Glazing - blending with glazes vs oldschool layering

Everything from sanding and priming to varnishing!
mahon
Super Villain
Super Villain
Posts: 23961
Joined: 31 Mar 2005, o 23:36
Location: Poznan, Poland
Contact:

Glazing - blending with glazes vs oldschool layering

Post by mahon »

I tend to hear the same questions all the time:
- how to glaze
- what is glazing
- what are glazes
- is it the ultimate blending method
- how many glazes are needed to achieve good transitions?

So let us explain the basics:

GLAZING IS SIMPLY PAINTING WITH GLAZES, WHICH ARE TRANSLUCENT PAINTS. THE IDEA IS THAT THE PREVIOUS LAYER IS PARTIALLY SHOWING THROUGH THE NEXT ONE, AND SO ON, SO THAT THE ADDITIONAL LAYERS BUILD UP INTO A SMOOTH TRANSITON OF COLORS.

us bust some myths:

1. Glazing doesn't require any special kind of paints. You don't need to buy the special glazes, you can thin your paints or inks down. Of course - if you add too much water they will be difficult to control, so you need to apply them carefully and not drown your model in the glaze.
The glazes you can buy, or available glaze mediums can help - that's no doubt.

2. Glazing is similar to washing but it's not the same. They both are methods of painting with thinned paints, but while washing is about letting your washes flow down into recesses (more or less freely), glazing is about controlled painting with glazes.

3. There's no perfect consistency of paints/glazes - you have to find your own Holy Grail of Glazing. One painter will prefer quicker but rougher effect and will choose more opaque and thicker layers, while another will choose smoothness over speed and will paint with thin nearly colorless translucent layers of paint. You can apply two, three, or hundreds of layers - it's all about what you want, how much time you want to spend, how patient you are, and what effect you need.

4. Glazing is not your ultimate technique which will make you the super-painter. It can make some things easier, but there are better techniques if you want fast results. It's pretty slow but can allow you to build up rich colors, with many subtle hues and tints.

5. There's no secret in glazing - it's just like painting with normal paints. But where you would normally use opaque paint, you use (more or less) translucent paint. That's all...

So let us move on to an example of what can be done with glazing and let's take a closer look:

That's how you would paint a transition of colors with the good old layering:

ImageClick to see full-sized image

You would need to use a different color for every layer, and make each successive layer cover less and less of the miniature. Right?

Now that's what you do with glazes:

ImageClick to see full-sized image

You can use one color for many layers because their increasing opacity builds up the color transition. And we achieved the same transitions as with opaque paints. See?

Soon we'll be moving to even more examples. So stay tuned!
Last edited by mahon on 6 Mar 2009, o 01:15, edited 1 time in total.
-- Mahoń

Image

Back in the garage with my bullshit detector
mahon
Super Villain
Super Villain
Posts: 23961
Joined: 31 Mar 2005, o 23:36
Location: Poznan, Poland
Contact:

RE: Glazing - blending with glazes vs oldschool layering

Post by mahon »

-- Mahoń

Image

Back in the garage with my bullshit detector
mahon
Super Villain
Super Villain
Posts: 23961
Joined: 31 Mar 2005, o 23:36
Location: Poznan, Poland
Contact:

RE: Glazing - blending with glazes vs oldschool layering

Post by mahon »

-- Mahoń

Image

Back in the garage with my bullshit detector
mahon
Super Villain
Super Villain
Posts: 23961
Joined: 31 Mar 2005, o 23:36
Location: Poznan, Poland
Contact:

RE: Glazing - blending with glazes vs oldschool layering

Post by mahon »

-- Mahoń

Image

Back in the garage with my bullshit detector
Skrit
Needs more explanation
Needs more explanation
Posts: 10608
Joined: 9 May 2005, o 15:34
Location: The Netherlands, Breda

RE: Glazing - blending with glazes vs oldschool layering

Post by Skrit »

Kudos Mahon! Very nice tutorial and it will definitly help me out a lot! :D
mahon
Super Villain
Super Villain
Posts: 23961
Joined: 31 Mar 2005, o 23:36
Location: Poznan, Poland
Contact:

RE: Glazing - blending with glazes vs oldschool layering

Post by mahon »

ImageClick to see full-sized image

I think it's enough for now... So have fun practising!
-- Mahoń

Image

Back in the garage with my bullshit detector
Cyberpaddy66
Posts: 680
Joined: 3 Jun 2008, o 13:22
Location: Cornwall :D
Contact:

RE: Glazing - blending with glazes vs oldschool layering

Post by Cyberpaddy66 »

Excelent work, I'll be sure to use some of these techniques on my sea elves.
Getting back into the thick (or rather thin as in thinning my paints) of it, not picked up a brush in some time so this may hurt a bit until I get used to the feel of them again :doh:
Alexander

RE: Glazing - blending with glazes vs oldschool layering

Post by Alexander »

Nice tuto, although many things are just obvious all together is very enlightening... :clap:
mahon
Super Villain
Super Villain
Posts: 23961
Joined: 31 Mar 2005, o 23:36
Location: Poznan, Poland
Contact:

RE: Glazing - blending with glazes vs oldschool layering

Post by mahon »

sometimes what is obvious for one person may be innovative for another. and judging by the number of questions regarding glazes, this is not that obvious at all. if it is for you - you can be happy :)
-- Mahoń

Image

Back in the garage with my bullshit detector
Marek
Posts: 533
Joined: 30 Jun 2008, o 15:56
Location: Lublin

RE: Glazing - blending with glazes vs oldschool layering

Post by Marek »

Thank you very much for this tutorial.
All the best in New Year!
Marek
Post Reply