I’m anti- contrast paint. Why?

• it’s Games Workshop. Games Workshop is the devil.
• it’s expensive. Because it’s Games Workshop
• it’s a fastpaint method promoted by Games Workshop. GW fastpainting can’t be good. Ever.

However I’m lured by the devil. Post-prejudice, Contrast Paint is excellent if you know when and how to use it and if you like the lighter ‘pastel’ effect. It’s a matter of taste. Check this Tale of Painters’ blog.

Yes, the stuff was hyped and overrated as ‘beginner’s paint’ and I hate to be labeled as a beginner. But use it as a coloured wash / expert ink method, in addition to your standard painting techniques and the results are fine. For 28mm, I succesfully used red contrast paint over a yellow or orange undercoat, and dark blue contrast paint over a sky blue primer.

Contrast Painting is good for large blocks with carves and lines, not really for small dots or details. A ‘second primer’; brighter than a dark wash.

6mm Contrast Painting

For 6mm Napoleonics, my standard painting technique is a light grey undercoat, followed by a Nuln Oil wash and then the usual bright whites, blues, reds and metals. A black primer is too dark IMHO, a white primer too light, and in my experience a wash after the colouring dulled the colours so much that I had to re-highlight the 6mm figures.

I had never used Contrast Paints so far for 6mm. In general I doubt that CP would work for this scale, because 6mm-painting consists of a lot of quick small ‘dotting’ in separated colours, while the diluted CP’s flow and mix.

Brunswickers are different. Single black colour. Standard black wash leaves to much grey undercoat with a brownish tinge, so I used Contrast ‘Black Templar’ instead of Nuln Oil. Check the colour difference below.

Backpacks etc were perfect after one coat.

BTW primer colour matters. Below a 10mm SF project, Black Templar contrast paint on a white undercoat.

Final result

That one coat on grey primer did the trick. I added the few colours, and the job was done. I only ‘highlighted’ the shako tops (with dark grey).

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Verdict: Black Contrast Paint was an excellent product for this project. Maybe other (mainly) single-coloured armies (white Austrians?) might do equally well with this approach.