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So I picked up a bottle of Golden Glaze medium to try out what all the hoopla was about with glazes. Even though I have poked around on various web sites and blogs on ideas about using glazes, i am not sure I am getting it right. What I understand is that it is supposed to thin the paint and when you paint it on, it creates a filter of pigment over what is underneath. Fine, I got that. What I am not getting are the thinning qualities. I cannot for the life of me get smooth surface with this stuff. It is thick enough that it is leaving brush strokes like crazy. It looks a little splotchy which is not what I want at all.

Anyone have any experience with Glaze Medium and can impart some wisdom on what I am doing wrong? I am mixing in Vallejo Game Color paints.

did you mix water into the medium? You need to thin it also, its mainly designed for thick bodied paints, so think it a little. Use a ratio of 1 part paint, 2 parts glaze, 2 parts water. It should give you what you want, but you have to play around with the ratio to get what you want also..

ruff wrote:did you mix water into the medium? You need to thin it also, its mainly designed for thick bodied paints, so think it a little. Use a ratio of 1 part paint, 2 parts glaze, 2 parts water. It should give you what you want, but you have to play around with the ratio to get what you want also..

Just to build on this a bit... I usually add a drop or two of flo aid to the water.

Sound advice above.

The thing about the artist media is they are made for use with heavy body acrylic for painting on canvas like traditional oil paint.

Thanks all. I will give this a whirl and see what happens. I will pull out my bottle of 10:1 water to flow-aid and experiment.

Glaze medium doesnt really thin very much, if it does at all its purely coincidence that the medium is less viscous that your paint. ?(real pricy artists paint is thick like butter)

What glaze medium does do, is to boost transparency and gloss, more so than a gloss medium does. Added to paints that are already transparent can make beutifuly rich glaze paints, but it will still work a little with opaque colours.

Cool. Good to know. I just figured since it said thinning on the bottle, that it would do that too? Teach me to trust that.

It probably does thin the Golden Brand Acrylics that they would like to sell you also haha.
Mediums can be very useful, theres a fair few varieties. For mini's matt medium's tend to be popular, but if you want glossy then glossy is great
All mediums will probably alter the flow and consistency of your paint a bit though, its a matter of preference, desired effects and practise/experience I guess.
Liquitex do an 'ultra matte' aswell as a regular matte medium. Not 100% on the actual difference but i thinks one is for opaques and one for transparents. Golden probably do similar products tbh, and if you want a matte finish with the glazing medium you have, your'e probably going to need to do a matte varnish coat as a final step of painting.

Paint additives are the devil and will dry up all your paints!!!!

/propaganda

I haven't yet tried a glaze medium yet. I would be most appreciative if you posted pics of your work with it!

I only have experience with Matte Medium, Slo-Dri(retardant), Flo-Aid and Ultra Matte medium.

I use the retardant and flo aid extensively in my everyday painting. The matte mediums are for my home made washes.

Aerethan wrote:Paint additives are the devil and will dry up all your paints!!!!

/propaganda

I haven't yet tried a glaze medium yet. I would be most appreciative if you posted pics of your work with it!

I only have experience with Matte Medium, Slo-Dri(retardant), Flo-Aid and Ultra Matte medium.

I use the retardant and flo aid extensively in my everyday painting. The matte mediums are for my home made washes.

I dont use it on mini's personally, But I do have some for other art projects.
Liquitex mediums I use are;

Gloss medium
Glaze Medium
Airbrush medium
Irridescant Medium

I've never had the matt mediums before, but do intend to get some for my mini's. The gloss and Glaze ones do give lovely transparancy with all the paints I've used so far - mostly Liquitex acrylic ink and Winsor and Newton Galleria.
The Glaze does come up a lot more transparent - I dunno I'f you ever went with enough layers but with the gloss (and I assume matt) you can get upto a relatively opaque colour in just a few coats while the glaze medium shows an underpainting through for many more layers. Both are very high gloss, and dry kind of rubbery if applied too thick, they aren't really suitable for varnish/top coating but make great intercoats.
I've not used them on mini's more for canvas and airbrushing, transparent colours are incredibly useful in airbrushing and more often than not a highly glossy, smooth, flat finish is desired.
The irridescant makes a kind of mettallic, its not the same as a GW one though, the point of it is to create interference patterns or to increase reflectivity of colours, if you put it over the top of some painting it will show the work underneath at some angles and look all sparkly from others depending on the lighting.
I've been meanign to try the texture mediums out for maybe basing or vehicle track / tyre mud etc. Theres a few, the black lava one looked interesting, very likely something in the acrylic mediums section is the water effect stuff too btw, if anyone knows which that might be useful.