Contrasting opinions

Or my two thin coats on the current Contrast paint fad

Contrast paint. If you’ve spent any time recently perusing the latest wargaming news you’re bound to have seen it. Depending on who you ask, it’s either the next big thing or nothing much.

Games Workshop’s marketing campaign was firmly in the former camp. This led to the usual sceptical response from older gamers. The failed promise of Finecast is still fresh in the minds of many. It didn’t help that they made it seem like Contrast paint was as close to liquid talent as you could get. That, and inviting pro painters to try out the paint at GW HQ gave a skewed impression of what could be achieved.

Once the general public finally got to try it themselves at Warhammer Weekend, we got a more honest view. The paints were great, but more on organic or cloth surfaces. They weren’t so hot on large flat surfaces, at least not without some extra effort. A little ironic, since Games Workshop’s post-human poster boy has a lot of flat surfaces.

Tempting as it is to go all in on these new paints, I’m going to hold off for now. The Contrast range retails for about $13 a pot here, which is almost three times what we pay for Army Painter.

So far, I’ve limited myself to two of the skin colours – Darkoath Flesh and Guilliman Flesh. I also plan to pick up Apothecary White once it’s available again. The white will make painting the Stormtroopers from Star Wars Legion much easier. But more on that later.

I’ve only tried the Darkoath Flesh so far on some Age of Sigmar Khorne warriors, so far. Less blood for the blood god and more skin for the skin tone, as it were. It was only a quick attempt, but I think it worked rather well.

Not that I didn’t dislike my old method for painting skin, but it will speed things up. Now I need to work out an easy way to vary the tone, to get the range I used for the Godsworn Hunt.