Glazing with the pro's

[BloodFather of Kharnath]

for the record, i mostly paint everything with glazes - both blending and tinting, and i find glazing medium pretty much overkill. the consistency of the paint used (ratio water-paint) is very much depending what color you use, both brand and intensity of it, all that comes down to experiance.

I've heard from a lot of painters that feel the same as you and swear by water only. I didn't mean to imply that you personally did not know the value of glaze medium because you only used it for tinting. I have heard of how you paint and quite frankly it intimidates and baffles me I meant only to say that some people use the glaze medium when they don't really even juice or glaZe their layers.

For my part, the first time I ever attempted blending I used lahmian medium from GW. And it worked quite well. I got used to it and now I go through about 3-4 bottles a mini. Not sustainable!!!

 

[BloodFather of Kharnath]

aaand we are going really offtopic with this one , so back to the original question: yes they are mixable, yes you can use the gw-glazes, but the colors are few and unless you want that vibrant primary color not the best. Better thin out some paint/ink(artist or model, have good exp with vgc ones, heard good things from andrea/scale ones) and use that.

We went off topic here because Digganob was actually confused as to the purpose of glazing when he purchased the glaze paints from GW. He thought that he could use them for his everyday blending through glazes. And we can't blame him for this because of all the confusion about the terminology involved. This is why I launched this silly tirade of attempting to clearly define a term that, it seems, few can agree on.

Anyway, cheers!

 

[Digganob]

Hey I asked the question and learned a lot more than I bargained for so please go off topic as much as you want. I appreciate everyone who left input here and can't wait to apply it. Didn't get to see that vid yesterday blood but I'm off to watch it now.

 

[BloodFather of Kharnath]

When I watched that video, it was a moment of understanding for me. I like how the guy dumbed things down for me, and emphasized over and over how anyone can do it. I'll add a couple things to what he teaches about juicing:

1. Make sure you take enough of the paint of of your brush when you are juicing. You'll see him use a paper towel to wipe it clean, and he shows you what it should look like when wiping it on the towel. That's fine, wipe it off this way, but test it on your skin. Draw a line when you think it's ready on the back if your hand somewhere. It shouldn't be watery, but it shouldn't be like dry brushing either.

2. Be patient. Juicing requires that you put down enough layers. The first few layers go down kind of rough. It won't look good until the pigment gets built up. This is where brush control comes in. When highlighting brush towards the lightest areas. When shading brush toward the darkest areas. Try not to lift up the brush in an area where it'll pool right in the middle. This means that for the most part you are sliding the brush off of the surface of the mini-avoiding as much as possible the lifting of your brush stroke in the middle of a surface.

3. I'll say again to make sure you apply enough layers, but this is even more
important with highlights and shading. When you do these two things, you are painting over another layer already. Because of this, you may think you've applied enough layers because you can see the layer beneath. This is a good thing, but as you move towards a brighter highlight it should be more opaque. A sign of a painter that had failed to put enough layers on his highlight can be chalkiness

4. Did I say make sure you apply enough layers? Well, now I am saying don't apply too many layers. When you do this it changed the properties of the paint and it turns glossy. I read this somewhere once and it changed my results quite a bit. No when to stop applying the layers. #1 it keeps you smooth and you won't obscure details of the sculpt. #2 it keeps the layer matte. This is graduate level stuff but that doesn't preclude you from striving for it.

4. Chalkiness can also be caused by other factors. Light colors, like white or skin, need not be diluted so much. Or do itself a favor and purchase VMC Ivory for all of your highlighting. Remember how Skel said different colors require different dilutions? This is true. Age of paint will change ur ratio too.

5. Did I say be patient? You will catch itself not diluting enough just to get the damn thing done. This will only downgrade your quality.


Thats it! Once you master dilution and brush control, the next step is understanding light theory. Always plan out how the light will play across the surface of whatever you're painting-metal, cloth, skin, etc. We can start a class on this next if you want

Really I hope this is more than just non-sensical rubbish to you. This is very meaningful to me because I believe everyone can paint, it's just their ability to learn it. It's just about when we have our moment of clarity.

 

[Ritual]

for the record, i mostly paint everything with glazes - both blending and tinting, and i find glazing medium pretty much overkill. the consistency of the paint used (ratio water-paint) is very much depending what color you use, both brand and intensity of it, all that comes down to experiance.

I used to think like that as well, and many additives I find I can just as well live without. Retarder, for instance. But now and then you do get problems with paint separating when thinned down heavily, and it behaves annoyingly when you apply it. Certain paints are worse than others in this issue. Glaze medium takes care of that and the paint behaves well even if you thin it down to stained water. You can live without it, but it saves me from now and then get annoyed when the paint doesn't want to cooperate.

Glazes and washes are applying techniques. They say nothing about the consistency of the paint being used (other that it needs to be thinned down quite a lot). You can both glaze and wash with paint that is still more paint-like (can be difficult to glaze well, but it's possible) and you can glaze and wash with paint that is more like coloured water. It depends on what effect you like and how subtle you want it. Glazing is stretching paint very thinly over a surface, washing is loading a surface with paint in abundance. The paint consistency is a matter of personal preference.

 

[Trevor]

What Ritual said. Back in the day before companies made specific washes, wash referred to using an ink neat (or watered down) and flooding the area; the glaze was very very watered down ink, applied over the area you wanted tinting, but not letting it pool. These days, terminology and techniques have blurred. To me, juicing is akin to glazing, but targeted, so you only cover part of the area in question (where glazes used to be done over the whole area). My understanding is that the term 'juicing' came about from translating from english into a european language and then back again - something got lost in translation.

I think the key thing to remember is that it does not matter what technique you use, it is the end result YOU get that is important. So use the techniques that work well for you and give you the end result you want. Doing 20 layers does not guarantee you will get a great effect, if you can get the effect you want with a basecoat and wash then that is fine. This was brought home to me over 20 years ago. I spent weeks carefully blending one mini under a microscope, the effect was technically flawless. I then quickly painted the rest of the squad, with much rougher blends, for a game. Interestingly, the technically better mini looked worse on the table than the quickly done ones... no idea why, they just did. The end effect is what matters, how you get there much less so.

 

[BloodFather of Kharnath]

Precisely. Terminology and technique have become blurred, leading to one artist and another doing the exact same thing,
but each calling it something else. This damages our ability to instruct, and leads painters like young Digganob to their LGS where they purchase Citadel glazes for the purpose blending. Again, this is why definition is important. Of course it is a preference to decide how much to water down that glaze or wash, but it becomes a necessity when teaching someone to paint that we are clear about common dilution formulas, and that we make these clear when defining these techniques. We reduce dichotomy to the benefit of the student.

 

[Ritual]

...but it becomes a necessity when teaching someone to paint that we are clear about common dilution formulas, and that we make these clear when defining these techniques.

I don't think there are any such thing as common dilution formulae. What works for me might not be suitable for you and vice versa. You can teach someone a technique, but you can't tell that person exactly what dilution rate will work best for them. They need to find that out for themselves. I have wasted so much time during the years trying to copy exactly what other people have done and it hasn't helped my one bit! Not until I started thinking that "Ok, I do it sort of that way, but also a little bit like I use to do it" I have been able to use other people's techniques in a constructive way.

 

[BloodFather of Kharnath]

Perhaps dilution formula was too specific a term. What I mean is exactly how I described it to Digganob, above, in helping out a young but talented artist. I simply described it as a glaze generally more diluted than a wash. This is what I mean for finding common definitions. I agree with you in that you should never tell someone to go 6:1, wateraint, but I believe it was prudent in this instance to differentiate glazes and washes with dilution quality as well as applicability, especially when confusion exists. I think we can agree that, generally speaking, a wash would not be as thin as a glaze, because one does not often have to apply 6 layers for a wash to build up it's opacity; this is generally accomplished with 1-2 layers. For beginners, these types of distinctions mean a lot, and it is the failure to make these distinctions that often leads to people being confused. Notice, for instance, that the OP went out and bought glazes and inquired about their ability to be mixed, and some posters pointed him to different washes. And the function of these glazes was to be for blending.

I appreciate this debate for its academic components. Just like I endeavor to be a decent painter, I'd like to one day be able to teach it as well. For the love of the Art.

 

[Stewsayer]

a wash would not be as thin as a glaze, because one does not often have to apply 6 layers for a wash to build up it's opacity; this is generally accomplished with 1-2 layers.

I agree some of this is down to how dilute a wash vs glaze is. But there is also the fact that by allowing a wash to pool the pigment becomes concentrated in the areas of pooling and thus more opaque than in a carefully applied thin layer that does not pool. So the same pool of paint on my wet palette can function as a glaze or a wash (and they often do).

I agree its nice as a new painter to have a paint recipe for skin or leather or whatever and to have someone say paint x should be diluted with 2:1 water paint ratio. It helps guide your exploration. I think what gets left out in tutorials and articles often is the point that its a starting point and you need to fiddle from there to find what works for you.

 

[BloodFather of Kharnath]

I agree some of this is down to how dilute a wash vs glaze is. But there is also the fact that by allowing a wash to pool the pigment becomes concentrated in the areas of pooling and thus more opaque than in a carefully applied thin layer that does not pool. So the same pool of paint on my wet palette can function as a glaze or a wash (and they often do).

I agree its nice as a new painter to have a paint recipe for skin or leather or whatever and to have someone say paint x should be diluted with 2:1 water paint ratio. It helps guide your exploration. I think what gets left out in tutorials and articles often is the point that its a starting point and you need to fiddle from there to find what works for you.

Very true Stew. Most tutorials it seems are meant for advanced painters in that they mention only very general guidelines and leave a lot to the imagination. When I was "more new" ( still a beginner in many regards) I sometimes struggled with this.