Hi, Long time no see.
I won't bore you with the details but it's been a busy while since I've seen you last. I changed careers, moved, and got married since I last sat down to write an actual article. Needless to say, I had a busy year. Let's dive right into the topic of discussion though and wrap with some thoughts on what's next at the end.
If you're like me and you tend to put YouTube or miniature podcasts on in the background while you paint, you've almost definitely heard of SlapChop painting by now. The term seems to have been coined by The Honest Wargamer and you can see his original video here. Long story short the technique is as follows. Prime Black, Drybrush grey and then pure white, finally slather the mini with "contrast" paints. I put contrast in air quotes now because the technique is definitely not limited to Games Workshop's official contrast range and will definitely work with other companies equivalent ranges (like the new Army Painter Speed Paints or the upcoming Vallejo Xpress Color)
When I first saw this I was skeptical. My first thought was definitely something to the effect of "yeah, its called painting, why bother with the fancy names?" I'm a big fan of contrast style paints and my biggest criticism comes down to the marketing approach of "one thick coat" not being the whole story. I think like any other paint, its a tool and it should be used "correctly." The main focus of the technique is to get stuff on the table, in a reasonable amount of time, to a decent standard.
As I mentioned, this is pretty topical now, with several content creators all posting their take on it. I wanted to give it a go myself but was looking for a project to use it on. This Video by Miniature Hobbyist popped up on my feed right around the same time This Video popped up by On Table Top. GorkaMorka, 3d printing and a quick project all in one go. The stars have aligned. Modulorka is basically a free to play Ork on Ork skirmish game. Currently free to download, they also have a kickstarter and a patreon going if you want to support them. The free rules bundle comes with a single ork infantry figure. It took about two hours to print and came with both supported and unsupported versions. There was a super minor defect on my print that is more than likely my settings but I left it as it looked more orky to me anyway.
I used the relatively new Gutrippa Flesh for the skin, and then Snakebite Leather, Wyldwood, and Black Templar for the majority of the details. I was originally going to paint the club the old fashioned way but settled on the new Garaghak's Sewer. I wasn't willing to skip metalic paints however and painted all of those details with 3G Gunmetal. I also painted the base in my usual methods with a block paint and few layers of drybrushing.
Here's the kicker. It's just like using contrasts normally but I think generally speaking the results are a lot better. In particular what this method did to the skin, club, and boots, I'm thrilled with. Some issues that stood out are the usual issues with contrast, you still need to be wary of pooling and the reality is some colors simply don't show up over dark surfaces (like the skeleton horde I used on the teeth.)
As I said earlier, I was a little hesitant when I first came across this whole viral sensation. Not necesarily because I didn't think it would work but more so because it was sort of being sold as a one stop shop in the same way contrast was originally. Theres still certain things I'll always paint traditionally (mostly metalics) but in general I was pretty pleased. I used the brushrage app while I painted and the whole model including the base and drybrushing was less than an hour. Now that I've done it once I could easily cut that time per model down drastically and I definitely think the added step of drybrushing is easy enough that I can't imagine using contrasts over just a white primer any more.
It gets better
After painting this guy, writing this article and sitting down to another paint session I did an entire starter force for modulorka. All 4 guys including the bases came in at 1 hour and 46 minutes once I had a scheme.
This was originally written in October of 2022.
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