More problems layering

[montka]

Hi guys,

I hope you can help me. I\'ve been trying to shade gold nmm using razza\'s recipe of snakebite leather + calthan brown, shaded with terracotta then chaos black. I have great results shading with terracotta, but as soon as I start adding chaos black to the mix I start to get blotchiness and tide marks wherever I shade. I\'ve tried adding glaze medium and I\'ve tried wiping off the majority of the paint onto a tissue before applying it to the model without seeing any improvement. A problem that sometimes occurs is that the majority of the pigment ends up at the end of the brushstroke on the edges of the surface I\'m painting, or on ridges on the model.

All I\'m looking for is for the paint to tint the colour underneath from its beautiful terracotta shade to a deeper dark brown shade, but so far this is completely eluding me. So far as I can tell the only way to avoid tide markings is to use the feathering technique, but that\'s easier said than done.

Besides wiping paint off the brush before applying is there any advice you can give me to result in smoother results?

 

[Shawn R. L.]

Could be a bad mix. One of the paints dosn\'t \'get along\' with the others.

Kind of hard to put into words but sometimes when I hit similar problems I can usually simply force the mix by a combination of strokes in different directions. Using a brush with shorter bristles can help in this in that it transfers more actual force.

Tide marks can be dealt with by using two brushes.....this really takes doing it to see what I mean and to get the feel of it. You use the one brush that has paint on it to work things out as best you can. Then have the other brush sitting near, just damp. You gently go from the tide mark towards where the paint get\'s thicker and just push/feather/soften the edge of the tide. This video at the end sort of shows what I mean.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=on7AA2M8FeQ&feature=PlayList&p=B0188761AA8BC0AB&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=1

Here\'s a video example of how to make feathering easy. From about 1 minuet to 2 minuets is where she is doing what she calls floating. You can do the same technique using a brush with long slender hairs. Wet the whole brush and get the paint just on the very tip. Push down on the bristles till they are bent for most of their length and you can acheve the same effect she is doing up to minuet two. What she\'s doing at the end isn\'t what I\'m talking about.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l56LP6KcG9Y

 

[Einion]

Just to clarify, are you mixing Chaos Black into the Terracotta and having the problem or are you applying the straight black, diluted, over the Terracotta?

IME blacks can often be difficult to use thinly over a colour that\'s a lot lighter, particularly if you\'re working over a large area. It\'s not exactly the same with white but similar kind of thing if you tried to work with straight white over a mid brown for example.

Einion

 

[montka]

Hi there. I\'m mixing chaos black with terracotta before applying it to the model. Razza\'s tutorial for painting Sigvlad the Magnificent suggests shading with a mix of terracotta and black, then shading with a mix of chaos black and badab black. Unfortunately when I try this the paint doesn\'t behave as I want it to. I\'ll give shawn\'s suggestions a try today and see how it goes