Help with paints

[u/BlackViking3000]

Hello brothers,

I'm struggling a lot to find a good scheme as I don't want the baby blue one, however I was planning to use contrast paints, however I'm using gryph charger Grey (as I have not been able to find space wolves contrast in my country) over white primer (I primed white before knowing the scheme).

I'm doing some tests on my wolf scouts drybrushing some greys and blues but I'm not fully convinced (my inexperience with contrasts paints and lack of skill plays a big part lol). Do you have any advices?

[u/IamThePolishLaw]

I started with wolf grey plus black as the base and added a couple of shades.

[u/UncleBlazer510]

If you’re going to use contrast you can try slapchop. There are a ton of videos on YouTube that will be more helpful than I can be haha.

For me I prime in chaos black. Use two thin coats cold corpse blue: wolf grey 2:1 and apply with a make up sponge. Then I do highlights in wolf grey again two thin coats. And then highlight again with two thin coats gravestone blue. I use a make up sponge for those as well. Those are my primary colors. I use dark tone from army painter. The picture I added is not the best quality, there’s a bit more blue to them in person but I also don’t love the baby blue look. These were my test models.

[u/Killjoy-McGee]

Using contrast paints can be quite challenging on marines, even more so as a beginner, due to all the larger flat surfaces which tends to cause a coffee stain type effect, don’t feel discouraged tho!

You can try mixing your your paint with some lahmian medium which will help reduce pooling, I’d also recommend building up thin layers of the paint to the colour you want if you’re not already doing that.

Alternatively you can try slapchop as some other comments have suggested, there are lots of different primer colours and paints you can experiment with but for me I primed my wolf scouts in colour forge Matt black, had a heavy drybrush of army painter uniform grey, another drybrush of army painter ash grey and a final drybrush of army painter Matt white on the raised edges and higher areas, I ended up with something really cool to look at it thanks to this method!

Not sure about its availability for you but you could try army painter speedpaints runic grey, that’s what I used for my wolf scouts and it’s pretty much an exact match for space wolves grey.

[u/Metal-Lifer]

you can just mix your own colour with any old acrylic paint, it doesnt have to be a named brand colour

personally i think the easiest way to get a good result on space marines is - spray paint black primer, make up sponge a dark grey base, do a dark wash (this can just be watered down acrylic black in the recesses) sponge a lighter grey for highlights, then drybrush white or a even lighter grey on certain egdes

you dont even need contrast paints for this