Reply To: Contrast Primers

[blinky465 17028xp 2]

I know everyone has been saying you don’t need a special primer – and it’s true, you don’t for contrast paints to do their basic job of adding colour and shade. *But* an actual primer paint (which has a rougher/key texture) does create a different, darker finish than on a smoother/glossier surface. I use both to achieve different effects – for a cloth-like texture, I’d put contrast paint over a “key” surface (rougher primer) – it creates a nice rich colour and nice, deep shades.

But if you give your model a quick cover of a smooth surface paint, or even a slight satin varnish coat, the contrast paint behaves slightly differently – you still get the nice deep shading, but on the very highest points, the paint pulls away, creating much lighter coloured highlights; you can use this effect for slightly shinier surfaces or to create “pop” without spending hours and hours on edge highlighting (personally I still like to add highlights but if you’re batch painting or looking to save time, contrast over a slightly smoother/glossier surface will give you colour, shading and basic highlights in one pass).

So yes, you don’t need special primer for contrast paints. But sometimes you might want to use one.

(I use Halfords matt black with a white zenith for about 90% of my models, but occasionally will paint areas or even entire models with a smooth off-white paint to get the highlight-and-shade-in-one-go finish).