Figure 1: The dead walk, now with more color!

Another month has passed and I am pleased to report that significant progress has been made since last I wrote. As you can see from the image above a few miniatures have received that most coveted of attentions! Receiving their respective coats of paint!

I thought a lot about how I wanted to tackle the massed hordes of zombies I have to get through 50 some minis and I ultimately settled on using contrast paints to hopefully make short work out of this large amount of models. Having yet to dip my toes into using Contrast as the predominant paint on my miniatures this seemed like the perfect opportunity to try this product out and add another hobbying skill to my arsenal.

To begin with, I polled some of my hobbying peers and got some recommendations from them on how best to use these paints. I received a few small pointers but ultimately I was pointed to this video by the famed Duncan Rhodes:

Figure 2: A succinct and pointed primer on using contrast paints curtesy of Duncan Rhodes Painting Academy.

Having primed my horde of miniatures in Grey Seer undercoat, and watched the aforementioned very helpful video, I popped open my newly acquired spread of contrast paints and gave it a go.

Figure 3: My undead collection so far. Zombies undercoated in Grey Seer Primer, and the remaining undead figures given a Zenithal base coat using rattle cans. (And some Colonial British Redcoats getting slightly nervous about all the undead behind them. Seen in the bottom left of the picture.)

To put it plainly, the use of Contrast paints is quite simple and very satisfying. Armed with a simple knowledge of how to use these Contrast paints one can accomplish a quality paint job on a large number of miniatures in a short amount of time. With this in mind, I am happy to report that the advertising promises made by Games Workshop at the launch of this product line are quite in line with the products actual performance. Additionally, I love how seamlessly the paints blend together, being more runny by their nature, one, with very little wet blending experience, can accomplish good looking color transitions with a few strokes of the brush. Here are a couple pics showing off the end result. Do bear in mind I painted all six of these miniatures from start to finish in less than an hour. And now with a grasp of how these paints work and what sort of look I’m going for I’m sure I’ll be even faster on the rest of the zombies moving forward.

Figure 4 & 5: Some close up shots of my test scheme models only using contrast paints on the figure itself.

I would recommend Contrast paints for hordes of common units. While I don’t think I will venture to use Contrasts in any large way on my characters or more unique models I now can understand the place this type of product has in the larger hobbyists arsenal. These paints took what would normally be weeks worth of work and reduced it down to what will be a solid afternoon or two of painting.

In closing, I did manage to get another model completed, one of the familiars for my force. This served as a sort of test model where I tried out a couple shades of green and yellow. These colors will make up the primary colors of my force, reflecting the royal colors of the Grand County of Stirland. This was a quick paint job and turned out quite to my liking.

Figure 6: A loyal familiar ready to serve his dark masters whims…

Looking forward to next month I am aiming to have all 50 of the zombies complete and begin learning how to best utilize the Zenithal base coat I gave to my other miniatures. A Zenithal base coat is another of those hobby techniques that I have heard much about, but again I have never dived into.

So, until we meet again, happy hobbying and Carthago delenda est.