Has anyone mixed Contrast paints with metallic pigments?

[Impervious]

Hello, I'm about to start stripping and re-painting a bunch of used minis to start a Blood Angels army.  I've been looking around for inspiration on how to paint these minis, and I absolutely love the effect I've seen that that the contrast paints provide for the time invested in it, so I want to try to do a significant portion of my painting with this technique with the goal of saving time in mind.  However, I'm not entirely sold on the colour itself.  I was hoping to give the minis a bit of a metallic finish, and from what I've seen, the best way to do that would require using a metallic basecoat or use a metallic below the contrast paint. 

 

My plan so far is to use a Zenithal highlight to help create shadows and hilights as well.  I intend to use a zenithal spray with my air brush (black primer, then lightly spray 3 more layers, consisting of a medium grey spray from about 45 degrees below level, alight grey spray 45 degrees above level, and a very quick white spray directly above, to provide a smooth transition to help this effect, although I'm going to test this to see how much benefit this provides over using fewer sprays).  I was then considering a very thinned down black wash over the entire model to darken recesses only at this point.  To get the metallic tinge, I was expecting to need to use a thinned down metallic (to not overwhelm the zenithal spray) on the armour, and then use the contrast paint overtop of that.  I'd go over the deepest recesses only with a black wash to make sure the recesses stayed dark, and then would pick out all of my details from there. 

 

I'm wondering if I could speed this up a bit by mixing some metallic pigments straight into the contrast paint.  I'm sure I'll experiment with this before I dig in fully, but I was wondering if anyone has tried doing something like this already and could provide some tips or tricks learned?  I'm not expecting to win any painting competitions, but at the same time I do want these to look respectable on the tabletop.  And I have a lot of models to do for this army.....

[Rik Lightstar]

I think the quickest and most efficient way to do this would be to do your airbrush work with metallic paints.

 

For Blood Angels Red contrast for example I'd go for something like

 

-Black undercoat

-Brass 90° angle leaving just the really deep recesses

-Gold 45° angle for the bulk of the raised areas

-Chrome/Aluminium from directly above

 

As your Zenithal layers

 

Then use Blood Angels Red with plenty of Contrast medium, about 50:50 and maybe a couple of coats.

 

You can give some further depth then with Carroburg Crimson in the recesses if desired.

 

Rik

[quasistellar]

What I have done with some success is to zenithal with metallics.  I use Vallejo Metal Color Steel (a very dark silver) over black primer, then do the zenithal with a silver mid tone like Iron Hands Steel.  I then hit everything with Nuln Oil Gloss, waited for that to dry, and then drybrushed edges with Vallejo Model Air Chrome (very bright silver).

 

I THEN went over this with contrast.  Had a pretty satisfying effect with the green I used (I think it was Ork Flesh?) for my stormcast.

[Impervious]

My main goal of trying to incorporate the metallic pigments with the contrast paint was so I could take advantage of the zenithal highlighting on things that are not metallic on the models.  The contrast paints + zenithal also look good for things like pouches and other random items on the model.  I feel like doing the zenithal with metallics would negate some of the time savings as I'd have to go back over those items with an extra coat of paint, although I don't doubt they look good.  I'll definitely give these suggestions a go though.

[Arkhanist]

I've also done the zenithal method with increasingly light vallejo metal color metallics (though not the contrast step), and it's definitely the easiest way to do it - metallics will drown out a pre-existing black->white zenithal. You could also do an acrylic red ink or 'candy' airbrush colour over metallic zenithal as a cheaper method per ml, but Contrast does also work nicely for that effect.

 

Here's an example of blood angels red airbrushed over straight gold, from this video - you can imagine the extra depth doing it with zenithal metallics would do.

 

 

FWIW, there's so little area on a marine that's not armour (or black casings, like the gun) it's not worth stressing about getting a zenithal on the pouches etc. They tend to get shielded by the rest of the body/arms anyway, so you have to finish them by hand even with zenithal priming the model. The one exception i gues would be robed figures like the new bladeguard, but that's why masking was invented!

Edited July 16, 2020 by Arkhanist

[jaxom]

The Gryph-charger Orange on Lead Belcher was my favorite from that video.

[Fajita Fan]

BA red over gold is gorgeous, terradon turquoise over silver is great too.

 

I’m doing contrasts over silver primed AT knights and I’ll post my WIP tonight. I’m a very very very slow painter.