The SLAPCHOP painting method.

[CRKrueger]

With the advent of Games Workshop Contrast Paints in 2019, followed by Army Painter Speedpaints, and now Vallejo Express paints, there’s a new way of using an old trick.

What these “one coat paints“ all have in common is the way the pigments exist in the medium. They are thinner than normal paints and thicker than washes. They let you paint over an area, and the pigment automatically pools in the recesses and leaves the raised areas lighter.

Something that has been a technique for primering since, uh, the invention of spray primer is Zenithal highlighting. TristramEvans has talked about this before. Basically you prime black from below and white from the light source you want and it creates all your highlights.

Well, SLAPCHOP is a little different.

• Prime entire model black.
• Drybrush entire model light grey, leaving all the recesses and low points black.
• Drybrush the edges and highest points with white.

At this point all your highlighting is done. Now all you need is a line of paints that’s kind of a highly pigmented wash to add color to the greyscale highlights. Like I mentioned above, there’s now three of those paint lines. So all that’s left is…

• Cover the highlighted model with one coat of Contrast/Speedpaint/Express and you’re done.

Here’s the original video.


Here’s an Artis Opus video showing how you can get better paintjobs while still using SLAPCHOP.

 

[Stumpydave]

I've used it loads to good effect. A quick and effective way to get a good looking mini.

However, the finished minutes tend towards a darker finish, not great if you prefer brighter models. Also it's not great for flesh - again being too dark IMO.

Still,I prefer the effect to zenithal highlighting.

 

[CRKrueger]

For those of you with mad painting skills who want to take it to the level, Dana Howl talks about how SlapChop is really an old technique called Grisaille, using greyscale gradations in painting, usually to simulate sculpture in a painting. She shows lots of ways to mix and match if you’re good at Zenithal, have an airbrush, know how to underpaint and glaze, etc.

 

[CRKrueger]

I've used it loads to good effect. A quick and effective way to get a good looking mini.

However, the finished minutes tend towards a darker finish, not great if you prefer brighter models. Also it's not great for flesh - again being too dark IMO.

Still,I prefer the effect to zenithal highlighting.

Yeah, I think something you want brighter, you’d prime first with some color other than black, then SlapChop it like the Artis Opus video or combine with more advanced lighting techniques like the Dana Howl video.

The key thing about Contrast/Speedpaint/Express paints is that they are designed to be used on white primer. Once you start messing with that, you’re going to be working against the paint to a degree. It will probably be better to hit that flesh with more white than the rest of the model, or use a mix of the contrast paint you want to use with a white or very light contrast paint to attempt to brighten it up. Contrast paints aren’t very good at covering other paints though, so you’re not going to get the same brightening effect that mixing white into standard acrylic paints would get you.

 

[Acmegamer]

Dana is very good. I've watched a few of her painting videos.

 

[Bunch]

I have limited experience with painting in general but I have tried AP Speedpaints 1.0 on a few minis. I found black primer to be way too dark but grey and white to give what I felt were way too light. I'm sure I'm doing things wrong but that's been my limited experience.

 

[Acmegamer]

I don't recall if I've already learned this or not, so i'll here. Can you use spray dull coat on miniatures that have been speed painted?

 

[Stumpydave]

I matt varnish everything. No worries so far.

 

[TristramEvans]

I don't recall if I've already learned this or not, so i'll here. Can you use spray dull coat on miniatures that have been speed painted?

yeah, absolutely. the contrastalike paints are essentially heavy bodied acrylic ink washes - so after drying the same as any miniatures paint

 

[CRKrueger]

I don't recall if I've already learned this or not, so i'll here. Can you use spray dull coat on miniatures that have been speed painted?

Yeah like the others said, it's still just Acrylic, so no issue with varnishes.

*However*, with AP Speedpaints there have been a lot of people who experience "reactivation", which means you paint another color over the Speedpaint and the water in the new paint makes the old paint liquid again, and you get a blend instead of what you want.

I haven't had a problem with reactivation personally, and Speedpaint 2.0 has supposedly fixed it, but as always Caveat Emptor, do your research.

 

[Bunch]

Yeah like the others said, it's still just Acrylic, so no issue with varnishes.

*However*, with AP Speedpaints there have been a lot of people who experience "reactivation", which means you paint another color over the Speedpaint and the water in the new paint makes the old paint liquid again, and you get a blend instead of what you want.

I haven't had a problem with reactivation personally, and Speedpaint 2.0 has supposedly fixed it, but as always Caveat Emptor, do your research.

I think Speedpaints 2.0 has another issue vs reactivation I can't recall it offhand but if I'm remembering right it's trading one issue for another.

 

[Acmegamer]

Yeah like the others said, it's still just Acrylic, so no issue with varnishes.

*However*, with AP Speedpaints there have been a lot of people who experience "reactivation", which means you paint another color over the Speedpaint and the water in the new paint makes the old paint liquid again, and you get a blend instead of what you want.

I haven't had a problem with reactivation personally, and Speedpaint 2.0 has supposedly fixed it, but as always Caveat Emptor, do your research.

Yeah. I recall the reactivation issue brought up in one of the videos. Having that happen would be very frustrating. Thanks for the reminder and to everyone about the dull coat.

 

[TristramEvans]

if paints are reactivating, it just means you haven't waited long enough for all the water to evaporate. easy way to test for this, wet a brush and touch it to part of an area you already painted.

 

[Stumpydave]

There is some suspicion that the reactivation issue was over-egged by a YouTuber who just so happened to be invested in a competitors speed paints.

 

[Simlasa]

This might also be worth mentioning:

 

[Acmegamer]

This might also be worth mentioning:

Yeah, Goobertown was another painter I'd watched videos of the speed painting. Some good videos as well.

 

[Simlasa]

Yeah, Goobertown was another painter I'd watched videos of the speed painting. Some good videos as well.

He makes the point that more folks should learn to mix their own paints. I think he works as a chemist IRL.

 

[DeadBob]

Out of curiosity, if you've used other fast paint cheaty techniques (like The Dip/Army Painter) how does it stack up against slapchop on various points ( cost, speed, results. required skill level) ?

 

[Imaginos]

It was goobertown that inspired me to mix my own washes when WarCry first came out. Got every faction painted that way.

 

[Stumpydave]

Out of curiosity, if you've used other fast paint cheaty techniques (like The Dip/Army Painter) how does it stack up against slapchop on various points ( cost, speed, results. required skill level) ?

I started with the original 'Eavy Metal technique, white undercoat, base colours, wash, highlight and details. So my miniatures never got finished.
Dip got stuff done. But walnut wood stain is good for warm, natural colours (greens, browns etc) and less good for cold or artificial hues (blues, Grey's etc.).
Then I tried Contrast paints and it was even quicker than Dip plus it worked better for blues, Grey's etc.
I tried Slapchop and when it works it's amazing, but it's not great for bright colours or making stuff pop - though that's probably down to my limits as a painter. I certainly prefer Slapchop to Zenithal highlights but I think they're meant to do different things so again, it's more down to my limitations.
Contrast paints (and careful application of shades).
Slapchop.

 

[CRKrueger]

He makes the point that more folks should learn to mix their own paints. I think he works as a chemist IRL.

Learning a little more about what washes, glazes, inks, etc are and what varnishes, mediums, thinners, flow improvers, etc do has helped a lot.

A long time ago, when I found out a light coat of varnish kept me from fucking up the miniature and allowed me to paint right over it (and wiping the new stuff off if I screwed up) was a godsend. Finding out gloss varnish will cover up minor fuckups like magic, which you could then dull down with matte was an epiphany.

 

[CRKrueger]

I think Speedpaints 2.0 has another issue vs reactivation I can't recall it offhand but if I'm remembering right it's trading one issue for another.

Yeah, Speedpaints 2.0 have two issues - according to videos, haven't bought any myself.
1. They’re less “Contrasty”, in other words they move more towards standard paint formula.
2. If you paint over some primers, especially "primer" meaning Acrylic Ink through an airbrush, the Speedpaints 2.0 can crack instead of bond.

Sounds like the cure was worse than the disease.

 

[CRKrueger]

There is some suspicion that the reactivation issue was over-egged by a YouTuber who just so happened to be invested in a competitors speed paints.

You mean Juan Hidalgo who was working at Vallejo, which was developing its own contrast paint - Vallejo Express, was the very first You Tuber to talk about the SP reactivation issue and didn't disclose a possible conflict of interest?

Hell, that's so basic and accepted a corruption these days if you're born Homo Sapiens Corporatus and don't know that from birth, you get left on the hospital steps.

 

[Stumpydave]

You mean Juan Hidalgo who was working at Vallejo, which was developing its own contrast paint - Vallejo Express, was the very first You Tuber to talk about the SP reactivation issue and didn't disclose a possible conflict of interest?

Hell, that's so basic and accepted a corruption these days if you're born Homo Sapiens Corporatus and don't know that from birth, you get left on the hospital steps.

I didn't know the details, only heard snippets and gleaned something of the incident from YouTube video titles.

 

[TristramEvans]

i totally endorse slapchop for folks looking to just get a bunch of minis to tabletop standard for putting together an army as quickly as possible while still having them look good, especially en masse as part of a unit and the usual 3 feet playing distance. It really is very similar to the technique that I presented here a while back that you can find pinned at the top of this forum (even my recipe for heavy bodied washes is similar enough to the one used by Goobertown Hobbies in the video posted earlier).

I've always meant to go back and expand on that, walking it towards my style of painting, which is what I'd say is halfway between tabletop and show quality. They look good enough to satisfy myself and have them on display, but i'm not entering painting competitions (though i did win one i entered here in town years ago tho, just done by a lfgs).

Anyways, i think "slapchop" and it's variants is a better method to teach beginner and casual painters than the classic layering technique, because it encourages painters to think in terms of tones and tints, lights and shadows, instead of...a 3D colouring book. But it is a tool like any other, meaning it does some things well, and others...not so much (I saw some folks in the Battletech community trying out contrasts and the results were gaudy eyesores - contrast on a proliferation of large flat surfaces = a bad time).

but let's talk about contrast paints. As mentioned by others, this isn't a new technique but a new presentation of an old one. Some mini wargame grognards might remember when they were first marketing, in the late 80s, as Dragonscale Paints. The reason most here might not have heard that name before is that they were a total commercial failure at the time - which may be why it took GW ver 20 years to try again. But Dragonscale never had GW's marketing engine (or youtube), just a few magazine ads, apparently so obscure that my google-fu is failing to summon up an example. But painters have been doing their own heavy-bodied washes for a long time. The technique is briefly discussed in Kevin Dallimore's second book on miniature painting for Foundry (now sadly OOP just like Foundry's beautiful edition of Terry Gore's highly underrated - and imho the best - historical miniatures wargame, Medieval Warfare).

I do think folks are way better off mixing their own colours, if they have any interest in continuing to paint or do more than make a single army table-ready. not only is it way cheaper (it's hilarious how GW came up with a scheme to produce far cheaper paints for more money than their already op paint line) and get's you outside the thumb of prepackaged colour schemes, but it also is good groundwork for basic colour theory, which is ultimately what will lead to taking your painting to the next level.

 

[TristramEvans]