Contrast Paints and How We Talk About Them

Peter and I have become fond of watching actual plays of wargames, something neither of us ever foresaw. We're those cranky people who don't "get" why people watch video games on Twitch and such. Even roleplaying streams, a la Critical Role, being baffling in their appeal, despite their analog nature and that one of my best friends, Steven Lumpkin, spent time as a RPG streamer of some repute.

Our favorite channel is Rerolling Ones, a group of friends who exclusively play Age of Sigmar. They're clearly fond of one another, enthusiastic, laid back, and sometimes legitimately very funny.

They always open with a short, goofy skit before the battle starts. In one of the recent episodes, the skit was about Games Workshop's still new contrast paints. In it, one of the crew, Brent, is painting (very well) a squig with contrast paints. The ringleader of the group, Shoe, walks up and sneers at him, saying "you're not gonna win a Golden Demon with contrast paint". Brent, wounded and realizing that, no, he never is going to win a Golden Demon with contrast paint, drops the squig in mock mental anguish.

It's funny, but it also got me thinking about how people talk to one another about contrast paints, as well as how Games Workshop talks to us about them. Because there really has been an unneeded snobbery about them, but GW also did some very strange things in communicating just what they are and how they're supposed to work, which has all combined to create an irritating sort of discourse at the margins of fandom, gatekeeping, and corporate teasing of expectations.

A few bullet point notes:

1. Some of the better painters have really been snotty about them. I'm assuming you're familiar, but if you're not, contrast paints are a suspension somewhere between a normal ink and a paint, with a lot of medium to make them viscous. You go thick (but more on this in the next point) in order to cut out some of the stages of normal painting.
   
   It's a very different system to traditional minis painting, though it can be easily combined. Importantly, it's not really for the people who are already painting miniatures, at least not as a core group. It's for people who don't usually paint at all. Because, for the most part, it really is just slather it on and get fair to good results.
   
   Despite the fact that the contrast paints aren't for regular painters, there was a weird combination of feeling threatened and looking down on them. No, you won't win a Golden Demon award, but when the hell was that the point? Basically never.
2. Games Workshop advertised the contrast paints with the tagline "one thick coat", a play on their Warhammer TV painting team's catchy repetition in each video that you do two thin coats for traditional painting. It's clever, since it keeps the advertising campaign as a sort of internally consistent rhetorical narrative. This is how GW talks inside itself, this is how they are now talking to you. It's become instantly memeable over at places like Reddit, where the dichotomy between years of two thin coat training and the 180 in approach lends itself to all sorts of irony.
   
   
   
   The problem is that it's not actually strictly true. One thick coat of contrast paint does the job most of the time, but, having played with them a lot, sometimes you have to go thinner, or layer it, or use a smaller brush than GW's recommended shade brush.
   
   This ended up having a curious effect on some of the test videos I watched in the leadup. Experienced painters were taking the big shade brush and trying to dab huge blobs of contrast paint on small parts of a miniature, like an armpit. This absolutely did not work, and you could hear the frustration at the results.
   
   What was so weird about it was that these were mostly experienced painters and I was left wondering just how powerful suggestion is if they were going with the one thick coat mantra no matter what or where, despite knowing it wasn't going to work. Even weirder, the response tended to be "contrast paints are okay I guess" or "I'm really disappointed in these", rather than altering their approach.
   
   (For what it's worth, I have some slightly ratty red handle GW fine detail brushes from way back in the day and they work marvelously for hitting smaller areas with the extra volume you need with contrast paints. Compared to GW's much better line of brushes today, the fine detail brush feels practically huge and carries more paint, accordingly.)
3. It really is a different way of painting. Youtube painter Miniac compared it to watercolor painting, where the paint pools in spots and you play with that for effect. Sometimes you leave it. Sometimes you wipe it up. Regardless, it does not behave like traditional miniatures paint.
   
   I like it, quite a lot, but it's not for everything. You're going to want to paint metallics with actual metallics. Your hero characters might need more detail. Some colors work better than others (I'm not sold on the dark purple, for instance). Sometimes you'll still want to highlight or drybrush.
   
   Maybe more importantly, it's not for one technique, the one GW's simple, meme-worthy ad campaign states. The super thick one coat from the large brush isn't the only thing these paints require. It's been fascinating watching the painting public come to grips with the gap between advertising which was effective (the paints sold out quickly) but hyperbolic and reality.