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So for the past year or so I've been using only distilled water as an additive and thinner to my paints.

However, I've recently been wanting to see if using things such as Retarder, Flow Aid and Matte Medium would make processes a bit easier and improve the results of said processes. I've been looking around online and seen a few things on the applications of said mediums, but kept coming up empty on mixing ratios for them. I've seen people posting that they only use them separately to using all 3 with water in various ratios.

I was just wondering what other poster's experiences with these mediums have been.

Les Bursley's wash and airbrush thinner recipe videos are good places to start for purpose-specific mixes with given ratios. Beyond that, you aren't likely to find much beyond what's printed on the bottle or written on the manufacturer's website (like the 10:1 water to Flo-Aid recommendation, limits on the ratio of retarder to paint to ensure that it will eventually dry, etc.).

The reasoning is simple - there's little point in trying to give hard and fast ratios when 1) mixes vary greatly depending on what you're trying to achieve and 2) it's impossible to guess what the initial working properties of the reader's paint will be. Once you know how a medium affects the paint, it's simply a matter of adding more and more until that effect is as strong as you want it to be (taking care with retarders and surfactants, again, which can have a hard upper limits).

Take matte medium, for example. It's basically just colorless acrylic paint, so adding it will leave the working properties intact (our paints generally have similar consistencies - it will thin or thicken the paint, obviously, if it originally deviated from that average) while lowering the opacity (there's only ever as much pigment as was in the original blob of paint). If you're looking to apply a glaze, just add as much as it takes to drop the transparency to where you want it to be. It's impossible to ruin the paint by adding too much - you'll just need to apply extra layers, or you can simply add a bit more paint before you begin. Remember that water drops opacity, too, so if you want the paint to also have a thin consistency, you'll need to add less medium to account for the addition of the water.

Honestly, though, for all that can be done with the various mediums, I don't find myself using them frequently. If I want to try mixing up a custom wash or making my own thinner for airbrushing, I'm glad I have the full complement. If I want to mess around with wet-blending instead of my usual glazing/layering, I'll throw in some retarder. For general painting, though, water is all I really find call for. Particularly problematic paints might get a touch of matte medium and flow improver, but >95% of times I load my brush, it's just some ratio (always thin to the task!) of paint and water.

You have to play with them and figure out what they do in what amounts. There's no real hard and fast rules, as I'm sure each product even if it's labelled the same probably has a different mix.

I have a Vallejo thinner and a Humbrol thinner and they both give drastically different results. The Vallejo thinner has no drying retarder in it and flows better, you can thin purely with Vallejo thinner and no water. The Humbrol thinner has a healthy amount of drying retarder, doesn't flow very well, but binds a lot better (paint doesn't separate). If you use the Humbrol thinner to thin with no water, you'll end up with a paint that takes 30 minutes to 2 hours to dry and because it doesn't flow well, that may be problematic. But then if you add some flow improver to the Humbrol (honestly I usually just use dish washing detergent, lol) then it makes for a really good wash medium if you want a slow drying wash. If you want a faster drying wash, you need to cut it with some water so it dries faster.

Basically, all the products are different. Things that slow down the drying and act as good binders can be useful for blending, but you have to play around with them. If you find paint is not sticking to the model and not flowing well, then some flow aid can be useful.

I use liqutex matte medium drying retarder and use one drop per paint palette color. IMO you may want to start slow one drop at a time.

I like using Liquitex airbrush medium even for brushing because it is thinner than the matte medium which means I don't need to then add water to thin down the mix. The downside is that it tends to make the paint a bit glossier - but since I matte spray at the end anyway this makes no difference whatsoever.