25mm West Wind - Lucifer's Wars - Incubi

Citadel's contrast paints have me digging around for miniatures that require mostly one color. I picked up a number of demons and demonettes to strengthen my witches against Solomon Kane and his witch hunters. These two are from West Wind's Lucifer's Wars miniature line which contains some rather interesting models. These are the Incubi.

After a coat of Citadel Wraith Bone spray I got started.

One of the benefits of Contrast is that you can cover large parts of a model and be done or, er nearly done. My intention was to one-coat these on all the parts: Flesh Tearers Red for the skin, Skeleton Horde for the horns, finally Templar Black for the hair. I did go in and yellow the eyes on the one at left - the one on the right doesn't have eyes sculpted and is kind of deformed with a very asymmetric face. They're demons and also fantasy so I can forgive this here. But after putting it all on - the only thing I was happy with was the hair. The painting community has revealed, after much experimentation, that not all Contrast colors are created equal and have different behavioral effects from one another. Other factors are also dependent on the sculpt of the model and whether or not it has surfaces amenable to this kind of pigmented wash. I'm thinking these ones, having large smooth surfaces without anything to break them up may be poor models for this particular color. To me, Flesh Tearers Red looks like 'hell" (hehe) as does the Skeleton Horde on the horns, even after highlighting them up a bit. The horns are considerably brighter than the model underneath them so they are the first thing one notices so for me, not the right choice then.

So to fix the skin, I went in and did a selective final highlight with Citadel Blood Red (Now Mephisto Red) on the one at left. Happier with that,  I did the same with the one at right for the finished photos at top. I also repainted Wraith Bone over the horns and tried Wyldwood instead of Skeleton Horde hoping for a more antler like color. That was also highlighted back up with an earth color to give it more pop.

In the end, I don't love these models. I was more careless than I thought on the clean up and left some big seams get through to the painting stage which are painfully noticeable to me. These are also not sealed and dull-coated yet so the shine is also contributing to my dissatisfaction.

On the bright side, I wouldn't have even gotten to these models if I was going to layer paint them up from black. So though I'm uneasy about them, I have two more gameable pieces than I did after the 30 mins it took me to complete them. Arguably - that's the benefit of Contrast Paints - to get more minis on the table faster than before. On that score these wonderfully suit their purpose.

Thanks for looking - questions, comments and followers are welcome and encouraged!