(Mostly)-thinned Contrast Paints provide a “good enough” discount marble effect.
Starting off June’s models in truly underwhelming fashion today – with the set of pillars from the 2016 CMON Dungeon Crawler boardgame Massive Darkness. By all accounts, the game is supposed to be pretty decent, though I haven’t yet opened it to play it. Instead, I’ve finished off the pillars – to be used as pillars in whatever game I happen to be playing that needs pillars. Because pillars.
Serving suggestion.
Paint was pretty straightforward, cleaned up, glued to round 25mm bases with a washed glued underneath to give them a little more stability. They were sprayed with the new GW “Grey Seer” and given a coat of thinned-down Gryph-Charger Grey Contrast paint in a bit of an experiment. With a satin varnish, the slightly-greenish hue and subtle tide marks give them a nice enough marble-ish effect, though a far cry from a “proper” marble look – they worked well enough as a Contrast Paint experiment. I decided not to dirty-up the bottoms of them, so that they can be used as either indoor or outdoor pillars.
Azazel's Bitz Box. 
A “far cry” from proper marble? Okay, I have seen you do a lot more for marble effects, but they look great. Very nice terrain pieces!
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Thanks! Well, I skipped entirely over hand-painting veins through the marble, as I might for something a bit more ornate (and in less than a set of 18!) But as an experiement with the new paints to give a marble-like effect, I’m pretty happy – so great to hear that you also think they worked well!
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They look great mate! The marble effect looks spot on to me dude – interesting use of the new paints!
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Thanks Alex – I see the new paints as a new bit of kit for the painting toolkit, so I’m not going to be beholden to using them “properly” by any means. I’ve got a few more experimental uses (and some more “proper” within those) coming up…
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Looking forward to it mate
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Very nice!
Where’s that Spartan shield from?
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Thanks Angelos. It’s from Scibor miniatures. I’ve got a fair few bits of Greek and Roman-themed conversion bits from them over the years.
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Interesting to see the new contrast paints put to use in different ways.
I’ve just grabbed a few myself; I’ve heard they work well over silver to produce a good coloured metallic look, and now I know they make a nice marble effect too – thanks!
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Yeah, I saw the metallic effects as well. I’ve just got to do an experiment on that as well before I go the whole hog with a squad I’ll be priming today…
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They look solid.
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Thanks Thomas – they won’t win any awards but they look good enough for the tabletop!
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Nice – I find marble can be a real challenge so a quick and easy way to get it looking good is worth knowing about that. Those certainly look the business.
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Thanks. I’m now wondering what sort of similar effect I could get on a vehicle with them? Though a Marbled-effect Rhino doesn’t really fit into any of my plans! 😉
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Looks great as a table-top level marble effect! Maybe not up to display piece or competition standards, but for something like this, it’s perfect.
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Absolutely my thinking. The chances of me going all-in on the marbling effects on 18 boardgame pillars was slim to none, so having a play with the new paints was a much more realistic proposition! 😉
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Look very good to me and I like that you achieved a very good look with minimal fuss.
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Thanks mate – minimal fuss is the name of the game for pieces like this!
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As people above have said, perfectly serviceable marble effect quick and easy. Good job!
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I’m all about the cheap and easy! Wait.. I mean…
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They look great- very effective in fact- on first glance I thought the technique you used would be far more involved.
Cheers,
Pete.
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Yeah, the uneven staining and (thinned out) “drip” effects turned out to be a blassing in disguise once they were done!
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These look great and have the right level of detail for terrain pieces. I would imagine painting marble properly would be really time consuming and to get these all done to a high standard would be a bit boring so I think you found the right level of work versus reward here.
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Thanks mate – that’s really what every model is – the balance between time and standards, and where you draw the line for each piece, which for me is largely based on how important the model is, the sculpt quality – and frankly – how much I like the model! 😉
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That is well said and even people who are lauded as painters are a combination of skill and a willingness to put more time into a model than others in my opinion. I know that is what has set my work apart from others in my hobbying career 🙂
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There’s a legendary quote attributed to Leonardo Da Vinci that goes “Art is never finished, only abandoned.”
Truer words never spoken.
Or written. 🙂
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I like them. I’m curious how long it took to paint them all with the contrasts?
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Uh…. I can’t remember. Easily under an hour, and that was futzing about, adding medium to each of them when I figured out that they looked better with the stuff thinned on the pillar shafts and generally doing the whole “hmm.. how will I do this?” thing as they were my first experiment with the stuff.
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