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hello dakka,

I'm painting up a powersword and decided to try wet blending it to get a nice gradient from dark blue on up through white before I add my lightning strokes. I've not had much luck with the whole process, though. I've painted this poor sword 6ish times now... so many times, in fact, that before the last attempt I had to scrape it back down to the plastic with my knife!

first method I tried was from this video (starts around 17:50) by girlpainting. adapting her process to shades of blue, I base-coated with fenris grey then undercoated the area near the hilt with regal blue and the area near the tip with shadow grey. for the actual blending, I used necron abyss (dark), enchanted blue (mid) and space wolves gray (light); each watered down about 4:1 water/flow-aid to paint. I ended up with either the paint drying too fast so no blending occurred or just a sloppy wet mess with colors running every which way. tried it twice with similar results.

second method I tried was from this video (the acrylic version, starting around 4:50) by awesomepaintjob and was also informed by this post from the brush brothers. I used necron abyss for the dark tone, ultramarines blue for the mid and white for the light tone. each was mixed about 1:1 with retarder from Golden and not otherwise thinned. I originally tried this over a base coat of necron abyss but the base coat kept showing through the white near the tip. I tried the same thing with a base coat of enchanted blue instead and still had the same problem until I base coated the tip of the blade with white.

I had more luck with this method than with the first, but it's still not there for me. here's what I ended up with after the 4th try:


(the top half has the white base coat at the tip of the blade and the bottom half doesn't)

it's moving in the right direction, but it still looks a mess. I stroked from the top edge of the blade down to the bottom, starting from the tip and moving down (light to dark) or starting from the hilt and moving up (dark to light) depending on which way I was trying to push the color. I had to keep adding white to the tip to keep it from turning light blue and I lost the mid tone entirely once I made the first blending pass... I ended up blending from necron abyss straight to white. I had a really hard time with keeping the gradient smooth, especially at the lighter end; brush marks everywhere! I'm using a size 0 raphael brush with a good tip on it... maybe it's too fine for this?

so many painters wet blend with acrylics and make it look easy that I feel like I'm just missing something fundamental. I want to get that figured out before I try yet another method (like water-based oils). so, what am I doing wrong and how can I make it better?

cheers,

v

I noticed that you made no mention of acrylic paint retarder...get some, make magic happen...retarder will stop paint from drying so quickly and allow a better blending effect. Good luck

BrotherVord wrote:I noticed that you made no mention of acrylic paint retarder...get some, make magic happen...retarder will stop paint from drying so quickly and allow a better blending effect. Good luck

I did make mention of it, actually. from the second method: "... each was mixed about 1:1 with retarder from Golden ..."

I still don't really see the point of messing with "wet blending". You can layer with very thin paints and create the same effect, I'd argue it's a much more useful skill to learn as well.

Painting with super dilute paints, even the consistency of water, is easier than people think. It's just a matter of using a right size, right quality brush and knowing how much to load it up and wipe off before applying.

No wet blending pros out there?

"wet blending" was hip hot buzz word for a little while, but it's just not worth it dude. Learn to paint with super dilute paints and layer and you will get the same result.

I dont think GW paints work well with the wet blend method. I use a super thinned paints to layer and then a wash of the base color to hide the hard lines. The wash at the end will get rid of the dry look you get with thinned paints.


I use P3 paints for wet blending due to the fact that they use a liquid piment for their paints. The last line of GW paints were powder pigment, not sure of the new ones.
The problem you get with the P3 line is that they dont drybrush very well.

I've used GW paints and Vallejo Acrylic Medium which works as a dry-time retardant, that way you can get some nice subtle blends.

its kind of streaky but i like the general look and i bet it will look good at the table

wet blending is tricky with acrylic paints because they're quite thick straight out of the pot and dry too quickly. You can thing them down with water, but then there isn't enough pigment in the solution for decent coverage. Wet blending is much more suited to watercolurs, which wouldn't be great on miniatures.

I've had my troubles with power swords too, and have found it MUCH easier to start with the mid-tone blue and go lighter and darker from there, rather than start with the darkest shade and try and highlight up to white.

Using thinned down paints and layering up the colour, I start with Skink Blue, then highlight up to white, and then at the opposite end of the blade go in with some Temple Guard blue, then some Sotek Blue/Hawks Turquoise and then some VERY thin Necron Abyss for a bit of a kick.

It also helps if you do your brush strokes along the blade lengthwise, rather than short ones across the width, much easier to have a smooth transition that way.

Just get an airbrush. You can paint a power sword like that in 5 minutes, tops.

I ended up giving up on wet blending entirely and did it with layering instead. you can see the end result in my P&M blog. turned out better than the end result I was expecting from the wet blending approach

I have only had one go at Wet blending and it didn't turn.out spectacular nor dismal either. Results in my P&M blog (The Vulkan's blade).

I followed the same vid by girlpainting as you OP. I didn't use exactly the same.paints though. I think WB is just something that needs practised. Oh, and use Lahmian Medium or other dedicated paint thinner for the thinning. This willbmean it is thin enough to blend and yet still pigmented enough so you don't need to saturate the blade.

When I wet blend, I usually mix a midtone on my palette, and do it in multiple push/pull passes. Going from white to almost black is going to be impossible to make smooth over such a large area in one go.

Varl ...good layering is a much better technique to learn anyway. I just looked through your Blog and I LOVE your army dude, very nice work! I would love to face them.

@gunzhard: cheers