"Did my first test of the new GW Contrasts, yep they work!" Topic

I maintain a hobby blog over on The 9th Age website.

I just posted my first experience and results with the new Citadel Contrast Paints. Initial impressions are pretty darn good. I'm going to be using them primarily to more quickly finish flesh on human armies as well as Orc and Skaven armies.

I experimented with Guilliman Flesh over both a tan undercoat as well as a white undercoat. I was pleased to discover that you can get a satisfying flesh finish over either undercoat.

These are going to be hugely helpful in getting my next several fantasy armies painted up more quickly and still look really good in the process!

Link to hobby blog post:

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Link to general gallery of pics. on Flickr:

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Hmmm- I may have to give these a try!

Very nice! Looks great for stain painting…

The yellow and green look to also be great from other videos I have seen.

The red is bad… boo… hiss!

I will add the flesh to my "must try list".

BTW… I have not decided on the Blue… videos and pics on it are inconclusive.

Joe Collins

Are these combination paint-and-wash?

only down side I've heard is that you must varnish your minis afterwards as otherwise the contrast paint will just rub off.

As someone who has never varnished minis the thought of doing it is putting me off slightly

Hey, I've only just heard about these…

So this does the "base coat" and the "inking" in one step?

@Neal smith basically yes, it self highlights

@Neal,

Yep, as Andy Tea said. The true benefit to these isn't the shading, since washes can already do that. It's the fact that they both shade and also highlight at the same time. The way they formulated it, it runs off the high areas and allows more of the undercoat to "shine through".

If you look at the faces I did they look as though I did a base coat, a wash, and then a separate highlight.

That's the big claim GW made with these, that you could achieve that subtle, "three tone" thing is what I call it. Where you've got the darkest shading in the recesses, an intermediate tone just around the darkest areas, and finally the lightest tone on the highest areas.

Obviously to achieve that with traditional paints you have to either do a triage of layer paints from darkest to lightest or introduce washes into the process before proceeding with the lighter layers on top of it.

The main reason that these new paints help me TREMENDOUSLY is that I absolutely suck at wet-blending. On flesh I just can't get it right and I end up muddying everything. With these I can now do flesh with much more confidence and have them look pretty darn good!

How much were they? My local shop is asking $9 USD a pot!

They were $8.00 USD a pot at my local hobby store which is what I believe they are selling for directly from GW's online store.

I did another round of experimenting this afternoon, tried more flesh and also did some skeletons with the Contrast color "Skeleton Bone". I also went back and revisited the two technical paints GW produced for their new Nighthaunt range: Hexwraith Flame and Nighthaunt Gloom.

Links to hobby blog:
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Link to general Flickr gallery:
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Preview pics:

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Don't think they will change my painting styles much.

Thanks for the review. I've been wanting to try them. Wondering if the primer matters. Generally I use Gesso.

Don't know about gesso as I haven't tried that yet. What does seem important is to use off-white base colour before the contrast colour – pale grey works for cold colours (eg space wolves grey) but pale cream seems better for warm ones such as flesh and red. That's after a grand total of 3 colours on 2 models so far!