Post by wardster on May 11, 2015 21:42:19 GMT -5
Figure painters who use acrylic paints have various tricks they use, to get their hand-brushed paint jobs to "blend" well, from one tiny shade or variation in color, to the next. Flow Improvers mixed into their paints, for instance; or drying time extenders. Both of these product types make it easier to avoid hard, harsh edges; and make it a lot easier to get the most out of water-based acrylic paints from various paint manufacturers such as Reaper, Citadel, Vallejo, and many others. Inexpensive craft paints can also benefit from such chemical assistance.
Once a person is used to those chemical ways to alter a paint's characteristics, one of the next steps up the learning curve with hand-brushed acrylics is to try out the "wet pallette" technique.
Basically, it's a way to keep super-fast-drying acrylic paints "wet" and active, for a longer period of time, by supplying a wet (but not overly wet) surface, right under some paint that's sitting on a paper-based, disposable palette.
The basic idea is to have some kind of a container (an ordinary plate might do, for practice purposes) with a damp sponge or moistened paper towels, sitting on top of that; and on top of that, you have some "parchment paper" (commonly used for baking purposes); and on top of that, you have small blobs of acrylic paints.
Used in the most basic way, the moisture from the sponge layer soaks through the parchment paper layer, above it, just enough to keep the paint from drying out.
Used in a more advanced way, you can put one blob of color onto the palette (say, on the left side, somewhere) ... and add another blob, of a different color (say, on the right side) ... and can drag some of both of those colors towards the middle area; where those two colors get custom-mixed together. This gives you a third color to add, "between" the other two ... with (if taken to extremes) the further possibility of mixing two variations, to the immediate left or right of the middle one.
In other words, you can have an "A" color and a "C" color; with a custom-mixed "B" color, right between the two extremes.
Or, with practice, you could plan the layout of your disposable paper palette's surface so that you have an "A" color on one end, and an "E" color on the other end of that imaginary line ... and with those two colors, you could custom-mix a "C" color, right in the middle of that line. And then, once you've turned two colors into three, you could go a step farther, and custom-mix a "B" color from "A" and "C" ... and could also custom-mix a "D" color, from "C" and "E".
Once you have that range of finely-blended paint, sitting there on your palette, ready to go, it's a relatively simple matter to just pick the exact spot on that imaginary line, to get the exact shade you want (if you're custom-blending, say, skin tones; and aiming at a light-to-dark transition) and dip your brush into that exact spot ... and apply it, wherever you feel it needs to go. Then, go back and pick another spot on that line, and add that somewhere else; and so on.
If you've ever wondered how in the heck figure painters who use hand-brushed, super-fast-drying acrylics get smooth blends of continuous color ... there ya go!
Once a person is used to those chemical ways to alter a paint's characteristics, one of the next steps up the learning curve with hand-brushed acrylics is to try out the "wet pallette" technique.
Basically, it's a way to keep super-fast-drying acrylic paints "wet" and active, for a longer period of time, by supplying a wet (but not overly wet) surface, right under some paint that's sitting on a paper-based, disposable palette.
The basic idea is to have some kind of a container (an ordinary plate might do, for practice purposes) with a damp sponge or moistened paper towels, sitting on top of that; and on top of that, you have some "parchment paper" (commonly used for baking purposes); and on top of that, you have small blobs of acrylic paints.
Used in the most basic way, the moisture from the sponge layer soaks through the parchment paper layer, above it, just enough to keep the paint from drying out.
Used in a more advanced way, you can put one blob of color onto the palette (say, on the left side, somewhere) ... and add another blob, of a different color (say, on the right side) ... and can drag some of both of those colors towards the middle area; where those two colors get custom-mixed together. This gives you a third color to add, "between" the other two ... with (if taken to extremes) the further possibility of mixing two variations, to the immediate left or right of the middle one.
In other words, you can have an "A" color and a "C" color; with a custom-mixed "B" color, right between the two extremes.
Or, with practice, you could plan the layout of your disposable paper palette's surface so that you have an "A" color on one end, and an "E" color on the other end of that imaginary line ... and with those two colors, you could custom-mix a "C" color, right in the middle of that line. And then, once you've turned two colors into three, you could go a step farther, and custom-mix a "B" color from "A" and "C" ... and could also custom-mix a "D" color, from "C" and "E".
Once you have that range of finely-blended paint, sitting there on your palette, ready to go, it's a relatively simple matter to just pick the exact spot on that imaginary line, to get the exact shade you want (if you're custom-blending, say, skin tones; and aiming at a light-to-dark transition) and dip your brush into that exact spot ... and apply it, wherever you feel it needs to go. Then, go back and pick another spot on that line, and add that somewhere else; and so on.
If you've ever wondered how in the heck figure painters who use hand-brushed, super-fast-drying acrylics get smooth blends of continuous color ... there ya go!
