Contrast paints (or equivalent)?

[Doug ex-em4]

What’s the minimum required to make the use of contrast paints viable? And should I bother?

Doug

[Burgundavia]

I've played with a couple of different brands and done some DIY with satin medium and other mediums. Well worth playing with, it is another tool like any other.

[Dean]

All my stuff is Army Painter Speedpaints.  White rattlecan primer, speedpaint, matt white acrylic for touching up, matt varnish, done!

No need for fancy undercoat techniques, highlighting, or oils, unless you know you want to, but to get stuff table ready, nothing fancy needed.

[Codsticker]

I second Burgundavia's opinion. I really like them for things like hair, fur, woodgrain and that sort of stuff. Taking a "regular" paint and thinning it a bit with matte medium can give you a similar effect. I quite often thin them a bit and use them like washes or glazes. I like them better than prepared washes and glazes, which can have a satin or gloss finish, as the contrast paints have a matte finish.

[fred]

The minimum is a white undercoat!

I find them really useful - some colours are better than others. I’ve found contrast yellows cover better than any other yellow paints. Initially I just had some fairly bright - more fantasy colours. But having got some more subdued shades they are good for military troops too.

[Panzer21]

Contrast paints have come in for a lot of criticism; people argue they are a gimmick and you can make your own.
I was initially swayed by the negative opinions as well as by pictures of stuff poorly painted on the internet.

Taking a long hard look at the lead pile I decided I needed a faster painting method. As an experiment I bought some of the first release GW CPs and tried them on 20mm modern Egyptians. They worked much better than I expected but did need some work drybrushing to tone down pooling and lift flat areas. I experimented with 15mm using white, grey and black undercoats, the black being heavily brushed with white or grey and one each of the white/ grey getting a black wash before CPs. Results were mixed. Disappointed with pure CPs, although perfectly acceptable from 2 feet....

Then a completely left-field experiment: Zinnfiguren 30mm flats. White primer, pure CPs or in the case of armour Speed Paint Metallics, then Army Painter dark/ soft tone ink wash followed by acrylic highlights.

Not sure if the photo will work, but examples on my blog:

https://aufklarungsabteilung.blogspot.com/

Last lot of figures took approx 45 minutes per figure.

Neil

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhimMJgG4XKm_-gmv8YeZ3sCYtkkmm-LX1Tqdj6eCevTDHsvwpKLBxGfuttirKBx7ygDFh3NrACYFfZqqpQgdvpyg3gF1nXM27b1eq0TP5Kq1PZonLCmQrLjfJvcqR-lZE8sLVRX4TdNwCsJMiLCTzDwcCsq0Pk4GkRvIrQS9TmPezUZQ0vWe_QEne7vmw/s4032/78%20Massed%20Swiss.JPEG

[zemjw]

I am a reasonable fan of them, as they result in a look that I like.

Pure contrast over white was too shiny for me, and trying to get paint into heavily shadowed areas was tricky and never looked like shadowed areas.

Slap-chop is where I am at the moment (grisaille as I like to pretend in my head to make it seem fancy, as I'm drybrusing grey and white over the black undercoat )

This gets the shadows and does a lot of the heavy lifting for more general shading. The look I mentioned above is "textured". I'm not into the Blanchitsu school of texturing, but I feel it does make the clothing look a bit more lived in. I won't be entering it in painting competitions any time soon, but it's fine from a few feet away.

There's also something nice about having the paint flow off the brush, rather than "wiping" it off as happens with more regular acrylics.

Downsides are that, because they are largely transparent, they won't cover up spills, so it's back to regular grey paint to fix that. They are also quite fragile, and, as the world's worst when it comes to varnishing, there is a growing time-bomb in my cabinets of chips and dings waiting to happen

[ced1106]

To speed up my painting, I use colored primers, and washes. Sometimes craft paints for terrain, or hobby paints for touch up, or if I don't have a colored primer in a color I want. Colored primers (eg. Strynylrez) are in larger containers, so are cheaper per ounce than hobby paints. Besides priming at 3am (: the best part about colored primers is that if you miss a mold line, you can just take care of it an paint over it again with the colored primer.

Every miniature in this thread started with colored primer. : https://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/103935-wildspire-miniatures-gloomhaven-crimson-scales-thread/#comment-2125919

[Dags]

With apologies to those that use and like the assorted speed paints I've yet to see any results (outside of some initial tests where GW gave them to their staff painters) that have impressed me.

I fully accept though that I'm not the target audience for them. They would add nothing to my style of painting.... if I need to paint quicker I simply use a bigger brush.

[Tom Dulski]

 I love speed/contrast paints, they are much thinner than regular acrylics and therefore preserve the finer details. Also the mix well with regular paints so you can make hundreds of different color combinations.

[anevilgiraffe]

I use them pretty exclusively now, standard paint as needed.

I've adapted Sonic Sledgehammer's slapchop, his videos are worth looking at.

[syrinx0]

I collect paint ranges almost as randomly as I collect miniatures.  I like contrast paints for some figures - especially for large groups of massed figures.  My zombie survivors and skaven used a lot of various contrast paints.  That said I still use use normal acrylics for most of my individual figures. Watch some reviews before you buy as some of each lines colors have poor coverage.

https://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=144295.msg1851445#msg1851445

[Sunjester]

Horses for courses. I use them a lot for 28mm, I am a barely average painter and I want stuff on the table fast. I like them, they mostly do what they say and the result is good to my eye.
For smaller scales, like 10mm, I have not had a lot of success so far, so I stick to "normal" paints.