Painting: High Contrast Style

As I've been posting some of my Carnevale miniatures recently I had a few people asking about the technique I was using to paint up the models. I thought it would be useful to write up a quick guide I could refer to so I didn't need to keep typing it up.

The method is very straight forwards and works on the basic theory that the steeper the gradient of dark to light you apply the contract paints over the more the highlighting effect stand out. The recommended method for using contrast paints is to put them over a white / bone undercoat and then to let the paint do all the work. I'd tried that method and wasn't entirely happy with it. I've also used the contrast paints over the top of a normal base colour as a kind of ink wash, that works well and gives a nice bright look. This method is more of a grim or dulled down style which I also really like the look of.

Most of the time is actually spent getting the model ready to paint so I start with a blank undercoat and then work up through progressively lighter greys.

The last dry brush is with white. The model is then ready to paint. Contrast paints will manage to colour even the darkest surface a bit so most colours will even show on black or near black. 

At this stage I just pick the colours out and work through the model until they are all done, it's surprising quick as you are essentially just filling in the areas with the colour required. Once I've put all the colours on I then apply the metal's which I normally shade with a black ink. I don't put any ink or further highlights on the model.

On these models I also used some rust paint from Army Painter to dirty up the armour. For the metal parts I try to almost dry brush the larger areas and leave some of the black to grey base showing so I don't get a large area of bright metal.

In order to make the most of this method you need plenty of areas with raised detail to catch the lighter paints, but it does also work with larger models with flat areas as you can see on the Forge Father model from Deadzone. I also chose to use Gryph-Charger Grey on the weapons to give a metallic feel rather than an actual metallic paint.  

Here are a few more examples of models I've painted using this method.