So in recent posts on TMP I've seen some modelers express the sentiment that painting miniatures with Citadel Contrasts is like "not quite painting them but almost."
I find this sentiment a bit baffling and I suspect that a good number of modelers who have this opinion have never used the Contrasts but only seen what they look like on miniatures that others have painted.
I find it especially baffling given how many of us are painting armies, in some cases hundreds of models for fantasy or historical games.
Having used the Citadel Contrasts for about five months now, I consider them to be an absolutely necessity in my painting tool box. In fact I would say they have even partially transformed the way I approach painting miniatures now.
Obviously GW did not invent this. The concept of dipping miniatures or doing all over washes to achieve quick shading and highlighting is as old as miniatures themselves.
However the Contrasts seem to be particularly good at what they claim to do.
Here is why they are so valuable as a product to own. They are first and foremost BASE COAT ENHANCERS. What do I mean by that? What I mean is that you can choose four or five of them and lay down base coats many times faster than you could with traditional layer paints. Why? Because they are liquid. You can cover large areas quickly and you can "push up" the liquid precisely to the very edge of a detail in a way you can't with layer paints.
You don't have to thin them out of fear of obscuring detail like unthinned layer paint. They never will gunk up detail because it's liquid.
Now having said that – are the Contrasts in and of themselves a means to en end? Do the Contrasts magically paint miniatures all by themselves? Well… No. And Yes. It's both.
What I mean is that once you become accustomed to using them you realize that each color can be thinned, manipulated, and tweaked to create many more colors and shades of color from just the one pot.
Once you have used them you will see that some of the Contrasts are much more opaque than others and you have you "stay within the lines" so to speak or they will overwhelm the color next to it if you accidentally paint over it. However – and this is a crucial point – some of the Contrasts are much more on the transparent side. And it is these transparent ones that really speed up painting and really show their true value and usefulness.
Colors like Skeleton Horde and Apothecary White can be slopped right over onto another color and they do not alter the other color, while at the same time they will still shade and highlight the white or off-white undercoat.
In addition, some colors like the yellows are so strong that you can apply them over areas even if some of the undercoat has another color on it. The yellow is so powerful that it cancels out the value of the paint under it to an amazing degree.
What I'm trying to describe here is that the Contrasts, once you get into a real relationship with them are quite literally like having a set of layer paints that have additional qualities and advantages and can be used like layer paints once you understand where and when to use certain colors. And once you get familiar with the range and how they interact you can almost play them like a musical piece on your miniatures, cutting way down on touch-up time and cutting down on having to do separate layer paint coats and washes, etc.
All of the Contrasts also make excellent standard washes. I've thinned all of them and used them as just a shader and they work amazingly well. And since you're going to be thinning them a good deal of the time any way, one single pot of Contrast will last much longer than many modelers would assume. When they are thinned enough they act very much like Army Painter washes do, but even better.
Another important aspect of the Contrasts is that some colors CAN BE used on their own while others often need to the help of additional drybrush highlights over it. You discover pretty quickly which colors fall into which category. Some of the browns are very strong and dark and can tend to overstain and overshade if used at full strength. The black is very strong and sometimes works better if thinned. The black often benefits from an additional highlight.
Some of the darker greens are also very strong and usually need some degree of thinning and benefit from an additional highlight.
However, a large amount of the range does not need thinning and gives excellent results with one coat. Space Wolves Grey is a fantastic one-application color to put over things like cloth and armor without needing any additional highlighting. The yellows perform the same way, they shade and highlight things like hair and clothing absolutely perfectly.
There are no miniatures that I would paint purely 100% only with Contrasts, at least not without adding some additional highlights to certain colors. And of course you always have to use layer paints to pick out certain details like eyes, buttons, facial hair, small lights, etc.
However – I do believe there is great value in seeing how far you can push that percentage and still have miniatures that look amazing for the tabletop.
I did that here with this squad of SWL rebel soldiers. I had these last few lying around and decided to a speed painting test with the Contrasts.
I painted this squad in an HOUR AND A HALF. It is 99% straight up nothing but Contrasts. The only elements of the models that have additional drybrushing are the boots, the top ridges of the helmets, and the rifles. Everything else is Contrasts straight out of the pot or slightly thinned.
All the faces are straight up Flesh Contrasts, in this case Guilliman Flesh. The Citadel flesh shades are an absolute miracle for doing faces. These are nothing but one slopped on coat of Guilliman Flesh over a white primer, nothing else.
So I know opinions will vary, but I have to tell you that getting a squad of sci-fi miniatures to this standard in an hour and a half I think is pretty amazing. And the thing is you could always go back and add more highlights and do more detailing later. But the fact that Contrasts can get a group of seven miniatures to this stage in a fraction of the time it would take you to do with layer paints is significant.
wants to know if you can tell the difference between weaker and stronger magnets with 3mm aircraft.
