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Hi all.

After receiving a few tipps from the community how to improve my painting on a marine (can be seen here), I've been struggling the past week with blending. I've read and watched a bunch of tutorials for different techniques, however, I can't get a single one to work for me and I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

Here's everything I tried and failed at. All was done on a marine.
One of the guides I used: http://equinoxpainting.blogspot.com.au/2014/12/blending-styles-and-how-to.html

Sadly, I don't have any pictures at the moment, but maybe someone can figure out what I did wrong.


Wet blending:
I don't know if a drying retarder is key here, I tried it without and failed. I placed two bands of colours next to each other, and took a damp brush. The colours just mixed into each other and didn't look at all like a blend. I gave up after a few tries and blamed the missing drying retarder.

Two-Brush-Blending:
This sounded exactly like it would work for me. Sadly, it didn't.
I applied colour layer like I normally would, took a damp brush (dipped into water, touched the tip on a paper towel), and tried a side to side motion with either the tip or the side of the brush. Neither did work. Two possible outcomes were common: the layer dried too fast, leaving a small line at the border of the layer and only taking colour particles out from within.
It looked something like this:


I tried a more thinned down layer, but that just resulted in a watery mess.


Glazing:
My tries looked unnatural, however,but might work with practice. Isn't my favourite in theory, though, and felt unnatural.

Layering:
Might work, in the CC thread of my marine I did it with two layers of grey, might try it with more layers in the future but seems very time consuming.

Feathering:
Same results as two-brush-blending.


Any help on what I'm doing wrong?

Wet-blending: Dilute paints don't work very well, in my experience. While you need them thin enough to flow off the brush and dry without brush strokes, the paint still needs to have some body, otherwise it just pools and intermixes completely.

Try working with slightly thicker paints and skip the 'damp brush' step - you'll only risk flooding the area. Instead, start mixing on the model with the same brush you used to apply your second color. There's a lot of back and forth with the technique, pushing one color forward and pulling the other back into the first. The reason people recommend drying retarder is because they need both the thicker consistency and the longer open time to get the best results.

Thanks, oadie.
Would you say wet-blending without a drying retarder is even worth trying further?

Any ideas on the other techniques?

I really sugest you to use tarder as you need yo use thin layers of paint and that dry rather fast... And to blending, if you need to blend red and yellow, blend red and 70/30 red-yellow then 50/50 and so and so...it will help you make smoother blend.

Thanks, I think I will stay away from wet blending then.

Suggestions for the other techniques?

I think you are over thinking wetblending. I don't mean this to sound rude, mind you. but when I wet blend (chaos cloaks, power weapons and whatnot) I apply the upper color, then wash the paint off of the brush, dry it partially off, then start working on the second color. SO a better example of what I am saying is this:
step 1: apply top half of the cloaks paint (blue)
step 2: wash all blue off of brush, dry (mostly dry)
step 3: apply bottom half of the cloaks paint (purple)
step 4: while purple is fresh, use horizontal brush strokes to begin merging the purple upwards

You don't want to take your time after step 1 is done, so it's kind of a more hectic wetblend then from some tutorials I've scene. I hoped this kind of helped, it's just my method that I tend to use.

I've found with acrylics any decent blending method just requires lots and lots of small transitions otherwise it just ends up looking smudgy. If you have a small area to blend over it's easier because each transition is closer to the next so the eye doesn't pick out each transition so easily. If blending something bigger like panels on a vehicle, I just reach for my airbrush, even if it involves a lot of masking.

I have had a bit more success blending enamels and oils, but then using enamels and oils in the first place adds a lot of time to painting a model so it's hard to recommend.

you can wet blend without retarder medium, its useful for larger items i guess.. i bought retarder medium and it works but i hardly use it now because you can wet blend without it and im too lazy to do the extra prep. for wet blending you need patience. you need to work the colours back and forward, and keep going between the 2 on your palette. its just a matter of perseverance.

i find i now prefer a method that combines layering and feathering for the highlights on my armoured guys. its pretty simple, all you need is your base colour and your highlight colour. for example, on my night lords armour, its based with kantor blue. teclis blue is my highlight colour. mix a little teclis with a lot of kantor. thin with water (i literally kiss the surface of the water with my brush tip.) apply, feather out the edges. you have to be patient because the effect will be less obvious when wet. mix your highlights again, with more teclis. apply and feather while the other layer is still fresh, in a smaller area. rinse and repeat until your highlight is pure teclis and pretty much a line highlight to pick out areas to pop. as i say, you'll see the effect work Once the paint dries. you can apply a thin glaze or wash to smooth out the effect if needs be. hope this helps a little. i know it can be frustrating.

You can see what i mean on my konrad. Look at his knee plates. Thats all feathered and layered. I did use another blue to add a final line highlight but thats another thing you can do at the end

Thanks a lot, queen_annes_revenge. I will try it again.

Easy question: Have you considered attending a painting class? Yes, they cost a bit but based on my personal experience it's worth the money.

You learn the techniques and have a trainer available to give you a hand and answer your questions.

Massive Voodoo is quite active in Germany but there are others as well.
Just an example: http://www.tabletopwelt.de/index.php?/forum/205-workshops/

Addition: A lot of FLGS host painting days as well. For example I not a shop in Nuremberg that has a painting days first Saturday of each month. And another shop in Berlin has such days every once in a while as well. But I don't know their frequency.