ruk·si

🖌️ Painting
Blending

Updated at 2020-05-06 16:08

Blending is merging two colors to create a gradient for transition.

Palette Blending:

  • Place two paints on your wet palette close to each other.
  • Use your brush to take paint A and smear it somewhere on the palette.
  • Use your brush to take paint B and smear it in the same place to create a blend.
  • If you need to make it darker or lighter, use your brush to get more color from the piles.

Palette Wet Blending:

  • Place two paints on your wet palette close to each other.
  • Place a couple drops of water between the paints.
  • Start dragging one of the colors towards the other one with your brush.
  • Clean your brush.
  • Start dragging the other color towards the other one with your brush.
  • With some practice, this will create a nice gradient between the two.
  • If you used enough paint, you can use the resulting mixtures for gradients.

Wet Blending:

  • You are basically smudging two layers of acrylic paint together; like with oil colors.
  • Don't use too thin of a paint; but not too thick either.
  • While still wet, apply another paint near the edge of the previous paint with strokes.
  • This will create a gradient between the two colors if done properly.
  • Having both paints ready on your palette is essential for this to work.
  • If you find wet blending hard, you can first paint the areas with solid colors then quickly reapply and blend the colors on the edge of the areas.
  • You can also use retarder in the first paint to make drying take longer. Just dampening your brush in a drop of retarder is enough.

To finalize, you can also use thinned inks to make darker areas more vibrant.