--- In mini-painter@egroups.com, "Daniel Cook" <dcook22@e...> wrote:
> Hi Bob,
>
> In an earlier post i commented about your site and mentioned that
you
> might decide to put up painting tips. The kinds of tips this list
can
> always use are
>
> 1. Blending - Obviously one of your strong points. We are always
> looking for good detailed descriptions of blending technique, color
> choices and paint thickness (dilution ratios)
>

I guess I'll start on the first one<s>..
I don't actually blend my hilights or shades. At least not in the wet-
on-wet technique favored by oil painters. It can be done with acrylic
extenders. I've tried them but since I'm accustomed to my own
techniques, I haven't really used them too much. I'll save that for a
future experiment.
What I actually do is layer on light colors on top of each other.
Imagine painting a space Marine:
I'll choose a base coat, say Ultramarines Blue<s>, then mix a hilight
color with white. The ratio usually is 5 drops blue to 1 drop white.
I then mix up another color with 3 drops blue and 2 drops white. Then
another transition in color is mixed with 2 drops of blue and 3 drops
of white. The gist of the story is to mix up 7-8 colors from your
base coat to your lightest hilight.
Now that you have 7-8 colors ranging from blue to light blue to
almost white, you have to add water to thin the mix. I usually mix my
hilight colors very thin, about 50% paint, 50% water.
Use filtered water BTW. Municipal tap water has many impurties, all
you have to do is look how dirty a used water filter is to see the
amount of rust etc. we are drinking.
If your hilight mixature is too thin, and you notice a seperation of
pigment, you can always add a bit of matte medium to thicken up your
hilights. Using matte medium can also help you achieve transparent
colors without overdiluting a hilight color.
Now for hilighting:
I take my darkest hilight color and paint a thin band on the top of
the kneepad. I then take my second darkest color and paint a thinner
band on top of my first hilight. This process is repeated until I
reach my lightest hilight. Each sucessive layer of paint is both
lighter in color, and thinner in width. The more colors you mix, the
smoother your hilights will appear.
Instead of actually blending colors, what your are trying to achieve
is the illusion of a transition from dark to light colors as if they
were blended together.
The key is lay the thin bands on lightly. This only come with
practice. If you were painting a thin band of hilight on a kneeepad,
the pressure you apply with the brush tip on the surface of the model
is at first light, then apply more pressure as you reach the apex or
top of the kneepad, and ease up on the brush as you reach the other
side of the pad. This gives you a smooth "feathered" edge toy your
hilights.
If you can see different bands of transition color on a hilight, then
you need to mix up another transition color, somewhere between the
two tones, and paint this on lightly between them.
Another tip is that the lighet the hilight, the less you need to use.
Your lightest hilight should also be the thinnest, so you have
complete control over the medium.

Does this help? I suggest you try this technique, and write back with
any other questions. Obvidously this is labor intensive. We're
talking 7-9 transitions per hilight!! save it only for your best
work!
As you can see I like to work with heavily thinned paints. My
basecoats are usually 50/50 paint water mixes, sometimes 75/paint
25/water depending on the color. The figure is basecoated 3-4 times
so as to not coverup any fine details. The benifit is that your
painting will be smoother, and i feel it is worth it to paint a
hilight several times, rather than have a heavy build up of paints.
I use mainly Citadel paints, both old and new. I don't prefer either,
instead I have certain colors I like to use, and will choose
accordingly. Both when thinned will apply smoothly without brush
marks.


BOBBY