By CraftingStepByStepPublished
Based on a video by Rinske Douna.
Blending is the thing that separates a flat wall of colour from a painting with air in it. Acrylics make it harder than oils because they skin over in a couple of minutes, so most people give up thinking they lack the touch. It is nearly always the paint, not the hand.
Rinske Douna runs through three ways to do it, and they cover almost every situation you will hit. Bring two colours together on the canvas. Mix the middle tone first and lay it in. Or load both colours onto one brush and let them marry as you work.
Use opaque or semi-opaque paint, and keep the brush slightly damp. Transparent colours let the canvas weave read through and go patchy the moment you add water. A dry brush drags. A soaking one floods the colour and lifts it back off. Damp is the window you are aiming for.
You have about a minute of open time on a small area. Do not fight a section that has started to set. Wet the brush, lift the colour back into range, and keep moving. Fighting half-dry acrylic is how you end up with ridges.
Every sky, sunset and water surface leans on this. See how to paint a sunset and how to paint water for the same blend applied to a subject.
8 steps · about 18 minutes.Check off each step as you go and your progress saves automatically.
Check the tube before you start. Transparent acrylics let the canvas weave show through and go blotchy as soon as water gets involved, which is where most failed blends begin. Opaque and semi-opaque colours sit on the surface and move against each other, and that is what a blend needs.
Tip
Most brands print an opacity square on the tube. A solid square is opaque, a half-filled one is semi-opaque, an open square is transparent.
Load a small amount onto a slightly damp flat brush and block in your first area. Take less paint than feels right. You can always go back for more, and a thin first pass stays workable much longer than a thick one.
Paint the second colour alongside the first, then work the seam where they meet. Stroke one colour up into the other and then back down, keeping the pressure light. You are teasing the edge apart, not scrubbing the two together.
Tip
Work along the seam rather than across it. Short strokes parallel to the join give a much softer gradient.
To pull one end lighter, damp the brush and pick up a little white without washing the colour out first. The residue on the brush helps the white sit into what is already there instead of sitting on top of it as a chalky band.
Second technique. Paint one colour at the top and the other at the bottom, and leave a strip of bare canvas between them. That gap is where the transition gets built, and keeping the two colours apart at the start stops them going muddy.
Mix the in-between colour on your palette rather than on the canvas, then brush it into the gap and feather it out in both directions. Mixing off the canvas gives you a cleaner transition and lets you check the tone before it is committed.
Tip
If the mixed tone looks wrong against the two colours, adjust it with a touch of white rather than more pigment.
Third technique, and the quickest. Dip a wide flat brush into one colour, then into the second, and lay it straight onto the canvas. The two blend on contact and keep marrying the further you work the brush up and down.
Step back and look at the whole panel. A good blend has no visible band where one colour stops and the next begins, and the tone should shift evenly from one end to the other. Ridges or hard lines mean the paint set before it was worked, not that the technique was wrong.
Tip
If a section starts dragging while you work, wet the brush rather than adding more paint. A damp brush lifts half-set acrylic back into a workable state; more paint just builds a ridge.
Liquitex
Liquitex BASICS Acrylic Paint Set (24 tubes)
Artist-grade pigment at student pricing, buttery enough to blend and thick enough to hold a stroke. The set most acrylic painters start on.
Benicci
Benicci 16-Piece Artist Brush Set
Every shape you actually reach for (round, flat, filbert, liner, fan) in nylon that keeps its point and does not shed. Comes with a palette knife and case.
FIXSMITH
FIXSMITH 8" x 10" Stretched Canvas (12-pack)
Pre-primed cotton canvases in a bulk pack so you can just start painting. The low-stakes surface for practicing before the big piece.
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