So whilst browsing the Internet last night I came across a post from Spikey Bits : https://spikeybits.com/2022/02/before-you-get-mad-about-army-painter-speedpaint.html. Now I am on day three of my Speedpaints and yes I am using them like Contrast as no matter what people say, Speedpaints ARE a direct challenge to Contrast paint. This is why I am still working on them. Today I try some in 28mm miniatures…

So to answer some of the points in the article:

Just make sure you fully dry the paint before trying to apply another coat over it- like basically any other paint you use on your miniatures.

Okay so the 24 hours I left it wasn’t long enough… I will try 36 hours next time… as if!

If you want to apply a wash or acrylic paint on to Speedpaint even after it is dry, it’s probably worth sealing your miniature (aka matt coating it) before you do so. You don’t have to, but it’s just great for washes, and is really just a good practice in general.

Okay again, this is fine if you want to highlight or wash, but you are totally buggered if you need to overpaint an error or change your mind on a colour. Plus he states some people varnish between layers in case you don’t come back for a while… sorry but I am afraid mine just sit there on the shelf until I get back to them.

Further to this with Contrast there are so many videos out there of people highlighting, washing and adding details over the top of the paint… some mentioned a varnish between layers but not all.

As I said at the start I bought these, I have no axe to grind, well apart from the mettalics do my head in, but with these I want to give them a fair chance.

I did use them like Contrast because…errr that’s really what they are meant to be the same as. I am not exactly sure how else to use them.

I should have had an inkling though as GW had matching pots of paint to their undercoat sprays. These were there in case you overpainted by accident. AP have a bottle of medium to thin the paint, but don’t have base coat colours… inwill have to see if my home made medium will do the job, as the starter set doesn’t have any if the AP stuff.

So I think what we have going here is a divided opinion which is a bit like GW in general… fans and non fans banging their paint brushes against their chests and yodelling their war cries in their defence/hatred of the product.

In case you were wondering how is post is out midday… its because we have a long weekend on Shetland.

Later on, I will start on the 28mm pikes… I had better be really careful where I put the paint. With the ones already done I have painted the whole arm or leg red and then gone over this with white for a contrasting colour.

Hmm… so this evening I did a little experiment… yesterday I painted the flag on the unit red. Today I undercoated it white as if I was going to repaint it another colour….

It looked white when I left it, but came back to this… so I gave it another couple of coats and came back to a pink flag

It would seem like the rumours are true that the speedpaints are reactivated when something goes over the top of them. Now I might have been unlucky and something weird happened but that red was put in 24 hours prior.

So if I put the flag aside and go down my usual routine of slap the paint on and then shove some white on for hands and face…

It isn’t the best photo, but look at the face of the yellow and green chap in the foreground, it does seem to have a bit of a yellow tint to it. Sadly this is repeated on a number of the miniatures. Now my way of painting these is not the neatest and I will be the first to admit it, but mistakes happen. Contrast paint had colour matched undercoat in case one dropped a clanger and got paint where you shouldn’t.

I am actually disappointed with this aspect as it could be a game changer for me at least.

I came home to a new parcel this evening and inside was my Army Painter Speedpaints…

Now as I had some teeny Imperials to paint I thought I would give these a go on those. Meaning I test the paint as well as paint something I needed painting.

There were some useful colours for what I am doing with the Imperials…

They come in the Dropper bottles, now unless you have been living under a stone then you will know this already. This set also came with a free paint brush, which isn’t much use for 6mm miniatures as it is pretty big. The box also came with the usual AP painting leaflet and another one just on the Speedpaints.

So evidently I shake the bottle, complete with a pair of agitation  balls, and then remove the liquid from the top. I then shake it again to mix up the rest of the paint…here I met my first problem, the paint was there not some semi translucent medium. So I dropped some onto my high tech pallette…

I started with the red, as you can see from the tissue, there was no medium. So I did a bit of a drop from the bottle and frankly painted red on every six millimetre miniature I had undercoated. To be honest this was a concern of mine, there is the potential for a lot of waste. As you can see the other colours are a lot smaller in my pot.

With a bit of trial and error I got the hang of how much I needed, I still ended up nearly painting two units with the tiny pools of paint. Now the one thing I noticed was that these started to dry pretty quickly on my temporary palette.

The paint went on pretty much like the Contrast… I say pretty much as at this scale it is blobbed on…well it is by me. I will give something a bit bigger a go at a later date.

The colours seemed fine to be honest apart from the dark grey which didn’t really cover much, perhaps it needed a bloody good shake. The leather cover was all over the lid even after a quick shake. It wasn’t as dark as the Contrast leather colour, but it was still okay though. I actually like the purple more than the GW versions.

So what does it look like …

Speedpaints on the left and Contrast on the right. Both sides painted as badly as the other 😉.

So for my initial thoughts…

Cost wise ten pots of paint and a brush for £33.99, so just under £3.40 per pot.even less if you take a couple of quid off for a brush… Compare this to GW at £5.75 a pot on island – down to £5.25 on Amazon, but there is still a big saving

Coverage… at 6mm I am not noticing any difference apart from the colours mentioned above. More likely user error than the actual paint, but time shall tell.

There is loads of hype out there by various Youtubers waxing lyrical about how much better the Speedpaints are… they got sent free copies, I even offered to buy a couple of pots to test, but was told they had run out and I would have to wait, obviously my little blog wasn’t big enough for them.

Upon saying this, I am trying to be a bit more even handed as I spent my hard earned cash on them myself so have no feelings either way. I was going to buy a box to try, I just wanted to start trying them earlier.

So where do I stand. Price is good, way cheaper than GW Contrast paint.

Dropper bottles, for this style of paint is a big pain in the neck for me. I reckon I am going to waste a fair bit either through drying out or through putting too much on a palette. Once I printed my CONTRAST pot support, then I haven’t spilled a drop. It is so much easier taking it off the lid than dropping it onto a plate or something. The other annoying bloody thing with the Dropper bottles is paint splurge… this is where half the pot ends up in the lid when you shake it.

Ease of purchase. As you can imagine, living on an island sort of limits where I can get things from. We do have a shop that stocks GW paints, so I can easily pick up a new pot of Contrast. At present anything else is bought online, which can be a pain at times.

I am going to actually have to sit on the fence on this one. There are some advantages and disadvantages for both ranges, to be brutally honest though, if GW dropped their price then I don’t think I would actually even bother with the Speedpaints… so I suppose technically I have sort of sat on the Gw side of the fence for the time being.

Once I have had a proper play then I will see what I think, one concern I do have is that whe you go over the speedpaints then they reactivate… something to consider as well as have a play about with…

John Mentioned the Aith Cake fridge in a comment and it is somewhere I will get to eventually. If anyone wants to visit out lovely archipelago then I am happy to show you around… maybe now is not the best time…

Yep the plague has clobbered us here, now supposedly it is because we have a greater uptake of Lateral Flow testing so there is some skewing of the figures here, but it still seems pretty high and to be honest it has eventually got into my school population now… I think we are the last to get it, which isn’t a bad feat considering how much there has been around about us.

I did manage to get a bit of painting done yesterday and this evening…

I had a parent council meeting this evening otherwise I think I would have got them finished…

I am on a roll this evening and have managed to get the last two skirmish units from this…

To this…

If my calculations are correct ( and probably aren’t) it leaves this lot to do…

Come to think of it, I decided on the composition of the army and as such I can choose to end it after these twelve bases. There are three units above. These form the remaining Tercio shot.

Once these are done then my Imperial army will be finished.

This evening I finished off a couple of units of Imperial Skirmishers and then undercoated in the usual blue-grey

I also got a smidge more done on my not Rohan miniatures…

The lady’s face has gone weird, it looks naff compared to the male one. I reckon a repaint is required. I added a bit ofvsgading to the white horses on the armour, not that you can tell from this photo.

After saying I am going to do less posts, I end up doing two in one day, but this time Indo have something go show for it.

I didn’t get any painting done tonight as I decided to nip onto the console and have a quick play on Fallout 4… you can probably see where this is going!

Whilst going from point A to B I suddenly came across a whole area of the map I had never explored before. Therefore I just had go and check it out. This led to further wandering and exploring and before long it was bed time. The good or bad thing about painting miniatures (depending on your viewpoint) is that they are not going to disappear. They are still sitting there waiting for more paint.

This was my trip to work this morning…

The car struggled more than usual, so I checked the tyres. Somehow there are summer tyres on there. I always go for all weather ones as standard. It looks like at the last tyre change what I wanted isn’t on the car.

The snow is meant to be gone by tomorrow so I should be okay for a while.

Today my good lady and I decided to just go to the chip shop for dinner. I am really glad we did as it meant we saw the Aurora on the way home, before the clouds rolled in…

The photo is a bit naff as it was taken on my phone, but the green can definitely be seen.

I managed to get some painting done too. A but more on the 6mm Italian Wars and also, as they were right in front if me, the two from the Rohan range…