The Contrast line of paints by Citadel are designed to provide instant highlighting and shading with just one coat of paint from just one pot. When it works, it's the stuff of science fiction. To this day, I sit and marvel at my painted Ur-Ghul miniatures, and all I did was slap some Pylar Glacier on them, along with a modest amount of detail work. Black paint, however, is a quirky problem for contrast. Adding a highlight or shade to black means it's no longer black, at least by strict definition. And yet not just one black Contrast paint exists, but two! Citadel sells Black Templar and Black Legion, and I own them both, I use them, and here's why.
Vallejo Xpress Color
First, a word about Black Lotus by Vallejo Xpress Color, which I also use. It's one of my favourite blacks for its flexibility, but there's a slight blue tint to it. With one coat, it's sort of a bluish gunmetal grey, and after a second coat it's a dark grey with black shading.
I've used it and was happy to keep using it forever, except for one problem. Last time I went to buy Black Lotus (luckily, I did this before starting on my Adeptus Mechanicus army) it was sold out.
So I've switched over to Contrast blacks and greys instead, exclusively because it's what's reliably available. Contrast is more expensive, and while I do use a lot of black paint on my armies, I don't use so much that the price is likely to break the bank. And besides, there are some benefits to the Contrast blacks.
Pots not bottles
First of all, Contrast paints come in pots not bottles. I've heard some people swear by dropper-bottles, but I am not a fan. I never know how much paint to squirt out of the bottle onto my palette and inevitably end up wasting paint, and the bottle nozzles get clogged with drying paint even though I religiously keep the caps on.
Contrast paint comes in a little pot that you shake, open, grab some paint from the cap, and then close. It's a familiar and reliable ritual that keeps my paints clean and secure.
Black and black
The truth of the matter is that both Black Templar and Black Legion are almost equally black. The difference between them isn't the shading, it's the texture. There's probably a technical paint term for it, but I don't know technical paint terms, so I think of it in terms of Black Templar being paint and Black Legion being (not literally, though) liquid latex.
Black Templar
Black Templar is a Contrast paint in all but contrast. By that, I mean it's doesn't "feel" like traditional acrylic paint, and instead is fairly watery, which you're used to if you use Contrast paints. It goes on smoothly, sort of pouring out of your brush and onto the surface you're trying to cover.
Is it contrasty? Well, not especially. I guess when they decided to make a black [Contrast] paint, they decided that they meant black. With Black Templar, you get full coverage of black. No highlights, no shading. It's just black.
You might wonder how that's any different from Citadel's "normal" Abaddon Black. I think the difference is texture. When it dries, Abaddon Black feels and looks like acrylic paint. Black Templar almost looks like a stain. It's a little like there's no paint there, but you've managed to stain your undercoat black.
I personally quite like this look. It feels authentic to me. For the most part, my miniatures aren't meant to be painted in the game world. In the game world, metal is black or grey because it's metal, and flesh is brown because it's organic skin. I prefer that to the look of traditional acrylic.
Black Templar mixed with some Contrast medium (I'm using Vallejo Xpress Color medium, because that's what I have) behaves like Black Lotus. It renders a gunmetal grey with black shading. This is actually my preferred look for a lot of my painted metals, and I have to admit that I wish Black Templar did this naturally, the way Black Lotus does.
With Black Templar, you get a beautiful matte black. If you want grey, you can either buy Basilicanum Grey or you can add medium to Black Templar.
Black Legion
Just think Legion and Liquid Latex, or at least that's how I remember it. Black Legion is a heck of a lot like Abaddon Black. It's solid black, and once it dries it looks a lot like a traditional acrylic.
In the pot, it's more viscous than Black Templar, too. I mostly use Black Legion on boots and tyres. (I'd probably use it for the rims of bases, too, except that it's twice as expensive as Abaddon Black.) I think the difference between Black Legion and a traditional acrylic is that Black Legion is essentially already thinned. As with all Contrast paints, I apply Black Legion straight from the pot and never feel like I'm losing detail.
Shades of grey
I guess I don't really use black paint all that often. I prefer 80% grey paint. Black Lotus was the closest thing I've gotten to that, but Black Templar is proving to be pretty flexible. Basilicanum Grey is nice, but I don't think I'm entirely comfortable with it yet. I use it here and there, but I never know how to feel about it and end up switching to Black Templar with a little medium. And anyway, I certainly wouldn't paint a miniature black with Basilicanum Grey. Maybe that's the lesson to take away from this. When I want black, I ought to use a black paint. When I want grey, I ought to use a grey paint.
It seems obvious, but maybe my experience in the world of digital colour has yet again confused me in the world of physical colour. In digital colour spaces, there are limits to just how much colour you can safely drop. You rarely actually want to go 100% black, because in digital that means there's basically 0 data there. So you go 90% black, and you trust that compared to all the other shades of black in the frame it'll look like absolute black.
In the physical world, that limit doesn't exactly exist. I think you can go too black on a miniature, but then again that's what manual highlighting or at least a lazy drybrush highlight is for.
But enough about me and my problems comprehending colour outside of the digital world. The point is:
- Black Templar is black Contrast paint without much Contrast, but a maximum level of matte
- Black Legion is almost a traditional black acrylic that's already thinned and ready for application
Photos by Seth Kenlon.