Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

A very nice article, but did you have to use Caslon Antique in your photo captions?

Oh, je vois que tu es Canadien. Ce m'explique tout. :S

If you keep your wets wet enough, you'll not get brush strokes with the wet blending. It also helps to have a clean wet brush handy if you note the paint is drying and leaving strokes. A few strokes of that brush will smooth things out.

For glazing, dump that "Lahmian" stuff and get a proper glazing medium, like Liquitex or Golden. Cheaper and better. The golden has a much longer open time than the Liquitex. or simply use thinned down matte medium. Or buy a quart of this and cut it with some distilled water+ flow enhancer of some sort. Works a charm.

Indeed thanks for this Talys. As with a few others wet blending does seem to be a bit of a mystery to me but when broken down into stages I think I can give it a try. The biggest issue for me will be finding the correct paint consistency to use to be able to pull it off.

 Talys wrote:

To be honest, I think the layered version has come out the best, although it's got a bit of a sheen to it; that could be the photography, though.

Its possible to get the same smooth transitions from all three techniques - its just a matter of time spent and brush control. I think that the examples are providing a false sense for the glazed tabbard as the other two examples transition through much greater range of color.

So here is my question. I have some skill in painting, but not to this level.

I have liquitex glazing medium, matte medium, slow dri and flow aid. I've tried glazing medium to make a glaze, but when I compare it to the GW glazes I have, it doesn't seem right.

So my question, is what is a good ratio for making glazes, since I should be able to make any color into a glaze.

Explanation does help out a lot, especially with the wet on wet blending. I hadn't heard of the practice technique on the sprue with leaving the gap. Going to try and practice that some, and the wet brush if it starts to dry is another good trick to remember.

@DarkKnights44 - I have all of those Liquitex products too (and airbrush medium.. really, all of the Liquitex mediums), though frankly, the only one I use with any regularity is flo-Aid, for light colors like tan and white.

I disagree with Red Harvest: I really like Lahmian Medium more than the Liquitex products for making glazes. But, this is a preference thing.

I have Lahmian Medium both in the original pot, and transferred into a dropper bottle. For a glaze, what I do is put one drop of Lahmian Medium (2 drops if it's a large area I'm going to glaze) into a palette, and then on a relatively small mixing brush, like a size zero, I have just a little bit of paint on the tip. I mix it up -- a lot -- until there is no grit visible at all. Note that the brush I use to make the glaze is not the brush I use to apply it (because that brush will become over-saturated; plus, I don't want to get tons of paint into my good brushes' ferrules).

So, to answer your question, WAY more medium than paint. Really, it requires experimentation, because I'm sure that it's different for everyone.

Practicing on sprues is a good thing; it's also easier because it's perfectly flat, and you can learn to wet blend on as wide a surface as you want, and then shrink it to as narrow a surface as you think you'll need.

Ya know, for me personally I've pretty much moved back to plain old simple tap water for just about everything. I've used just about every medium I can get my hands on. While I've found that some of them do make some processes easier by extending the open time of the paint, I've frequently found that in exchange for this extra time, many of the mediums add more of a gloss sheen than I prefer there to be.

Since I like a matte finish without having to resort to varnish (particularly important when I'm doing TMM work) and I know it's always available to me, water has become my go-to for thinning and making glazes (unless I'm using an airbrush of course and then I use a dedicated airbrush thinner).

You can pull off all of these techniques with nothing more than simple tap water so don't be discouraged if you don't have a bunch of mediums sitting on your shelf

 Talys wrote:
@DarkKnights44 - I have all of those Liquitex products too (and airbrush medium.. really, all of the Liquitex mediums), though frankly, the only one I use with any regularity is flo-Aid, for light colors like tan and white.

I disagree with Red Harvest: I really like Lahmian Medium more than the Liquitex products for making glazes. But, this is a preference thing.

I have Lahmian Medium both in the original pot, and transferred into a dropper bottle. For a glaze, what I do is put one drop of Lahmian Medium (2 drops if it's a large area I'm going to glaze) into a palette, and then on a relatively small mixing brush, like a size zero, I have just a little bit of paint on the tip. I mix it up -- a lot -- until there is no grit visible at all. Note that the brush I use to make the glaze is not the brush I use to apply it (because that brush will become over-saturated; plus, I don't want to get tons of paint into my good brushes' ferrules).

So, to answer your question, WAY more medium than paint. Really, it requires experimentation, because I'm sure that it's different for everyone.

Practicing on sprues is a good thing; it's also easier because it's perfectly flat, and you can learn to wet blend on as wide a surface as you want, and then shrink it to as narrow a surface as you think you'll need.

Thanks Talys, I will give that a try as well. I know I'm working with the two hardest colors, white and black, since I'm painting Raven Guard. I've noticed that white dries super fast, so unless I use my wet palette, it leaves brush strokes and looks blotchy. I hoping I can make a glaze to help with highlights on the white.

@Darknights44 - A couple of suggestions...

First of all, yeah, white is not easy to paint onto white. A few tips that should speed things along:

- For a large area, Liquitex Flo-Aid is your friend. On your wet palette, put a decent size chunk of blob of White Scar (or equivalent from other brand). Put a drop of liquitex Flo-Aid (diluted 20:1 with water) into a REGULAR palette (like, one of those things with little round cups). Dip brush into the flo-aid, and mix a very small amount of flow-aid into your white paint on the wet palette. Wash off this brush and dry it before painting the model, to avoid overloading the brush (getting too much paint on it).

You'll be AMAZED at how nicely it dries (sans brush strokes). But... you'll also need to do a zillion layers because coverage sucks.

- For small areas, I've become a big fan of Ceramite White. I used to really hate this paint, because I could never paint it without brush strokes, but it turned out, my real problem was that my pot of Ceramite wasn't mixed up enough. It took a long time, using one of those motorized stirrers to get my ceramite all homogenized. The coverage is actually pretty awesome, and if you're not doing too many coats, it will come out more or less brushstroke free (a little less than more). But for small do-dads like AdMech symbols, you can't see them anyhow.

- Don't try to wetblend or layer from white to black. You'll want to shoot yourself. Pick a few intermediate shades. The closest GW color to black that I like is Skavenblight Dinge; the others in the sequence are Mechanicus Standard Grey, Dawnstone, Administratum Grey -- which takes you to a neutral, fairly-bright grey. Then you can work to the off-whites, Celestra Grey and Ulthan. But.....

This is a miserable amount of work.

What I prefer to do is to basecoat Celestra grey over black, then, block it out solid with Ultuan grey using Flo-Aid. Cut all the edges really nice. Then, using Lahmian Medium, make a glaze out of either Administratum Grey (neutral) or Dark Reaper (leaning blue), with not very much paint at all. Then wash the white, and it will look good. Or do both, one after the other.

Finally, either highlight using white scar, or drybrush with Praxetti White if you are confident that you have a light drybrush hand.

The wings on my Prosecutors are done this way:



If you look on my land raider or the Kastellan, the half-white skulls of the Admech symbols are all painted with ceramite white directly onto solid black.

Thanks Talys. Those wings look fantastic. I think that will help trying your way. I know I just have to practice.

I just shot some pictures of two Sternguard I painted. When I get them uploaded I post them so you can see how my first attempts came out.

Without trying to sound like an oil-painting-preacher, can I suggest that where the oil painting method I posted on the previous page really shines is painting whites.

I used this zombie as an example simply because it was the first thing that I placed my hand on that was already primed white. I used the same technique as the previous page (primed with a white acrylic, painted the oil in to the crevices with a small round brush then used a small filbert to drybrush-blend it in to the surrounds). If you want more contrast you just repeat it (paint more oil in to the crevice and drybrush it, each time you do it it'll get darker).

The reason I think this method is really good for white is that whites really show up any streakiness you might get from wet blending acrylics or any harsh transitions you might get from layering AND it's quicker than either (with the downside you have to wait a while for it to dry and then varnish it for protection). With oils if you get any streakiness you just smoosh a dry clean brush over the region and it'll blend the streaks together.



It only took a minute or two to do that. There's no way I could get blends that smooth with acrylics in a similar amount of time.

Thanks guys for all these great techniques. Gives me a lot to try out and see which ones work the best for me.

Here is my first two Sternguard Raven Guard I painted. When I get a chance this week, I'll practice some of these techniques, so I can improve the white look.