GW Contrast Paints on 15mm Horses

 My first purchase of the GW Contrast paints was with painting horses in mind. There are times when I quite like painting them but when you have a hundred or more to do for an army, short cuts are helpful.

My first go with them left me unimpressed. The colours I used didn't produce much noticeable difference in shades, so I ended up doing as much highlighting as before. Their flow did, however make it quicker to apply the base coat and there were less times where a deeper groove in the detail was missed.

I did use them for other figures, and once I had more experience I decided to try again with the horses.

The main difference with my earlier attempt was that I now tried to dilute some of the darker colours. This made a great deal of difference and took better advantage of the range of shades which could be produced.

I took some reference pictures of the various colours I used, largely so that I could remember. There are some colours (mostly more browns) which I have since bought and will also use.

The horses are all War and Empire, mostly from the Skythian range. Undercoat is Halfords white - I have tried GW primer as well but the Halfords is easier for me to get.

Wyldwood  Gore Grunta Fur  Basilicanum Grey  Black Templar

Skeleton Horde  Aggaros Dunes  Dark Oath Flesh  Gulliman Flesh

Cygor Brown - very dilute to undiluted

Other than diluting, these are the colours without any further highlights or washes. Some are better for horses than others but a bit of additional highlighting or washing has given a good range of horse tones with less work than I would normally need. 

Note, I have tried (not entirely successfully) to do a bit of white colour balancing, so tones will vary.

Darker colours can be achieved by applying more paint, without giving a noticeably thick coat. Black Templar, for instance, would need to be much darker for a black horse, but it is a very useful colour even if the rest of the horse is done with other methods. It gives a nice black for manes and points - the strength of the black can be adjusted easily to give a fade. The horse in the above picture ended up as a darker blue roan with some spotting.