Dragging my style from 1984 to 2010

Contrast paints were made to avoid a step in the painting process. Usually you would prime the figure, apply a base coat, then shade and then highlight the figure. With the contrast method, the base coat is eliminated. It's supposed to be the base coat and shade at once.

Good to know. That sounds great.

What do you use to prime?

I take it you have to varnish also?(Something I never needed to do with enamels.)

I will definitely try that.

Spray primer? I tried a paint on white primer (polyurethane?) and it really didn't work. It didn't cover the figure. The black one did though.

Two different painting techniques here:

1) the old fashioned/standard way, which is kind of what you've been trying. Spray your model with a primer (undercoat). Block in each area of colour with brush (basecoat). Then use a shade/wash (same thing, they're interchangeable terms) either over the whole thing or different coloured washes for the different coloured areas. If you're feeling adventurous you can layer/highlight over that with lighter versions of your base paints.

In this case, the traditional primer colours are white or black, for light/dark models respectively. I have had bad experiences with white primers (they seem far less reliable in terms of quality/coverage) so I avoid them. I have found a grey primer works well (Games Workshop: Mechanicus Standard Grey) for most models. It saves the amount of layers of paint you need when base coating the various colours. If you're trying to paint yellow, white, flesh colour or similar lighter tones over a black primer undercoat, you often need 3+ layers of thinned paint to get good coverage without obscuring all the details.

2) contrast fashion. Contrasts are relatively new paints from Games Workshop designed for the quickest and easiest painting - they can be considered either really pigmented strong washes, or really dilute normal paints. You prime the model first with a light primer - it had to be a light colour, as a contrast paint over black does nothing (same as a wash over black). GW's normal two spraypaints for priming before contrast paints are Wraithbone (a pale bone colour, ideal for warm colours) and Grey Seer (a pale grey colour, ideal for a cooler look).

Once you've done that, you grab the relevant contrast paint (e.g. Wyldwood for a woody brown) and then paint it carefully over the area you want brown. Job done. It pools in the recesses but still covers the raised bits, given you immediate contrast between them. As with washes, you need to avoid it pooling too deep. You can also use Contrast Medium to dilute it, for example if you want a paler brown.

You then move onto using a contrast paint on the next section, e.g. Talassar Blue over blue robes. A key thing is that you need to be neat with where the contrast paint goes (if you get the blue contrast over some brown, it'll look odd), or you have to tidy up between each step using the "base paint" equivalent of the primer you used (which GW sell too).

The only thing Contrast paints cannot do is metallics - so you need to use a regular metallic paint for that, and then wash or dilute contrast over it.

Again, if feeling adventurous you can layer/highlight the raised parts after your contrast layer has dried, but often that isn't necessary.


I use the "old-fashioned method" because it's what I'm used to, and I want to keep consistency between my models. But Contrast paints are impressive in what they can achieve, and are the quickest painting method around. They will look very different to your enamel painting style though.

Sedge summed it up quite nicely there. Most people stop after basecoating and wash. This, in my opinion, is a "normal" tabletop standard. One more step "highlighting", and it will boost the look of your model by 1000%! In my opinion, this is one of the easiest steps (applying a wash is quite simple to) because it is simply brushing over the most raised (closest to your light source) bits of the model in a drybrush manner.

(Drybrushing is a method of dipping your brush, and wiping most of the paint off on a paper towel, until just a very faint amount of residue remains on the brush, then quickly flick your bristles back and forth over the area you want to drybrush. This will give you a nice faded blend of color and prevents a hard edge between colors. Very easy to do once you get started, but be warned, it destroys brushes. I usually hang on to older brushes for this once they've lost their point and start to fray.)

Something I struggle with constantly, is leaving enough shadow or dark areas on a model. It REALLY makes the model look more realistic, but only really works if you've used a black primer. This is one of the main reasons I use black primer...primarily. It creates shadow for you and eliminates what I call "the star effect", which is little white dots glaring through if you don't get 100% coverage with your base coat. White primer is horrible for this, but sometimes necessary. The Lumineth army I just completed was all whites and blues, so it needed a white primer start.

As for Contrast Paints, they work really well in certain context. For example, it works wonders on Tomb King Skeletons where 90% of the model is bone colored. But on, say, a unit of Black Knights, it's better to prime black, then paint the boney bits the traditional way since there is really very little bone showing. (I learned this the hard way and had to paint black over white primer several times before it didn't look streaky.) Just study your model, and apply the appropriate primer once you've figured out your color scheme and painting order.

As for the "dip method" with washes, it can be fine if the entire model needs the same color wash (sometimes occurs). But if you do, be sure to have a brush at the ready to soak up any pooling and even it out, or else it'll wind up looking like a 10-year-old kid painted it. After you watch and soak up the pools, I've found that it was just as quick for me to have applied the wash with a brush, and that would've given me much more control. It MIGHT save you 1-2 minutes, but you will be relegated to only using one wash. You might be able to get away with using a brown (Agrax Earthshade) on Zombies, Goblins, Skaven, etc.

I think your world of painting is about to go Nuclear. You're gonna be CHURNING out the models and I'm looking forward to it!

Never hesitate to ask if you don't know how to do something. We're here and can help each other. Big asset in this community!

One thing that might help is add some Quickshade Mixing Medium to the wash before applying it. I learned this trick from this video, I think it looks very good also for 'clean' units. BTW, I recommend checking out other videos on his channel too, it's full of nice tricks for fast painting units that still look good.

Haha, yeah I found it very informative as well, learned a lot from it. BTW if you are interested I've used the traditional 'dip method' with the non-wash quickshade as well on my beastmen (see the below link if you'd like to see some examples). I found that does work well for beastmen but not so much for 'clean' units.