3 replies to this topic

[Orionjp]

I just saw a few tutorials on wet blending on youtube. To me it looks a little sloppy and uncontrolled. How effective is wet blending really?

[Inarah]

I think it's really up to the artist. If you're in control of your brush and have a good idea how your paint is going to act you can have very good control over the process. It's up to the painter to decide how much paint to put down, how much water to use, and how to lay the strokes over the area.

[Bruunwald]

"Wet blending" (a redundancy since all blending in painting requires wet paint), has been a standard technique of painting pretty much since painting anything at all has been around. Mona Lisa? "Wet blended."

Any painter of models who wants to get better at it, ought to sit down with a canvas or smooth piece of wood, a few paints, and a nice clean brush, and learn to blend his colors. There's nothing new about it. To what level you want to include it in your miniatures painting is up to you, but it does everybody some good to have some familiarity with it.

[Hot Lead]

I just saw a few tutorials on wet blending on youtube. To me it looks a little sloppy and uncontrolled. How effective is wet blending really?

You've probably just been watching the wrong videos...



While this is a promo video and not the complete segment, the technique is classic wet blending. There's actually two basic forms: butt two sections of wet paint next to each other and then mix between them or what I do - work a new color into a wet area of paint.

The key with blending (well, with any painting technique) is the paint consistency. Your paint has to have a certain "body" to be mixable without being too thick (brush drags and paint pushes around.) At the same time it shouldn't be too thin, or the brush will poke though the paint and make holes.

After that the technique used varies by painter. Some people do long, even strokes to mix the paint. Some painters do crossing or hatched brushstrokes to "pull" the colors together. In either case practice makes perfect.

Couldn't agree with Bruunwald more! Trying it on a "macro" scale will give you a handle on the technique before you try it at our scale.

At the smaller scale paint consistency becomes key. Acrylics on canvas have extra drying time vs. the smaller relative size of a mini. Using drying retarder or working quickly is a necessity.

Take care,
Laszlo