Contrast Paints and Slapchop: The Complete Guide to Actually Getting Your Minis Painted

Hey again, friends. Let me tell you a quick story. A few years back, Games Workshop flew me out to England. Not for a vacation. Not for sightseeing. They flew me across the Atlantic Ocean so I could sit through a PowerPoint presentation about paint. And honestly? It was one of the most exciting days I've had in this hobby. Because what they showed me changed the way I think about speed painting miniatures.

I've spent a ridiculous amount of time experimenting with contrast paints since then. I've tested every color in both ranges, I've tried Slapchop on everything from single marines to full armies, and eventually I developed my own system called SMASH CHOP that I think takes the whole concept even further. This guide is everything I've learned, distilled down to just the stuff that actually matters. No fluff, no filler. Just what works.

If you've got a pile of gray plastic staring at you right now (and let's be honest, you do), this is your way out.

What Are Contrast Paints and Why Should You Care?

If you're new around here, contrast paints are a range from Games Workshop that behave differently from regular acrylic paints. They're translucent. They flow into recesses and pool in shadows while leaving raised areas lighter. In one coat, over a light primer, you get shadows, midtones, and a bit of highlighting all at once. That's the pitch, anyway.

And here's the thing. The pitch is mostly true. Contrast paints genuinely do save you a ton of time compared to the traditional "base coat, shade, layer, highlight" approach. Where a normal paint job might take four or five steps to get depth on a surface, contrast paint does a respectable version of that in a single coat.

But they're not magic. They have quirks, limitations, and some genuine gotchas that nobody on the marketing materials is going to tell you about. So let's get into the real talk.

The Good Stuff

The Contrast 2.0 range (the second wave of colors) is a massive improvement over the originals. The saturation is wild. Seven of the colors are made from single pigments, which means they're absurdly vibrant. Bad Moon Yellow, Imperial Fist Yellow, Magmadroth Flame, Blood Angels Red (Baal Red), Doomfire Magenta, Leviathan Purple, and Aeldari Emerald. Because single pigment colors don't get muddied by mixing, your minis just pop at the table like nothing else in the contrast range before.

The yellows in particular blew my mind. Yellow is notorious for being a nightmare to paint. You need like six coats of a traditional yellow before it covers properly, and if you're going over anything dark, forget about it. But Imperial Fist Yellow over white primer? One coat. Done. Vibrant, smooth, gorgeous. If you only buy one pot from the new range, make it one of the yellows. Trust me on this one.

The Honest Downsides

Here's the part you won't hear in the marketing. Contrast paints are really unforgiving when you make mistakes. If you accidentally get blue on a yellow section, you're stuck with it. You can't just paint yellow back over the blue because the paint is transparent. You'll see the blue right through it. Even if you re-prime that little section white and go over it with yellow again, it'll look different from the surrounding area. You'll just stare at it knowing there's nothing you can do.

The other big challenge is smooth surfaces. Shoulder pads, vehicle panels, anything large and rounded. Contrast paint pools in weird ways on these surfaces. The key is always working with a wet edge, meaning wherever you place the paint, you need to keep working around it before it dries. If it starts to dry and you go back into it, you'll get ugly tide marks.

And some of the colors are basically just inks. Magmadroth Flame, for example, doesn't give you any of that contrast shift between shadows and midtones. You could buy actual inks, add a bit of matte medium, and get the same result for less money. Just something to keep in mind before you drop eight or nine bucks on a pot.

The Slapchop Method: Speed Painting for Everyone

Now, contrast paints on their own are pretty cool. But a guy named Rob (The Honest Wargamer) figured out a system that makes them even more effective. He called it Slapchop, which is simultaneously catchy and cringe-worthy enough to induce a level of rage similar to those zombies in 28 Days Later in certain corners of the hobby community.

But the name stuck for a reason. The method works. Here's the idea.

The Four Steps of Slapchop

Step 1: Black primer. You spray or brush your whole model black. Simple. This establishes all your deepest shadows.

Step 2: Gray zenithal. From above (roughly a 45 degree angle), you hit the model with a light gray. This is usually done with a spray can or airbrush, but a big drybrush works too. The idea is to cover the upper-facing surfaces while leaving the undersides and crevices dark. You're setting up all your midtones in one pass.

Step 3: White drybrush. This is the special sauce. Grab your best drybrush and go to town over the entire model with white paint. You're pushing all the edges and the brightest points near the head and shoulders so they'll really pop later. This is doing your edge highlighting for you, basically. And edge highlighting is both the most eye-catching AND the most time-intensive part of traditional painting. By doing it now with a drybrush, you're saving yourself a massive amount of time.

Step 4: Slap on contrast paint. And that's where the name comes from. You literally just slap contrast paint over the whole model. The shadows, midtones, and highlights are already established underneath. The contrast paint is transparent enough that all that underlying work shows through. Paint the armor one color, the skin another, the cloth another. Move on to the next thing.

I gave myself 15 minutes to paint a Horus Heresy marine using pure Slapchop, and I got it done. The result? Bright, vibrant, very much that stereotypical Games Workshop box art look. If you like that style of clean, saturated color schemes, Slapchop is fantastic at it.

But I knew I could push it further.

SMASH CHOP: My Improved System

After experimenting with Slapchop for a while, I started folding in techniques from my own speed painting toolkit. The result is what I call SMASH CHOP. It's not a complete redesign. It's more like Slapchop 2.0 that evolved into its own thing. The core philosophy is the same (use underlighting to do the heavy lifting, then add color on top), but the execution gives you way more depth and way more interesting results.

Speed painting is a lot like riding a teeter-totter. On one side sits speed, on the other sits quality. By raising one, you lower the other. What speed painting systems aim to do is use tricks and efficiencies to keep that speed high while boosting quality as best we can.

My goal with SMASH CHOP is not to paint as fast as humanly possible. It's to knock out a hero or unique model in less than one evening while achieving work that looks genuinely eye-catching and doesn't require a particularly high level of skill to pull off.

The Core Steps

Step 1: Colored underpainting. After your black primer and white zenithal, this is where SMASH CHOP diverges. Instead of going straight to contrast paint, you smash a bunch of bright, saturated colors all over the model. Pink, purple, orange, teal, whatever you want. You can use an airbrush or just the biggest brush you own.

Here's the weird part. The colors you choose here don't have to match what you want the final model to look like. I know it's tempting to look at a pink and purple alien and think "that's not how I want my Tyranids to look." But trust me. These colors won't be visible as-is when you're done. They're just laying down bright, saturated undertones that will give your model way more color interest and depth. They create the impression that you spent way more time painting than you actually did.

Step 2: Layering with thin and thick paint. This is the other big departure from traditional Slapchop. Instead of just slapping contrast paint over everything, you create two puddles of your base color. One is thick (just a tiny bit of water added straight from the pot). The other is thinned down 50 to 60 percent with water.

For shadow areas, use the thinner paint. More of your bright undertone will show through, giving you instant depth. For highlight areas (surfaces that catch more light), use the thicker paint for better coverage. And for the deepest shadows? Don't paint them at all. Just leave them. Wherever one surface meets another, like where skin meets carapace, leave a thin line unpainted to really differentiate the parts.

Because you have those interesting bright colors in the shadows, if your paint goes on too thin, you get to see interesting color beneath. Not just standard black, which would muddy things up. It enhances the thin paint and gives you a way more interesting surface in just one coat.

Why SMASH CHOP Makes You a Better Painter

This is something I care about a lot. One thing I always look for in a speed painting system is whether it actually helps me improve as a painter while I'm getting stuff done quickly. And this is an area where plain Slapchop falls short. There aren't really applicable skills in Slapchop that transfer to becoming a better painter over time.

SMASH CHOP is different. You'll learn how to work with both thin and thick paints. You'll learn how to transition from shadows to midtones quickly and efficiently. You'll improve your brush control by tracing the details of the model. These are real, transferable skills that make everything you paint better, not just models you speed paint.

The Optional (But Worth It) Steps

After those two core steps, your model is done. Table ready. Go play a game. But if you want to push it further, here's what I do.

Edge highlighting. I know, I know. This is supposed to be speed painting and nobody has time for edge highlighting. But hear me out. Grab some light pastel colors (it's Easter basket time, we're dyeing eggs here) and do one pass of edge highlights, starting with the most important parts of the model first. Face and main armor. That's it.

If you're painting 50 of these guys, only highlight the face and armor. Those two areas make the biggest impact and can be done in under three minutes per model with a little practice. And here's the real benefit. As you do this over an entire army, the amount of brush control you'll learn will be astounding. You'll get faster and faster while your quality improves. You'll know what angle to hold the model at without thinking about it.

And you don't have to stress about rushing through this step because your models are already table ready before you start the highlighting. It's bonus work, not required work. That mindset shift is huge.

Washes for extra punch. If you still have time and energy after highlighting, targeted washes can add a surprising amount of vibrancy. On my Votann dwarf, I grabbed a yellow shade and hit all the orange armor really quickly. It pumped up the vibrancy noticeably for maybe two minutes of work.

Which Method Should You Use?

Here's my honest take. It depends on what you need.

Pure Slapchop is perfect when time is your only concern. You need models for a tournament this weekend, or your D&D party is fighting a horde of goblins on Friday night. 15 minutes per model, they look pretty darn good on the table, and you're done. No shame in that. That's a valid question people ask themselves all the time, and the answer is whatever gets you to the table playing games.

SMASH CHOP is for when you want that extra something. When you've got a hero model, a character, or just a unit you want to feel proud of. It takes longer (about 25 to 30 minutes per basic model, up to 90 minutes for a larger or more detailed one) but the results look like you spent way more time than you did. And you're building real painting skills along the way.

The beautiful thing about both methods is flexibility. Your model is functionally done after the base steps. Everything after that is optional improvement. You can stop at any point, set it down, and be proud of your work. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Step-by-Step: Your First Contrast Paint and Slapchop Model

All right. Enough theory. Let's actually paint something. Here's the full process from start to finish.

What You'll Need

• A primed model (black spray primer, or brush-on if that's what you've got)
• A gray spray or large drybrush and gray paint (for zenithal highlighting)
• A good drybrush and white paint (any white works, don't overthink it)
• Contrast paints in whatever colors your model needs
• A decent brush (size 1 or 2 for most infantry models)
• Water and a palette
• Paper towel for the drybrush

Budget note: you don't need fancy brushes for this. Whatever you've got works. I've used everything from expensive kolinsky sable brushes to cheap synthetic ones and the Slapchop results are pretty similar.

The Process

Prime black. Make sure you get full coverage but don't drown the details. Multiple thin passes beat one thick glob every time.

Zenithal with gray. Hold your spray can (or airbrush) at roughly 45 degrees above the model and spray downward. You want the top of the head, shoulders, upper surfaces of arms, and tops of any raised details to catch the gray. Everything underneath stays black. If you're using a drybrush instead of a spray, load up a big drybrush with gray and work from the top down.

Drybrush white. Load your brush with white, wipe most of it off on a paper towel until you think there's almost nothing left on the brush, then scrub it across the model. The paint will catch on edges and raised details. Focus on the head, shoulder areas, and the most prominent edges. I tested a fancy heavy body artist acrylic white for this step once, just to see if it made a difference. It didn't. Use whatever white you have and go about your business.

Apply contrast paint. Here's where the magic happens. Dip your brush in your first contrast color, make sure it's loaded but not dripping, and paint. Work in sections. Do all the armor in one go, then all the cloth, then the skin, and so on. Keep a wet edge at all times. Don't go back into areas that have started to dry.

For SMASH CHOP, remember: this is where you'd use your thin/thick paint approach instead of straight contrast. Thin on shadow areas, thick on highlight areas, nothing on the deepest recesses.

Call it done (or keep going). At this point you have a painted model. Full stop. If you want to push it further, grab some pastel-ish highlight colors and do a quick pass of edge highlighting on the face and main armor. If you want to push even further, targeted washes or a bit of sponge chipping can add a surprising amount of character.

Picking Your Color Scheme

One of the hardest parts of painting, whether you're using contrast paints or not, is picking colors that actually look good together. This is especially true with Slapchop and SMASH CHOP because you're committing to colors early and you can't easily change them.

I'm a really big fan of making sure your two main colors contrast with each other. If the majority of your model is a light, warm skin tone, contrast that with a really dark carapace or armor. Light on light just makes everything blend together and nothing pops. You want that push and pull between light and dark, warm and cool.

This is actually one of the reasons I created the Deck of Many Colors. It's a physical deck of cards that helps you find color combinations that work. You can fan through different schemes, hold them up next to each other, and figure out what looks good before you commit any paint to a model. Way better than staring at a color wheel on your phone and hoping for the best.

Common Mistakes (That I Definitely Made Myself)

Because I believe in learning from my screw-ups so you don't have to repeat them:

Going back into drying contrast paint. Just don't. If it's started to dry and you touch it, you'll get a nasty tide mark. Either work fast enough to keep a wet edge, or let it fully dry and accept what you've got.

Using contrast paint on large flat surfaces. Shoulder pads, vehicle panels, cloaks. These are pain points for contrast paint because it pools unevenly. There's a reason you don't see people painting Rhinos and Land Raiders with contrast paint and a paintbrush. For big flat areas, consider airbrushing your base color or using regular paint.

Skipping the white drybrush. The temptation is to just go from zenithal to contrast, but that white drybrush step is what gives you all those crisp edge highlights. It's the difference between "pretty good" and "actually impressive." Don't skip it.

Overthinking the underpainting colors. For SMASH CHOP, your underpainting colors don't need to be perfect. They don't even need to match your final scheme. Just pick something bright and saturated and commit. Remember, it's what we aren't painting that makes the big impact on the final look. And not painting something takes way less time than painting it.

When Contrast Paints Aren't the Answer

Let's be honest. Contrast paints and Slapchop are fantastic tools, but they're not the right tool for every job. A full unit of 40 or 60 marines using careful contrast application could actually take you quite a bit of time because you need to be careful, especially with lighter colors, that you don't make mistakes you can't fix.

If you're painting a display piece, you'll want more control than contrast provides. If you're painting vehicles or terrain with large flat panels, an airbrush and regular paints will give you better results. And if you just enjoy the meditative process of traditional layering, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. The best way to paint miniatures is the way you enjoy. The way that brings you back to the painting table again and again.

Speed painting is an art in and of itself. You're always looking for that perfect balance between efficiency and quality. And there probably is never going to be such a thing as a perfect speed painting system. Instead it's about experimentation. Trying a little bit of something new, folding things into your process, maybe replacing one technique with another. So at the end of the day your system is more fine-tuned than it was at the beginning.

The Bottom Line

Contrast paints, Slapchop, and SMASH CHOP are not about cutting corners. They're about being smart with your time. Every minute you save on basecoating and shading is a minute you can spend on the fun stuff, or a minute you can spend actually playing the game with painted models on the table.

The Contrast 2.0 range in particular has really raised the ceiling of what's possible with these paints. Those single-pigment colors are astounding for vibrance. The saturated colors give you real shadow-to-midtone definition. And when you combine them with a solid underlighting method like Slapchop or SMASH CHOP, you get results that genuinely surprise people.

Don't create imaginary rules for yourself in miniature painting. Be fearless. Try new techniques. Evolve your approach over time. And the quality of your painted armies will grow with you.

Now get out there and slay the gray.

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