English Civil War Pikeman in GW Blue Contrast Paints

After completing two units of shotte for Pikeman's Lament I embarked on painting up a unit of pike. 

The Big Plan

My experiments went so well with using Contrast Paints on the red-coated shotte that I decided to try them with the pikemen. This time I landed on blue coats and white shirts.

This was my first test figure and I thought he turned out well. I started off with Warlord's plastic pike from their King & Country set. They assembled quickly and I primed them with GW Corax White instead of GW Wraithbone. I thought the colder white would do better with the forthcoming white shirts. I drybrushed the figures after the primer dried with pure white from Vallejo to make the edges pop.

Mixing Contrast Paints

The Contrast Paint blues out of the pots didn't work for me. They were either too dark or too vivid. I mixed up a few options and finally chose a 1:1 mix of Talassar Blue and Ultramarines Blue. 

A lot of the pants were done with Space Wolves Grey as it worked well with the blue. I used Aggaros Dunes for the gloves and a mix of 1:1 Aggaros Dunes and Wyldwood for the pikes. 

The shirts were hit with a quick coating of Apothecary White. The helmets and armor were a single coat of Black Templar.

The only shading I did was adding Snakebite Leather to the shadows of the gloves.

I thought it would be quick and fun to add some easy highlights to the pikeman. I used Vallejo Model Color White for some fast stripes on the upper part of the shirt. I used Vallejo Game Color Electric Blue + a touch of White for the blue coats. I edge highlighted the lower part, and for the upper shoulders I tried a stippling effect.

The dotting did a great job of integrating the highlight with the Contrast Paint underneath. I tried to put more dots near the top and fewer as I went down the coat. It was quick and easy to control; a perfect compliment to Contrast Paints.

Best Miniature Varnish Ever

I finished him off with a coat of varnish from a recipe that I found from the Two Thin Coats Guy who used to work for GW. It's easily the best brush-on varnish I've ever used and is my new gold standard:

🌟  GW Contrast Medium 1:1 AK Interactive Ultra Matte Varnish  🌟

Now it's time to do the rest of the unit.