Managed to have a go with the new citadel contrast paint at games expo over the weekend, i cant say im amazed by them nor am i disappointed by them but i thought i would share my feelings on them.

Good

• Easy to apply and you do get an acceptable finish in 10 mins
• They wet blend beautifully
• Large pot size
• They are bringing out contrast medium to add any paint like lahmian medium
• Seems thin enough to airbrush out of the pot

Bad

• Expensive GW wouldnt confirm the price exactly, but when i asked if between £4.50 and £5 a pot was in the right ball park the said yes…
• It feels and behaves just like airbrush paint with a drop of flow aid in it, and my “highly scientific” test to determine if flowaid is present is to lick the brush and see if your tongue tingles, and it did, so im going to revisit this once i have some paint in my hands and do a compare and (excuse pun) contrast over using airbrush paint, airbrush paint with flow aid, and citadel contrast.
• Some shades in the range work much better than others
• Forget get about getting coverage with a different shade ontop of an existing layer of contrast paint you will need to reprime/paint white or light grey first
• Pot not dropper bottle, usual problem with the larger citadel pots of being very easy to tip over (yes im looking at you @warzan 😉 )

Gotcha’s

• Satin finish on large flat panels, the space marine i painted has a noticably satin finish (this a good thing for applying decals, and would save me my usual satin/gloss coat before decals) compared to the more textured poxwalker i painted, but you would probably want to hit it with some dull cote if your adding contrast painted mini’s to an existing army.
• Big brushes (like the citadel shade brush) are your friends with this paint, it behaves a lot like a wash, and pools easily, so having a clean dry brush to remove excess pooling helps a lot aswell
• Primers need to be light, these will not work well on anything other than white or very light grey (the two new primer sprays and paints they are bringing out), halfords grey will be to dark, stynelrez/ump light grey primer would be perfect for a moody paint scheme, other wise white/offwhite will give you quite a bright finish
• They didnt have any of the metallics out to try, but based on how the colours behaved i would expect them to behave very much like citadel air or model air metallics.

Examples

I spent about 30 mins playing with the paints and trying things out, here are the results, for the space marine i just base coated everything in blood angels red, and then tried to layer over it with other contrast paints to very mixed results, for the pox walker i instead painted neatly keeping as much primer as possible visible on the different textures and non flesh parts of the mini, with much better results compared to layering.

As you can see painting ultramarine blue on top of the red resulted in a rather purple helmet (0_o) and thats after 5 cotes of ultra marine blue, the smudge on the pouch was the black acting just like a pooled glaze, and the orange mess of a maglocked helmet is meant to be yellow after 6 cotes.  The bolter and auspex were left free of red and black was applied directly to primer, one cote was used on the sight and auspex and gives a pleasing “stealth” look, and a second cote was applied to the bolters casing giving it a much more charcoal black tone.

Whilst waiting for the helmet to dry on the space marine, i painted this pox walker in 10 mins flat and thought i would try a few techniques on it as well, just concentrating on being neat enough whilst painting the flesh on, which was a single cote of plague walker green, the boot is 2 cotes of snakebite leather as is the belt leather skirt, with the chain mail being a single coat of black, for fun i tried wet blending  the nurgle flesh colour and blood angels red and was really pleasantly surprised at how well they blended, the horn was painted with the bone color in the range, by glomming a load on the tip, and working it down the horn, its things like this where the time saving comes into play, it looks the same as my usual horn technique but instead of several layers of agrax earthshade and seraphin sepia graduated up, its a single cote of the bone contrast paint, over brushing blood angels red gives the chafed/weeping flesh effect you can see on legs and belly, other than going back and picking the teeth out and possibly the eyes, i would say that the 10 min and table top ready claim is true, just dont expect good results if you like to prime in a colour other than white or very light grey.

Verdict

I will probably pick up a few shades of it (citadel paint geeks rejoice they have brought some old shade names back snakebite leather for example, plague walker flesh is truly a one coat and done solution to getting hoards of nurgle to the table top), but get used to painting on primer on any areas you over shoot the mark with, the recent (i.e. non 90’s advice) of paint it all your base colour then pick details out doesnt really work with contrast paints, much easier and quicker to just be neat in the first place and work methodically; as it took 5 coats to get something remotely resembling blue instead of purple when painting on top of blood angel red, and the yellow just doesnt work on anything but the primer, 6 coats and all i achieved was something vaguely orange, but i wouldn’t say its a revolution if you are used to brush painting with airbrush paint and/or using flow aid with normal acrylics, but for newbs and speed painting its a ready mixed solution….  It also wet blends beautifully out of the pot.  It is worth noting that it dries to satin finish (probably down to the flow aid in the paint), not a very matt one so some dull cote would probably be needed to integrate mini’s painted with contrast into an existing army