Need help with wetblending

[Priceykins]

hey guys
ive been painting for a few years, and have been able to get good results using layering, however, I have recently decided to try my hand at wet blending.

This however is where the trouble starts.
I use \"cryla gel retarder\" and a home made wet pallet. I dont know if possibly the retarder i use is the problem, maybe someone else will be able to help there.

But anyway, whenever i try to wet blend, u basecoat the area(say archaons cloak) in the medium shade of the coliur i want to achive. when put in the recesses a darker shade, and on the high ares the highlite shade, and start to \'fiddle\' and \'squirm\' with the paint brush to try and blend, but i just end up with a mess. The highlight shade sort of goes weird, and shows bits of the base colour through it, which isnt good. Also in a few attempts, the paint has dried with brich strokes showing in it, and also lumps of paint, which makes me think the paint was 2 thick, however it was thinned to milk consistancy. I generally use a mix of vallejo colour and citadel paints.

Can anyone give me any help or advice, or a link to a good wetblending tutorial(which i have scoured the net for, but cant find). thanks in advance.

 

[Nelson]

I think, but I\'m not sure, that a large part of the problem is because of the gel retarder. It thickens your paint up too much, while thinning the actual pigment in the process. By the time you thin it back down with water to the ideal consistency, it\'s a transparent mess. Try to find some retarder that\'s basically liquid. I can\'t really help you there, since I haven\'t been able to find any myself, but I know lots of people use it.

 

[Priceykins]

well, on the back of the tube of retarder it says \" increasing proportion of retarder inreseas transparency and reduces viscosity\". I think this means ure right about it reducing pigment concentration. I know where I can get liquid retarder, the same place i got this, jus its like double the price, n i regard myself as quite cheap when it comes to buying stuff. is there any other ideas of what I could be doing wrong?

 

[E-Arkham]

The gel retarder is definitely part of the problem, if not all of it... especially if you\'re thinning the paint down to milk consistency.

I use Liquitex Slow-Dri fluid retarder. A two ounce bottle will cost you less than $4.00 US at Micheal\'s or Hobby Lobby. It\'ll last you a good long time -- I picked up mine several months ago, and am just now closing in on the halfway mark. And I paint a LOT and wetblend everything.

Alternately, your lights may be too hot and/or too close. If you\'re using 100w or 70w bulbs, try dropping down to 60w and moving the lights back/higher.

Make sure your brush stays wet, dipping it in water often even if you\'re using a retarder.

And finally, it might also be your wet palette. If you don\'t have enough water in the wet palette, it could be sucking the water right out of your paint as you use it. For the record, I don\'t use a wet palette.

Kep

 

[Priceykins]

I live in scotland, so it costs me the equivalent of about $20U.S to get liquid retarder. The wet pallet has plenty of water, and Ihave seen it keep paint useable for over a month.

I mite try and get some liquid retarder. Also I do tend to have my lamp very close to my model when painting, so could this be effecting the paints? It a 60w day/white light bulb. Ill try moving it back up and away from the model while im painting.

Also is there any advice/tutorials on wet blending theory, like how many different shades should i use to achieve best effect, and stuff liek that, as I cant find it newhere ???

 

[E-Arkham]

I\'m amazed there\'s that much of a price difference for liquid retarder between the US and Scotland, but if that\'s the case, you don\'t *technically* need it -- but it does make things a lot easier.

For years, I used regular water and/or inks. Keep the brush wet at all times, rinse it often, and keep all the colours you\'re using open to dip between them.

I\'m betting the reason you won\'t see many tutorials for wetblending is because you have to work fast, even with retarder, so there\'s no real time to stop and photograph.

This is off the top of my head as I recall how I do things so this description might be rough, but try this: You\'ll be painting over a base coat of either the midtone or the shadow colour, so open only two pots of paint. One should be a highlight colour (or white, or bleached bone, or whatever you feel is suitable for your colour choice) and the other should match your base coat.

Keeping the brush wet, start by dipping into your base coat colour and apply it over a small section. Quickly dip into the water, rinse it/shake it about, pat it on a paper towel (not enough to dry it, just enough to keep it from dripping) and dip into your highlight colour. Make sure you just dip the tip or one side of the brush. Apply the highlight over the still wet base coat section you just painted.

It should be relatively easy to see the colours start mixing together on their own. Remember how I said just dip the tip or the side of the brush? Well, use the other side that doesn\'t have any paint on it to help blend. If the colours aren\'t blending smoothly, rinse the brush out again and use it without dipping into paint again to smooth the colours together.

If you end up with too much water on the figure, dry your brush completely and dab it lightly to soak out the excess. If you have so much water on it that a few dabs with a dry brush won\'t soak it all up, wipe it off or let it dry, and then start again.

If the paint is drying faster than you can blend it, don\'t add any more paint trying to cover it up -- that\'ll just end up making things worse. Add a brush\'s worth of water and try to smooth it out with a brisk, even motion of the brush along the folds/creases/etc. Let it dry entirely and start again if need be. If the paint is drying very rough, blot it with a paper towel and try to get it off while it\'s still mostly wet and... start again.

It takes practice, certainly. It helps to start trying this on large smooth areas, such as cloaks and banners. Should you end up buying retarder, you\'ll be using the same technique as above. The main differences at that point will be that you\'ll replacing your water with the retarder (except for rinsing off the brush) and you\'ll have more time to blend before the paint gets sticky.

Another trick is that you can use a similar colour of ink to thin your paint down. The obvious problem here is that you have to be working with a set of colours that matches the inks you have available.

I tend not to use my palette at all when wetblending except to hold a few drops of my retarder. Though if I end up with a bit too much of one colour or the other on the brush, I\'ll twist it along the palette to mix them on the brush before heading back to the figure.

Ah, idea! Put two colours on your palette with some space between. Mix them on the palette in the space. Swirl the two paints together and work on getting it smooth. Get a feel for how the colours flow together and blend. That\'s all wetblending really is, only you\'ll be doing it on the figure itself and using smaller amounts of paint.

Anyway, that was a bit of a ramble, but I hope it helps.

Kep

 

[Shawn R. L.]

One trick I learned from \'Tole\' painting is a teckinque called \'side loading\'. This is something you will have to play with to really get it. Take a SQUARE end brush. get it DAMP, not soaked. Put just a touch of the color you want to blend on the corner on one side of the end of the brush. Always keeping the \'loaded\' side to the area you want the paint to be, stroke repeatedly. With some practice the paint blends itself.

 

[Jeff Hofmann]

my first wetblending attempts were very crude, but effective. If you don\'t like this idea, remember, I hadn\'t even heard of wetblending at this point.

For a base coat, paint one end dark, the other end light, and have them meet in a thin zig zag pattern in the middle.

In the next step you must work quickly. I\'d recommend holding one brush in each hand and one in your mouth.

Put a drop of dark paint on the dark area, a drop of light paint on the light area and a drop of water inbeween. Make sure that all connect and allow it to dry slowly.

This proccess might need to be repeated once or twice, and for large areas you might need to adjust the technique.

It works great for black legs blending to chestnut bodies on horses.

 

[Priceykins]

I managed to find some liquid retarder, cost me bout £8, though it is like a half pint bottle(8ounces) its made by \"golden additives\" got it in a local art store. Its is definately for acrylics. Ill use it at some point soon, and c if it helps, jus need to paint strip ma emps champion model for like the 12th time(hes a guniea pig for me testing out new painting teqhniques). Think hell be a blood angel, found some gr8 vajello reds, that make excellent looking blood angel armour, so ill give it a shot, and post the result, unless hes guniea pigged again before that, lol.