Blending - Pro\'s please tell your secrets!!!

[Chrispy]

Yes, It would be harder to layer with Black primer. This is what give me so much trouble while doing NMM on black. Forunatly, there is a way to do it: Elouchard has an article up about underpainting. If you use greys to build up to a lighter color, you can blend with thin paints on them better.

 

[edomingox]

underpainting

i tried that. didn\'t work that well. I\'ll be using white primer from now on. unless something really calls for black primer. unfortunately, I already black primered a couple things. but that is cuz they will be a black dragon and a smokey demon prince.

 

[laurence]

G\'day Endomingox, for a while now I\'ve been practising the layering technique and I find this works really well when working towards achieving a nice smooth blend. My advice would be to play around a little with both the wet on wet & wet on dry technique, as they both bring good results. I personally would \'nt mix acetone with my paints as I find good \'ol filtered H2o does the trick, although I guess that if thats your thing and it works why not?? I don\'t mean to send you all a war & peace message here but I just wanted to respond to Cyril\'s advice, firstly thanks heaps to both Cyril and Chrispy for sharing that little gem of information with us. I\'m a little curious what Cyril meant when he said his new lamp is helping his blending? Has this got anything to with the heat that the lamp (bulb) emits or the brightness of the overall light?? Curious stuff... I say this because everytime I have a paint its like entering a solarium, not that I\'ve ever entered a solarium but I think you get the picture? Cheers

 

[edomingox]

layering

ya. i been using the layering technique instead of wet blending. seems to work better for me. although i wish i new which one will ultimately be the best. i sense i am taking the easy road cuz layering is easy. but if wet blending is actually the best, i should be practicing that. if you know what i mean.

 

[Sturmhalo]

Originally posted by edomingox

Wouldn\'t it be harder to layer with black primer than white primer?

Well, I guess it depends what colours you\'re using. As long as the base colour covers the black it makes no difference to the layering. Otherwise you\'ve got to start re-undercoating specific areas with white (eg. when painting yellow, reds, or some other light colour that has poor coverage).

I prefer a white undercoat personally. The main advantage of white over black is that it shows up all the small detail really well and you don\'t miss any of it. Black on the other hand can make it harder to spot these little things.

Originally posted by Logansama

The reason I started using acetone in the citadel line as a thinner is because so many of the colours, white in particular, dry very unevenly if you layer them. It gets very frustrating when you are going for a perfectly smooth finish and you have to layer several coats of white and ending up losing the flat surface texture.

I used to find that mixing black or dark grey with my white for a base coat and highlighting up to pure white also gave a nasty steaky affect. A cream base coat highlights up really well, but if you want a stark white then I use a base of something like GW\'s Ghostly Grey, or Coat d\'arms Lupin Grey. These slightly more subtle shades of grey highlight up really well and give a nice clean finsh!

 

[Sturmhalo]

Originally posted by edomingox
ya. i been using the layering technique instead of wet blending. seems to work better for me. although i wish i new which one will ultimately be the best. i sense i am taking the easy road cuz layering is easy. but if wet blending is actually the best, i should be practicing that. if you know what i mean.

I wouldn\'t say that one or the other is best. They\'re both really useful. I use layering all the time as it give ME the best results and it\'s a lot less hassle. I would however give wet blending a go (with oils) on a large scale figure where the larger surface areas might make layering a pain in the ass!

 

[Flashman14]

Ya, don\'t get caught up on \"what\'s best\" but rather what gives you the results you want to achieve.

Partly what that entails is really knowing and being able to restate your achievement goal with each color - sounds all Zig Ziglar or something but really think about what you are doing with each shade.

In other words really get comfortable with what a great paint job is: define it in words to yourself - you have to get that clear in your head before you put paint down. If you\'re only vaguely applying highlights then it will be luck or accident than you get what you want. So define what you want first.

For starters, look hard at minis you think are the best, like Cyrils or Kuromaru or even Sturm himself. Really analyze visually what\'s going on at each piece. What colors on the face, the sword, etc? where do the highlights fall? How fast does the blend begin? Whats the range of tones in that color - small? Large?

See where I\'m going? To be \"the best\" you really have to apply some brain power. There are no cheap tricks that will do that for you. More important in the long haul than talent or skill is patience and understanding.