I’ve always found speed paints/contrast paints or any one of the many variants available, a bit hit and miss. 

I jumped in when the big box of Army Painter’s Speedpaint Mega Set 2.0 was first available for pre-order. As I began to use them over the following months I became a little irritated.  The performance of the paints to achieve the much hyped “one coat over a primed mini gives you shadows, mid tones and highlights” effect turned out to be very dependent on the colour you were using. Some colours worked fine even brilliantly, others barely did the job unless you thinned them. Also I was a little disappointed that a couple of bottles were missing their mixing balls (and yeh I shook them, a LOT!) and a lot of them didn’t have the Speed Paint 2.0 with the descriptive colour name (I think it was about 19 out of the fifty had the new label).

Army Painter Nuclear Sunrise Speed Paint looking a little like chilli sauce.

There was also one colour nuclear sunrise which just didn’t look right the paint had dark speckles in it.  I probably should have contacted customer services but for 3 or 4 bottles out of 50, it just didn’t seem worth the hassle and I am useless at complaining. So I put it down to a few bumps in getting out a pre-order which I am guessing was heavily subscribed.

I have had the occasional success with using the paints. They can be great for larger minis, especially if they have a lot of detail and not a great many flat surfaces.  But I generally only use them when I am in a particular hurry for a table-ready mini. The Army Painter did excel with the metallics. They are just so good.

A couple of month’s ago (three at the time of writing – shit, it has been way too long without posting on my blog!) I watched a great video from The Mini Witch – Lyla Mev, testing the different speed paint techniques and it inspired me to have another try. So I dug out the make-up sponges I’d bought a while back and hadn’t really used, and put together a couple of minis one from the Wargames Atlantic Guards box and the second from the WA Villages box. Introducing the Watchman and the Witch of Teapots (that is almost a Hugh Cook novel title).

First steps, priming both the minis with Army Painter Warpaints Air: Matt Black Primer.

Then it was out with the make up sponge to add highlights with AP Warpaint Fanatic Ash Grey and AP Warpaints Brainmatter Beige. This one of my favourite off white colours and I have a couple of bottles to go before I try out the Fanatic version. 

I only managed to get a post worthy photo of the back of the Witch of Teapots. The back of the Watchman picture was awful.

Adding Colour

The witch is very much inspired by Granny Weatherwax so for her hat and robe I used Grim Black and Purple Swarm for her under robe, which is unlikely to be the proper name for the gament, but you know what I mean.

For the teapot I used a mix of Maize Yellow and Ancient Honey and for her boots and staff I used a brown – I can’t remember which one, there are a lot of browns in the set, which is a good thing. Brown is one of those colours you can never have too many variants of! Also not shown here I used some Occultist Cloak on her leggings.

I think I’ve said this in a previous post – I need to write down the colours I use in a project if I’m going to blog about it, but the best laid plans etc. So as far as I can remember, for the breast plate and tassets sword blade and the rest of his armour plus the metal parts of the lamp are all Broad Sword Silver with Holipte Gold for the pommel and crossguard of the sword, The feather was painted with Slaughter Red, the hat Royal robes, the tunic Purple Swarm and the cloak Ghille Dew, Then various browns for the belt, gloves, hair and beard,

I got carried away with the process at this point and didn’t remember to take more photos of each step. I really need a camera in my head!

The Finished Minis

And here they are! I did re-do the flesh tones with standard acrylics and worked on the watchmans lamp a little with normal paint and did a dark wash also on the watchman but otherwise all speed paint. I particularly like the way the watchman’s cloak turned out. It sort of has a weathered look about it.

The Witch of Teapots with trusty teapot and x-tra large twiglet.

So overall I am pleased with the results. The sponge does add highlights with a different quality than the drybrush which on some areas looks a lot smoother, but, as I think Lyla pointed out the sponges are not able to reach some parts of the mini. For that matter though, that can happen with drybrushing also, but not as much as the sponge method. When my smallest drybrush wont get in to a hard to reach area, I usually grab an old brush and snip of a chunk of the tip, being a synthetic brush user I have a lot of old brushes. Oh the curse of the hooky tip!

How do you get on with Speedpaints/contrast paints? Have you any tips to make them look awesome? Do you just totally hate them? Let me know in the comments!