The Citadel paint range exploded with colour last month, as eye-popping new Contrasts and reformulated Shades hit the shelves. Since we’ve had some time to get familiar with the newcomers, we challenged members of the Warhammer Community team to use their new paints in strange and interesting ways. Here’s what they came up with.
Ben Galler
Magnus the Red sports a wealth of textures, from feathered plumage and flowing cloth to smooth horns and shining armour. Ben’s tackled the task with a variety of Contrast paints, painting the Daemon Primarch’s vibrant skin with Doomfire Magenta and tinting metallic areas with Aeldari Emerald and Asurmen Blue – painted over a gold basecoat – to give them an almost ethereal gleam.
Steve Harris
Steve layered Briar Queen Chill and the newly improved Nuln Oil over a bright Stormhost Silver basecoat for a metallic Contrast tint – to give his Sisters of Silence armour with a cool tone and a steely appearance.
Emma Robinson
Emma’s Tzaangors have a vibrant, old-school colour scheme that uses Contrast for almost everything, from their pastel skin to their earthy horns – she’s even used layers of Contrast paint to give a metallic look to their golden weapons and trim.
By transitioning from a wash of Bad Moon Yellow to Ironjawz Yellow and Nazdreg Yellow, and then sharply highlighting with pure White Scar, Emma’s created a reflective and gleaming appearance for the gold surfaces – even though no metallic paints were used.*
James Rose
James created a spectacular feathered rainbow on his Lord of Change by thinning his Contrast paints right down to a glaze consistency with Contrast Medium. Then he applied lots of thin layers onto his Greater Daemon, slightly overlapping layers of Celestium Blue, Dreadful Visage, Sigvald Burgundy, Karandras Green, and more to retain vibrant paint colours while building up a smooth, ‘wet blend’ gradient between each hue.
Daniel Veress
There are many ways to paint the Alpha Legion’s distinctive metallic blue-green armour, and here Daniel covered the wide armoured panels of his Leviathan Dreadnought quickly and easily, with a thinned coat of Kroxigor Scales over a Leadbelcher base. Thinning the Contrast helps it spread out evenly on such wide panels, keeping the finish free of blotches.
How have you been using the new Citadel Shade and Contrast paints so far? Show us your work at our Twitter and Facebook pages, and see if you can come up with some wild new techniques we’ve never seen before.
* Warhammer+ subscribers can find in-depth guides to glazes and painting non-metallic metals on Citadel Colour Masterclass.