I use Halfords matt black (the one that says to use a grey primer on a sticker on the lid) and zenith with white.

I made the mistake one time of using Halfords black automotive primer – it was a disaster! It’s designed to resist “orange peel” effect, so tends to clump and “smooth out” super-fine details. The matt black (non-primer) paint shrinks into the details really really nicely.

I use matt black, white zenith, then slap on the contrast paint – it works really well, keeping the shadowed areas in a nice dark shadow, and helping identify the high spots (which I then follow up with an edge highlight or a layer of “one-shade-brighter” to really make them pop). For me, the trick is to have the confidence to leave some areas of your minis almost black, while bringing the edges up to almost white for the highest highlights.

Sometimes I will just use regular acrylic paint as a primer, ivory or light grey, and that works just fine.

I know everyone has been saying you don’t need a special primer – and it’s true, you don’t for contrast paints to do their basic job of adding colour and shade. *But* an actual primer paint (which has a rougher/key texture) does create a different, darker finish than on a smoother/glossier surface. I use both to achieve different effects – for a cloth-like texture, I’d put contrast paint over a “key” surface (rougher primer) – it creates a nice rich colour and nice, deep shades.

But if you give your model a quick cover of a smooth surface paint, or even a slight satin varnish coat, the contrast paint behaves slightly differently – you still get the nice deep shading, but on the very highest points, the paint pulls away, creating much lighter coloured highlights; you can use this effect for slightly shinier surfaces or to create “pop” without spending hours and hours on edge highlighting (personally I still like to add highlights but if you’re batch painting or looking to save time, contrast over a slightly smoother/glossier surface will give you colour, shading and basic highlights in one pass).

So yes, you don’t need special primer for contrast paints. But sometimes you might want to use one.

(I use Halfords matt black with a white zenith for about 90% of my models, but occasionally will paint areas or even entire models with a smooth off-white paint to get the highlight-and-shade-in-one-go finish).

@carlospictor – great examples (and, pretty impressive painting too!)

You can pretty much use contrast paints over any white or very light primer. As an alternative to Wraithbone you could try Army Painter Skeleton Bone; it’s a little darker than wraithbone but could work. Similarly you can use white instead of Greyseer but it’s a little brighter.  You can even get some fantastic results painting over metallics like leadbelcher.

I have used several different primers and they all produce really nice effects if the paints are used properly.  That said, I would still recommend using the contrast primers when you’re first starting out just because that’s what they’re intended to work with.

However most GW primers are out of stock pretty much everywhere.