniak wrote:

 Shadenuat wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
No, it's a fantastic tabletop level.

A 'great' tabletop level is fully painted in basic colours. Any sort of shading and highlighting is an extra.

Not sure if serious.

Very serious.

You're not likely to win awards in a painting competition with wash-painted models... but 'tabletop level' isn't about winning awards, it's just about having coloured models on the table. So if your models are painted in appropriate colours in more or less appropriate places, it's 'tabletop level'.

I agree with this most out of anything in this post.
For table top standard, it’s great to have it like that..
Amazing, fantastic, unbelievable etc are all further levels of work on them.

It’s great to see a model with colour on every part. That’s that.

————

 Shadenuat wrote:
Noone called people who want to use these paints a fanboy or a troll.

But those which don't think these paints are worth it are:
- Black Knights
- Airbrush Evangelists
- Elitists
- Gatekeepers
- Trolls

...just from the some of the comments previously.

Although I agree Shadenuat, those things were said about people against this.
There were for sure posts going the other way too, saying GW fanboys will just buy whatever and such.
But it always goes both ways with such things.

I’d rather we just see people using these when they come, with great results, so people can see what could be achieved.
Then everyone can make a decision.

————

Also, left off the list of reasons not to airbrush (I think I saw, space, noise and price?).

-Set up/clean up. - it has been discussed before, and people just say, oh it doesn’t take long, and it’s easy to do etc.
But the point is, it still takes time. Where justa quick undercoat with a can, or a quick pot opened d some colours put on - that is just quicker.
And it suits some (me included), if I had a whole day aside, then who knows, but that’s not something that works for me.
(I also think of paint wastage, pouring into the airbrush, some will be wasted in the lip etc. Then pouring and back in the pot, the whole airbrush jar seems to have it still all up the sides, you don’t get that back. But a minor thing I know..)

-Skill. A funny one, as you won’t have it till you do it. But it is enough to put some people off. How much paint or models wasted to get to the point when you can do it.

Danny76 wrote:
I also think of paint wastage, pouring into the airbrush, some will be wasted in the lip etc.

I don't think there is any other champion of paint wastage as the Citadel (TM) pot.

How much paint or models wasted to get to the point when you can do it.

You cannot become better without first being bad and making mistakes. Might as well never paint then.

There were for sure posts going the other way too, saying GW fanboys will just buy whatever and such.

I don't think people are "fanboys", they just got some results and are using tools which worked for them. It's normal. I'm not critical of just some random person. I am however critical of Citadel way of painting because I think it doesn't teach people important basics and to love painting. Their whole obsession is to make painting to end as soon as possible as like some sort of a chore between buying models and playing. While taking more money from people than what I consider reasonable and selling stuff which I just find kinda bizarre.

-Set up/clean up. - it has been discussed before, and people just say, oh it doesn’t take long, and it’s easy to do etc.
But the point is, it still takes time. Where justa quick undercoat with a can, or a quick pot opened d some colours put on - that is just quicker.

That may be true initially, as you learn how to use the tool, but now that I've been doing it for several years I can honestly say I can prime a dozen models in zenithal priming via airbrush in the same time it would take me to gather them up, take them outside, hit them with one coat of spray primer, wait long enough for them to try to bring them back in. Like all things, it's a matter of practice.

The anti-airbrush arguments are usually from those that haven't invested the time to learn to use the tool, in my experience. Now, sure, there are definitely some valid arguments (need space for a spray booth if you want to do it regularly, initial lay out expense), but the knee-jerk reactions are just as bad as the "fanboy" reactions from others.

After going to using an airbrush for even just priming and sealing, I won't ever go back to using cans. I don't ever have to care about weather, dropping models on the way back in, etc. Yes, I'm fortunate in that I have the space to have a spray booth set up, and realize that not everyone has that option.

drbored wrote:
I love these arguments.

"Ugh, GW paint is going to be soooo expensive and you can ONLY use it with the proprietary spray paint, and how much do you even get? It'll only cover like the foot of a single model even if you use the whole pot!"

It's like there's a group of trolls in here trying to convince people not to buy this paint? What does anyone care if someone else buys a paint?

You fancy pointing any of the group of people out? I'm probably being a bit paranoid but when I read that thing about the group I briefly suspected that I might be among them. I've been reading the last half dozen pages of this thread, and re-reading it again, as far as I can see there are three basic points of views. The first group seem to be saying "Wow this looks great, I'm excited to try this out!" (Fine by me!). The second group seems to be saying "Meh. Not for me, I can't see the value here" (Yay, that's my opinion too!). Then the third group, the group that I don't understand, the group that seems a bit strange to me, is saying stuff like "It's like there's a group of trolls in here trying to convince people not to buy this paint? What does anyone care if someone else buys a paint?". (A quote from you!). Like I say, I'm imagining that I'm in the second group, and I can only think that the people in this third group (the group I don't understand, the group that I'm grouping you into) are talking about the people in my group! They certainly aren't talking about the guys in the first group are they? Then again maybe I'm not following the conversation properly and there aren't any groups at all (That's probably most likely! I'm tired and your talk of a sinister "group" probably has me reading things into the situation that aren't there).

Right I'm off to bed.

GoatboyBeta wrote:
Anybody else mentally queuing up potential projects and uses for these paints? I'm up to four with just the blacks and greys already

I'm starting a 30k Emperor's Children army that will be done completely in the purple Contrast paint. No better way to paint 100 marines than to slap on a coat of Contrast.