Maledrakh incorporates contrast paints

As a part of trying to incorporate contrast paints into my repertoire, I started by using contrasts mainly as another type of wash over zenithal grey on black undercoats. Which is good and well. However, I realised that I myself actally never have used them as advertised, globbed onto white or cream undercoats. Looking at pictures and videos of other people painting is fine, but really not a replacement for doing something yourself. After all, there is usually a great gap between theory and practice in most things.

So I broke open the drawer full of old Bones 1 pc-type minis. These are some of the very few minis I have that are undercoated all in white. I don’t even remember why. Maybe I was all out of  black primer spray or something. However, I was reminded why the old Bones 1 pc-type minis were consigned to the Drawers of Oblivion™ in the first place. Bendy. Soft. Shallow details. Faces without noses. Hands without fingers. Weapons made for poking around corners…

Them old Bones are a quite different beast than the newer Bones. Which are still not pefect, but certainly miles better than alot of the old stuff.

So I pulled one out more or less at random. I thought what I pulled was some sort of lady druid. Turned out she was a “Dark Elf Wizard”. Right right.
The stark white of the plastic and subsequent primer made the mini very difficult to read. Details? What details?

At any rate, it was the first to get the prescribed Contrast treatment. No thinning, no nonsense. One coat, straight onto white undercoat.

Which I rapidly found out was a bit of a utopian dream. Mr Shakyhands wanted it otherwise. I spent more time trying to correct overpaints than anything else. In the end (what, maybe all of 10 minutes) I gave up the fiddlywork and adopted a more laissez faire attitude to this.

I am thinking if I do any more of these, which I most likely will just to get the feel of the different paints, I will be going for speed and single coats for starters. Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead! Let ‘er rip! These minis would not get painted any other way, so whatevah!

I mean, it went so fast I don’t even remember quite which colours I used here. Was it gulliman or darkoath flesh? Was is snakebite or gore-grunta fur? Camo or militarum on the hair? I know it was Templar Black on the leggings, and Iyanden Yellow on the staff. The rest eludes me. This was a fast paint job.

I did some details with regular paint, such as the eyes , the knees and the knife. The rest is constrast on white.

I did however learn once and for all, that contrast is shiny. She looks positively wet in this picture. On the other hand, one of the problems I have earler had with this type of older Bones is that the detail is soft and shallow, and easily gets obscured by regular paint. Especially when using unthinned paint and several coats for coverage. The contrast does away with all that sort of thing as it is so thin, and actually brings out details I for one have not seen before. (Just like a wash, fancy that!)

So this mini looks perfectly fine considering the amount of effort that did not go into it. Also it shows that contrast paints can work on thinner, shallower minis than the GW chubbies they usually are shown on.

The Prophet of the New Path vs The Defender of the Old Faith. Who will win? Or will their lovemakingup beget a Genesis-like bastard with the power of the Word?

77121 Liela, Dark Elf Wizard

Bones 1 Core set, 2012, Dark Elf subset

Reaper Miniatures

Sculpted by Werner Klocke

Made in Bonesium PVC

30mm base.

available from reapermini.com both in Bones and in Metal. The metal one is way more detailed.