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What are people finding they're good for?

Interested in alternate uses, techniques, colours people have found indispensable, colours that have disappointed.

Anything people have discovered beyond the obvious and the marketing blurb really.

They’re a lot of fun to use over metallics. If you like a shellac’d look on your metals, they’re beautiful.

I haven’t had much chance to try anything else. I think they’d work well for a scheme where you have a colour transition? I’m thinking the perhaps out-of-date Alpha Legion scheme, where green sort of came up through the blue... if that makes sense. I’ve been meaning to try a Marine with a bright, almost neon green undercoat, and then paint over it with either the medium or dark blue contrast.

If anyone happens to have an interest in trying it, and posting a picture of the results ( good or bad ) I’d appreciate it.

Other than that, they do need to go on thick. Like, if it was regular paint you’d be the target audience for a thin-your-paints meme. Like, candy on a candy apple thick. I’m pretty sure they have two different paints in one bottle. One that sinks to the bottom of the painted area and dries quickly. The other maybe designed to roll off the bottom layer, drying slower. That’s what causes the darker pigment to collect on the recesses. Pure conjecture, but that’s the way they look to me.

I’d say they tend to look best on surfaces that are “natural” and where a bit of inconsistency in colour (like skin, or cloth, or leather) makes it look real.

As noted, they also look great over metallics. It’s a very easy way to give your power weapons a funky glow effect without much effort.

They're beautiful for layered glazes - the sepia, purple, blue then black make for great heat staining.

I found a nice trick the other day with snakebite leather, when you've got a ammo belt, paint the whole thing in lead beltcher, then layer over with snakebite leather and it looks like a ammo belt with brass casings. the brown seeping into the cracks nicely giving impressions of leather holding the brass shells together.

They really have some uses but they are far from "zero skill" paints as was first advertised.

I can use them to make line-highlight look alike, as I am doing on my current dark eldar.

I can make the same end result with contrast or regular painting. The contrast saves time at the cost of a very small amount of fidelity vs conventional painting. But the key to contrast is control of it's thickness and layers. One contrast by itself is pretty meh. What happens when over white you paint, say vol pink, then selectively backfill with thinned black contrast?

Turns out the contrast paints are one hell of a trick tool in the toolbox.

I find them more useful for tinting and shading actual colored paint rather than putting contrast over off-white. Also, contrast over silver with a few edge highlights makes a very easy power sword.



That's Terradon Turquoise over silver, with Sybarite Green and Gauss Blaster Green edge highlights. So easy.

 John Prins wrote:
I find them more useful for tinting and shading actual colored paint rather than putting contrast over off-white. Also, contrast over silver with a few edge highlights makes a very easy power sword.



That's Terradon Turquoise over silver, with Sybarite Green and Gauss Blaster Green edge highlights. So easy.

Generally contrast over a light base, warm, cool, or neutral doesn't look all that hot.

I use it for tinting other colors an awful lot, probably 70% of the time outside of my DE.

The fix for contrast over light color not looking awful is layering it. Which can be a challenge with a light colored goal.. like your magenta/pink armor. What you do is light/contrast/contrast "shade". The results are good.

For Contrast on Vehicles I use it like I would an artists ink. Did a Land Raider with yellow contrast and then worked in actual paints. Mostly because the Iyanden Yellow was "just the right shade" I was going for in hue and saturation and none of my yellows really fit the bill. I shaded with Nazdreg yellow and then with Skeleton Horde and highlighted with actual paint layered thinly on top.

I actually used Volupus Pink contrast over Vajello Magenta, then edge highlight with the Magenta - not strictly necessary as the contrast does give some edge highlight on its own but it pops a bit more this way. I also used Apothecary White over Vajello Ghost Grey but I painted over most of it with Ghost Grey again, the Apothecary White basically becomes a recess wash, but I can leave the Apothecary White over Ghost Grey alone in recessed/hard to reach areas without it really being notice-able, and the cleaned up raised areas pop more and get a white edge highlight. And I used Basilicanum Grey over silver to shade the silver on the weapons and backpack, and touched up the raised portions with silver again.

So really I'm using Contrasts as a shade, a recess wash as well as metallic tint, all on one model. All of this could have been done more traditionally but contrast did make it easier and far quicker, though to be fair I did a lot of trial models to nail down my order of operations and chose paints that go over each other well and that really cut down on the difficult, fiddly painting these colors could have been.

But just using contrast as contrast? Nah.

I base with them, and touch up over them.

What's skeleton horde like? Does anyone know? I have a horde of skeletons that need painting and well.....

I just posted my first (mostly) Contrast model in another thread

I was never really good at painting and found it to be too troublesome to pick up. Contrast was what made me come pack to the hobby, actually. I use Contrast nearly exclusively apart from one or two areas and I am very pleased with the results.

Things I learned about Contrast:
- Talasar Blue over Corax White looks amazing
- Likewise, Skeleton Horde over Stormhost Silver gives an amazing looking gold (see my picture below)
- You have to be careful about pooling, as that is a very easy way to make your paintjob look unclean

For me personally, Contrast ist a game changer.

Let me link my Marine here for ease of discussion (the purity seal is made with Skeleton Horde over Corax White, since the person before me asked):

 Snrub wrote:
What's skeleton horde like? Does anyone know? I have a horde of skeletons that need painting and well.....

Think of it as a very good sepia tone heavy body wash; I'll be using it over a zenithal primer job, with minimal VMC ivory highlights afterward.

I've been using aethermatic blue and flesh tearers red as glazes. The blue over layers of lupercal and sons of horus green gives a lovely deep turquoise hue, and the red smoothes my transitions from black to red nicely.
I thin them very slightly with water too. Don't believe the hype.

I can't see me ever using them in the advertised method. I have my painting methods and can't see them changing too much now, but if nothing else I think of the contrast range as a massive new improved selection of glazes.

I still use regular glazes but the contrast paints work a lot quicker, due to the increased pigment or something I guess?

I will be using contrasts to paint a whole Stormcast army after some experimenting.

 Snrub wrote:
What's skeleton horde like? Does anyone know? I have a horde of skeletons that need painting and well.....

Skeleton Horde with a tyrant skull drybrush after is an incredibly easy and satisfying way to do skeletons.

Honestly?
They are a godsend for new painters as you get effective results quickly.
For average painters again, they have a ton of use especially for making good effects.
For the higher end painters they really just provide a faster way of doing things.

I love them personally.
Picked each of them up as I was pleasantly surprised with how good they actually are.
Most common use I’ve seen though is for easy metallics.

winterdyne wrote:Think of it as a very good sepia tone heavy body wash; I'll be using it over a zenithal primer job, with minimal VMC ivory highlights afterward.

Ah beautiful. What primer do you use? The GW approved one, or something else?

Templarted wrote:Skeleton Horde with a tyrant skull drybrush after is an incredibly easy and satisfying way to do skeletons.

Excellent. That's basically what I was looking for!

 Snrub wrote:

winterdyne wrote:Think of it as a very good sepia tone heavy body wash; I'll be using it over a zenithal primer job, with minimal VMC ivory highlights afterward.

Ah beautiful. What primer do you use? The GW approved one, or something else?

Templarted wrote:Skeleton Horde with a tyrant skull drybrush after is an incredibly easy and satisfying way to do skeletons.

Excellent. That's basically what I was looking for!

The skulls here are just straight up Skeleton Horde, no touchups



The small skulls are over Vallejo Dark Sand, a darkish warm off-white. The large one is over Vallejo Ghost Grey, a light cold off-white.