Glazing: Putting Theory into practice. Advice Needed.

[Masnagj]

Thank you for taking the time to read my thread. After reading Mahon's wonderful glazing tutorial, after getting off of work I picked up the brushes and tried putting the theroy into action. The results did not work out so well, see below.

Click to see full-sized image

Click to see full-sized image

Heres where you come in, I would like to know what I may be doing wrong to get this sort of effect, which is not the smooth uber blending technique I wish to learn.

Here is what I did, I primed the model using the white paint on primer from reaper. From there I mixed up some chaos black with regal blue to provide a non black black for shadows on the mini.

I then figured I would glaze up from the shadows to Ultramarines blue. This is where the results varried.

I mixed up a small amount of UM blue in my pallete added a small drop of liquid soap as recomended, and added a ton of water. I loaded the brush as normal and touched the brush to a paper towel to remove excess water, I then painted as normal with my attempted glaze. For the first few coats I noticed it acted closer to a wash, leading me to believe there was to much water, so I became more concious of getting rid of more water before applying the brush.

As I continued to apply UM blue, it seemed the blue became to start becoming less blue if that makes any sense, so I mixed up some regal blue with the water as well as the dish soap, and took a few glazes over the leg again. It certainly made it more blue.

I also tried to highlight the tops of the greaves as well as the thigh with glazes of lightning blue, after going over with a few coats of this glaze I saw only a small coloration of the lighter blue.

When I looked at the minis leg again this morning it almost has a chalky consistancy to it. So it is clear I need advice, and a lot more practice.

A few questions if I may:

When I paint with the glaze is it bad if small bubbles from the soap are showing up when you are painting with the glaze. I would imagine the answer is yes, and the remedy is to use less soap or increase the ammount of water.

Is it better to glaze a darker color onto a lighter color? As I went the other way and tried to glaze light over dark did I miss that part of the explanation in the tutorial?

The chalky nature of the finish, I would imagine that this is cause by the paint still being to paint like and to water it down much more in order to give it a much more translucent look to it as well as smoother finish.

If I am wrong please let me know, I will try a few things tonight when I get home, when I am at work all I can think of is the brushes and getting back to work and increasing my skill level!

Thanks again for taking the time to help a glazing noob!

Scott.

[Marek]

Hi Scott,

I'm far from being an expert but few things came into my mind when reading your post:

1. Do not add liquid soap to the paint mixture, add 1 drop to the pot with water instead and use that water to thin down paints

2. Water down the paint really hard and apply several layers; 3-4 are not enough and if they gave you color - you used too thick paint. You should see (almost) no effect when applying the next layer. Wait until the layer dries before applying the next one. Be patient! (That's the hardest trick! )

3. From the pics it seems that you have overpainted the whole areas. How can you get smooth transitions if you painted from one edge to the other with the same color? Each layer, or each second/third one, should cover smaller areas, leaving those that should stay darker untouched. Therefore the surface must be dry, otherwise water would split over the previoulsy painted part and distribute uniformly over the whole painted piece (or dive into recesses).

4. I'm not sure but during going from light to dark you must be more carefull - the dark paint will leave a more visible mark on the lighter one. Trying to do highlights should be easier as far as smoothness is concerned, but requires more layers for the highlight to appear.

5. Finally, wait for tips from those who know better

Good luck!
Cheers, Marek.

[mahon]

Scott,

Marek is right in most points, indeed. Thanks for stepping in, Marek!

Usually it's true that dark colors cover better and more easily than light colors. This is even more improtant when working with such thinned paints as you do while glazing. This results in a few points:

1. it's easier and faster to shade with glazes than to highligt with them. so you better start with highlight color applied and then adding darker and darker colors.
more experienced painters recommend starting from 70% highlight in the color transition, which means: your highlight is 100%, your shadow is 0%, base color is usually about 50%, so the 70% means halfway between the top highlight and base color.
it will not be very difficult to apply the missing 30% of highlighting, while the remaining 70% is easy peasy as it's only shading!

2. white or grey highlight is preferable for glazing because it will take many many layers until you cover black primer well...
alternatively you can apply the base color or the 70% highlight with opaque paint over the primer, and start glazing from this point. sounds reasonable? you get solid background to apply your glazes on.

3. you don't need to use glazing as the only technique in your painting. you can paint in any other way, and only apply glazes selectively, as finishing touches. for example to make transitions smoother, to decolorize shadows, to add variations to your colors, or to reduce contrast.

4. yep, too much soap in your paint will make it difficult to use. as Marek said one drop in your glass of water should be enough to break the surface tension and remove the 'borders'.

and as Marek said - let more experienced guys offer any more help now.

[Masnagj]

Thanks you for the responses on the glazing, That whole soap thing is very good to know.

Highlighting with white, I would imagine it would be useable as almost a universal glazing highligh color. As you cover the previous color in white it would progressively make the layer below brighter and brighter with no actual blending required. is my understanding correct there? I am going to print this thread out and take it home with me and take on some more practice to see what I can create.

I will make sure I post pics wednesday when I come back to work.

Thanks again for the responses!

[mahon]

I would avoid highlighting with pure white. You would eventually get a washed-out look, pastel colors, pretty much 'bleached' look.
Unless you apply a 'colorful' layer once in a few layers. For example: blue - white - white - white - blue - white - white - white - blue - etc.

There's no way we can describe it - thinckness and opacity change a lot here. All I can recommend is experimenting. Even if not on a real miniature, you can do it on a primed sprue, blister, old CD, etc.

If I was to recommend a way of painting blue armor with glazes, it would be:
- apply three colors on palette: base color, darkest shadow, highest highlight
- mix the base color with the highlight to get an intermediate color
- apply it all over the armor
- shade with base color (if you use very thin glazes) or mix of this color and base color and after a few layers with the base color alone
- then add some shadow color and shade with the mix
- shade with the pure shadow color
- now go highlighting. there shouldn't be much to highlight as you already started from a color lighter than the intended base color

remember you can always take a previous color after a few layers and fix something which didn't go quite right

for example: "uh-oh, I highlighted too much, let me take a darker glaze and touch it up a bit"

I used to use overlapping glazes to find the progression I wanted: lighter- darker-lighter-darker, etc.

Ah, one last thing - it's much easier to apply dark corrections than the light ones. dark colors simply cover more easily.

[Masnagj]

Thanks for the example Mahon, I am able to associate it with the example with numbers much easier now that you have posted that. I will try working on the other leg during my days off on the same mini, to get a comparison between attempts. Thanks again for all of the help.

[Masnagj]

This is attempt number 2 at glazing. I think it worked out much better than before. It needs many many layers in order to go to a pure lich purple.

When working with this, I noticed that there is a bit of line where the previous layer was applied, does this mean I need more dish soap.

Click to see full-sized image

Thanks for taking the time to offer advice once again!

[Demi_morgana]

looks like the advices work fine!
waiting to see the glazin results on minis

[mahon]

probably the surface tension is still a bit too strong. you could experiment with dish soap....

and even though it may seem it's a slow method of painting due to dilution of paints, there are two points worth mentioning:

- you don't use too much paint on your brush and you paint with thin layers, so even though your paints are thinned down they don't take too long to dry because of the small amounts applied

- you don't need to reduce opacity with water. you can use some water and some 'glaze medium' or 'matt medium' and your paints will be less opaque but not very watery. this way you can have more control over your paint.

but the method remains the same

It seems like you've been able to pull off some really tough transitions. Now it's only the matter of how good effects you want, how much time you can devote, and practice, practice, practice...

I can see you managed to notice what it is all about!

Even if it doesn't become your basic method of painting, it's good to know it for the moments it might be useful.

[arctica]

One thing to try is a bright base coat and glaze the shades on, i find that easier then working my way up to the highlights from black. But its all about practice and being comfortable with the consistency of the paints etc. Good job on the second attempt, it looks pretty good although blurry