Colouring in with contrast paints

By TomDecember 30, 2020

or, Contrast Paints vs Old Bones, continued.

A while ago I painted an old Bones model in contrast paint, just to see how it would turn out. Actually, not too shabby was the answer.

Now, the thing is that I have a couple of drawers full of minis that are undercoated all in white. These are mainly from the first Bones kickstarter and Drake the Dragon Wargame. (I don’t even remember why. Maybe I was all out of black primer spray or something.)

I have been rummaging a bit again, and been looking at these minis, to be reminded exactly why the old Bones 1 pc-type minis were consigned to the Drawers of Oblivion™ in the first place. Bendy. Soft. Shallow details. Faces without noses. Hands without fingers. Weapons made for poking around corners…, mould lines that are really diffucult to remove as they need to be carved off…and sometimes go through details.
They were doomed to stay there in Limbo forever as I never considered those models to be worth spending time on.

Well, I paint to relax. To get the sense of something done. I am not one of those that need every single mini to be the best they can be. That is for a very select few minis.

But I do like to have my models painted and on the shelf and not just undercoated and hidden away in some dark drawer. Even the ones that do not capture my imagination.

The Plan

So, what I have done for now, is to assign ten of my mini holders (=old glass paint jars with a big lump of blue tack on the lid) to “Project Colouring In”. This is a long term project where I select ten of the old white undercoated models, stick them on a mini holder each, and place these minis all over my painting desk. Every time I open a contrast paint, or even have some other paints left over on my palette, I will try to get some of it on to one or more of these models as well.

What usually happens when I have semi-painted models cluttering up my work space is that over time I get sick of the sight of them and make an effort to finish the offending models. So the idea is to get the older models painted in addition to whatever I am actually wanting to paint, simply by nickeling and dimeing them like this.

When one is done, I replace it on the mini holder with another of the old minis. In this way, I should ever so slowly manage to churn through the collection, if given enough time.

Maybe this whole plan will go the way of the shelf game (which is, the way of the dodo) and the partially painted minis will just go back in the drawers. But maybe not…and the plan might just about work. We shall see.

The key is to get some paint on the models and not be too fussy about anything. Laissez-faire! Sure, it’s lazy painting, so what? These are models that would never get painted otherwise. (And they still look better than Mage Knight prepaints. Admittedly, that is mainly because I care enough to paint the eyes.)

So anyway.

I did three last week. Here are seven more:

All are from the core set aka Vampire Pledge from the first Bones kickstarter. All are available from reapermini.com
They have mainly been painted with Citadel Contrast paints on a white undercoat. I have also used regular paints here and there for details, metals and touch-ups.

From left to right: