I wanted to paint this Slaaneshi daemon steed in bright pastel colours, turquoise and pink. I wanted to use contrast paints for a quick, decent looking job on a model surface well suited with scales, hair and ribs. Unfortunately, contrast paints don't exist in these colours but fear not because one can make one's own.
You need just three ingredients:
The first is a matt acrylic medium. I used Liquitex but the brand is not important. Acrylic medium looks and rather behaves like PVA 'white' glue. As an aside, it is very good for sticking printed material to models as it tends not to cause the print to 'run'.
Matt acrylic medium is goopy so after putting some in your mixing palette you need to dilute it down - and this is where an acrylic Flow Improver comes in. Add flow improver and stir until the mixture is properly runny to Contrast paint levels. Again, any brand will do.
Step three is to add pigment, in this case from Vallejo acrylic paints. Do not add too much. Put a bit in and stir well and repeat until there is a nice runny contrast paint.
And that's it.
The model above was painted using just these methods. The flow improver causes the paint to dry slowly so one can mix enough to paint a whole unit in one go.