Making Your Own Contrast Paints In Slaanesh Colours

I wanted to paint this Slaaneshi daemon steed in bright pastel colours, turquoise and pink. I wanted to use contrast paints for a quick, decent looking job on a model surface well suited with scales, hair and ribs. Unfortunately, contrast paints don't exist in these colours but fear not because one can make one's own.

You need just three ingredients:

The first is a matt acrylic medium. I used Liquitex but the brand is not important. Acrylic medium looks and rather behaves like PVA 'white' glue. As an aside, it is very good for sticking printed material to models as it tends not to cause the print to 'run'.

Matt acrylic medium is goopy so after putting some in your mixing palette you need to dilute it down - and this is where an acrylic Flow Improver comes in. Add flow improver and stir until the mixture is properly runny to Contrast paint levels. Again, any brand will do.

Step three is to add pigment, in this case from Vallejo acrylic paints. Do not add too much. Put a bit in and stir well and repeat until there is a nice runny contrast paint.

And that's it.

The model above was painted using just these methods. The flow improver causes the paint to dry slowly so one can mix enough to paint a whole unit in one go.

Tamiya Clear Red vs Citadel Touchstone Blue

I recently acquired some Tamiya Clear acrylic paints and was well impressed so, as I have Malign Sorcery bits and pieces to paint, I decided to put Tamiya head to head with Citadel.

First off, I sprayed the pieces Humbrol Metallic Silver as both an under coat and a base coat. This is an excellent paint which covers well in one go straight onto the plastic.

The Tamiya paint is much thinner and runnier than the gloopier Citadel and is much easier to paint onto the model. Unlike the Citadel, the Tamiya is often used by modellers through an airbrush to freshen up the colours on a model.

The Citadel paint was a pain. I put on two coats and it tended to form thick globules in recesses while running completely off raised areas. Even after two coats I had to do two extended touch ups and it still didn't look quite right.

In contrast, the Tamiya went on in one coat and only needed a couple of touch ups in raised areas.

Army Painter gloss varnish, painted on completed the build.

And after all that the Tamiya still looks better!

Tamiya make a complete range of these paints in all the main colours - I shall definitely be buying.

Miniature Wargames Free Figures, Wild West Exodus

This months issue of Miniature Wargames has free figures from the Wild West Exodus game, now owned by Weyland Games.

I don't know much about the game but it seems to be steampunk using 30 mm (?) plastic models. These two retail for £17 the pair.

The models do not immediately impress. The plastic is one of those semi-resin types but does stick together easily with standard plastic glue. The models are fairly adjustable and lend themselves to a degree of customisation.

And the finished model is actually pretty decent - much better than the bits would suggest.

As these were free, I decided to lay around a bit with a different painting technique.

I undercoated them in Humbrol aluminium spray, which gives a metallic light grey and rather grainy appearance, and then coasted them with Tamiya Clear Red.

I was very pleased with the result: see above.

Adding a little Tamiya Clear Yellow overpaint gave some pleasing  highlights. All I did to finish off was to paint in a few details in Vallejo brass.

I will use this technique again. Next time I might try Humbrol silver or gold as the undercoat.

Bolt Action - SS Ahnenerbe Detachment Daemon

Painting up a 'Daemon Aircraft' for my Bolt Action SS Ahnenerbe Detachment.

This is the base undercoat.

You first undercoat black, and then spray Humbrol multi-effect over the top in thin layers. I used amethyst.

It's a bit dificult to see on static pictures, but the colour changes with the angle of the sunlight, like with modern car paint.

Probably will need another coat or two but getting there.

The colour shimmer.

Warlord Games Army Painter Varnish

Warlord Games Dark Tone varnishes are a superb way of churning out acceptable painted models quickly.

The above photo shows six models painted identically in fast, bland colours - no shading, highlights or layering. But two of them have been treated with Dark Tone: can you tell which, children?


When you are churning out forty ranked axe-dwarfs for a regiment this is a Godsend.

I don't dip the models but paint the varnish on, thinning with white spirit as necessary. However careful you are the lid will clog up and so expect to throw away about half. The pigment sinks to the bottom of the varnish but can be lifted up by the brush. I use cheap children's paint brushes.

Coat D'Arms Metallics

I am running out of my stored Citadel metallic green, 'Enchanted Green', that I used for my Alpha Legion. I have discovered that the Coat d'arms paints ARE the old Citadel range of two back. So if you want to colour match an old paint or use one of the great coloured metallics that Citadel never replaced, you know where to go.

Painting Spearmen

A couple of weeks ago  had an interesting chat with John Treadaway, whose views on many wargame issue are Sympatico with my own, about painting 'spearmen'.

In most wargame armies the bulk of the troops are the ordinary spearmen, the guys trailing a pike or carrying a musket. That is a lot of models to paint in similar colours. A block of soldiers are best given a coherent paint theme, even if they lacked it in real life, because it looks better on the wargame table and is useful for identifying units in games where the individual soldiers spread out a bit.

I confess, I am not a fan of the 'White Dwarf' paint techniques for wargaming models, as opposed to display models. You know the sort of thing, models painted by commercial artists in intricate detail to look good in close up photography. Please don't misunderstand me. I admire the skill of these artists immensely but their techniques are damn all use to wargamers for three reasons.

1. Most of us lack the artistic talent to recreate the techniques no matter how hard we try.

I can kick a ball but all the training in the world won't turn me into David Beckham.

2. Even if you could paint like a commercial artist, the results don't look particularly good on the wargame table.

The styles are too fussy, with too much detail. An army of display models look like a legoland house when viewed from a couple of metres away: all those colours and shades.

3. You don't have time.

And this is the final killer. How long would it take to paint the cannon-fodder, the major constituent of your army?

For example, I picked up a couple of packs of Westwind WWII British Army metal rifleman to populate my Bolt Action British force. That's them above.

I needed to paint them in a couple of evenings so this is the technique I have evolved over forty years of wargaming. Please, please, I am not setting  up as some sort of artistic guru - I have all the artistic skills of a hagfish - but I am an experienced wargamer.

So this is how I paint 'spearmen'.

1. Clean, assemble, stick everything together.
2. Spray white: Vallejo white undercoat is good but there are plenty of others.
3. Cover the whole  model with a sloppy diluted colour of the primary cover - Khaki in this instance - so it forms natural shading.
4. Paint in the additional colours: in this case flesh, mid-green (helmets), silver (bayonets) and dark brown (rifles, boots and base).
5. When properly dry, cover with a diluted dark brown wash.
6. White glue static grass to the base (or whatever) and give a light coating of Vallejo acrylic matt varnish.

Quick, simple, and minimal talent required but the models look OK en masse on the wargames table.

And then you go wargaming, which is the point of the exercise. Yes?

Fings Wot I Like: Textured Paint

I have just discovered textured spray paints by Rust-Oleum. This one is called Desert-Bisque, but there is quite a range. I tried it on some D-Day plastic beach defences. It creates instant beach/ desert/ rough concrete in two light coats.

Amazing! So darn easy. A lick o' paint and I will have two great beach defences.

New GW Washes

   I had assumed the new Citadel washes were simply a name change by the marketing jerks but the new washes do actually seem to work better with less pooling as they dry. Look at the uniforms on these little polyethylene toy soldiers and the ammunition box shading.

Power Sword - Chameleon Nanoflakes

This is my first experiemnt to coat a power sword with Chameleon Nanoflakes, again using a clear varnish as the medium (Citadel Gloss). It is very diffcult to photograph this in late December even at midday as we have no sunlight - the the system depends for its colour on the exact angle light strike the plane of the surface.

Vevertheless I have attempted to shoot the model holding it in one hand in the window, while wielding the camera set on macro-close up in the other. Very far from ideal. I rotated the model to give some idea of the effect - which is inevitably very subdued by the dim grey light coming through the window.

Please scroll down.

Blade Runner Spinner - Chameleon Nanoflakes

This is a 28ml resin model of a Blade Runner Spinner. In order to give it an 'energy field' effect, I used acrylic varnish over the base paint saturated with Chameleon Nano-Flakes. They are intended to be used in a clear medium over black but I used it over deep blue and brown ochre. The micro-flakes are titanium compound covered silicon and cause a colour shimmer over the paint from copper to emerald green depending on the light interaction. It strikes me that the flakes could be great for power swords, holo-fields, force fields and so on. My next experiment will be to put them into the paint.

Crappy Mini or Not

I stumbled across this page, which is part of the minipainting guild site, while surfing.

http://minipainting-guild.net/crap/craphome.html

It is about reclaiming and renovating old minis. Here is a reworked Princess Leia by Harry Colquhoun.

Spay on Mud - A Review

I have bought a bottle of spray on mud used by railway modellers. See below.

I am very impressed. It is a fine spray of die, which is water-wipable, at least for a while. The flow is easy to control so can be directed onto set areas, like tracks. It dries in about sixty seconds. This is a really fast way of putting mud on the tracks. I have used it for my 1/72 Eastern Front models: see pics.

The tray at the bottom shows what a heavy application looks like - really dirty, oily mess. Luvverly.

The picture at the top is a PzII. Germany were still using a few as a battle tank for Barbarossa, although it was rapidly phased out in favourof the PzIII. Opposite is a Russian T34/76, which was in production at about the same time. Every modern tank can trace its pedigree back to the T34, simply the finest tank of its era. Shame Stalin had all the designers, engineers, and instructors shot as dangerous radical thinkers.

Dealing with Frosting

Dealing with Frosting

One of the problems with Citadel Satin Varnish is that it 'frosts', i.e. deposits a white crystaline material on the mini - often in pretty patterns - see below.

The cause is uncertain because it doesn't happen every time, even with the same can. Folk lore has it that air humidity plays a part but it is difficult to see how this can apply to Southern England in September (Temperature about 15C).

I posted the pic below a couple of days ago and received useful advice from Da Masta Cheef on removing it by the application of a little olive oil.

This got me thinking (I am a research scientist, after all). I tried a little test. I applied a little water to the gun shield and sure enough the frosting disappeared, only to reappear when the water dried. The varnish must have a crystaline irregular structure that appears white on the macro scale. The water fills the irregular gaps and presents a flat surface to light reflected off the model - so no white appearance.

Anything that achives the same effect will remove the frosting. In the search for a permanent cure, I tried spraying the model with Humbrol varnish, designed, I assume, for enamal paints. It gives a strong, thick, permanent finish. I would advise only doing this on well cured acrylic paint (but acrylic varnishes would probably work just as well).

As you can see from the pic above, it works tolerably well.

Air Brush

Another burning hot day in Kent, the heat, the sweat, the rabbits.

So I got the airbrush out of its winter store. The mem-sahib has banned its use in the house for some inexplicable reason. Women are so unreasonable.

I use a Badger single-action - going for simple and high quality. The compressor is a must. Compressed air cans are another name for a refrigorator.

I had forgotton what a great finish you get with an airbrush. I diluted the acrylic Citadel paint with tapwater and Cap Plan screenwash (the blue stuff).

Army Painter Dip on Wargames Factory Zombies

A group of Wargames Factory Zombies painted using Army Painter Dip, £18 for 250ml. Dip is a can of what looks like floor varnish. I used Strong Tone, the medium choice.


1. Spray the sprues with a tough cellulose brown.


2. Assemble and stick on a base to give you something to hold.


3. Flat paint in a few bold colours.


4. Dip them upsidedown in the can of Army Painter and place them on a tray to dry; this whole procedure is best undertaken out of doors, or in a shed etc.


And this is the finished product. The figures can be highlighted at this stage but I decided to leave them. Zombies are supposed to be mucky. The figures are quite shiny - Army Painter is basically varnish and stain. This could be taken off with a light drybrush but it will probably tone down with time.

Now they need permanent basing.