Sunday 22 January 2012

Experiments in Colour and Viscosity (With Thanks to Albert Wick Esq.)

A good friend of mine is an artist. He also plays the halfling Albert Wick in WFRP, so for blogging purposes I'm going to call him Albert. Last week I popped round to Albert's studio and while taking a look over his latest works-in-progress (all fabulous, as always) he suggested that I might like to take a few sample supplies with me to help with my miniatures painting. Never one to shy away from a goodie-bag I gratefully walked away with a generous batch of artists' materials.

An alternative colour wheel
So this week I'm putting work on all the monsters on hold to undertake some experiments in colour and viscosity. For my canvas I'm using a Chapel that I base coated about six months ago - it's a good excuse to get it finished and it doesn't really matter if I make some mistakes.  

Winsor & Newton Acrylic Fluid Matt Medium - Review

Today I experimented for the first time with some Winsor & Newton Acrylic Matt Medium. GW have started selling a medium of their own along with the vastly over-priced 'Eavy Metal Brush Set, but if a painter wanted better brushes and a superior medium, W&N are the perfect company.

Fluid Matt Medium
What was interesting for a first time medium user was the way it mixed through the paint without diluting the colour at all - this matt medium doesn't take from the depth of the colour in the way that thinning with water can. It also increased the flow of the paint (and it's sheer volume, obviously) while making it more transparent: an attribute I'm really starting to appreciate in my paints.

I worked up a 50:25:25 mix with Dark Blue (Model Color), Chaos Black and the medium to add shading to roof tiles based in Ultramarines Blue. It worked so well that I'm finding it hard to imagine using regular acrylics without some sort of medium mixed through in the future - but I'll hold off giving too much of a glowing recommendation until the end of the week, when I'll have had the chance to try some other shading/blending approaches.

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