Hi there, guys. actually, I`m a starter and I have some problems with painting figures with acrylics. I can`t realize highlits and shadows. as I understood, blending can`t be used with acrylic colors. Instead, glazing or blending is used.
I was trying to master these techniques, but the result disappointed me. I got sharp borders between the highlight and the basecoat. I heard about Vallejo paint retarder, that gives more time to blend colours. is it necessary to use retarder or I just do something wrong? I`d be glad to hear your advices or recieve some links for helpful videos, articles, etc. I`m sorry for my English, I`m a bit confuse with the times.

Hi lhor,

You may want to post your question on Historicus Forma as it's a site specializing in figures, etc. Here's the link:

http://hfmodeling.kitmaker.net/

Rob

Oh, sorry. thx for for advice

Hi Ihor,

The trick with acrylics is painting with a very thinned mixture.

Firstly you paint your base coat and then you prepare your highlight thinned mixture.

The trick with the very thinned mixture is that you have to touch a paper or towel to get rid of most of it from the brush. In that way you can paint the figure with no problem.

When you paint the highlights you should not see any difference with the first coat but only when you paint many layers. You have to try to get each layer to be more highlighted and not ending where the precedent one ended.

On a more graphical way:
Base layer: ------------------------------------------------------------
1st highlight: ----------------------------------------------------
2nd highlight: --------------------------------------------
3rd highlight: ------------------------------------
4th highlight: ----------------------------
and so on

Once you are done with the highlights you start painting your shadows and the process is the same as with the highlights but in the areas you want to shadow. You also should not try to have any area where highlights get in touch directly with shadows but having at least a minimun of base color in the middle.

It is also important when you prepare your base color to have in the mixture the colors you are going to use for the highlights and for the shadows so get a nice transition from base color to highlights and to shadows.

Hope this helps you.

There are many articles or tutorial on figure painting in armorama or links to them. Also there are many good books on painting figures. I like the most Osprey's books. You have one by Jaume Ortiz and another one by Calvin Tan .

Good luck with your painting,
Angel