Exercises: blended sunset base on your arm with sparkle pink and sparkle lilac.

Paint the top layer of the clouds and drag downwards and away to one side.

Next, paint the mid layer of clouds, slightly overlapping

same side as before.

blend it back in with the base colour.

B lending colours on the face or body can greatly enhance the impact of a design and also help to impress your audience,

so here are some tips for blending techniques in both base and line work.

Where to start?When blending large areas of colour, i.e. the base colour for a face painting design, a sponge is usually the best tool for the job as it can hold

surface area than most brushes can provide which is more comfortable for the model and

When blending line work use your particular choice of brush to create the initial brush stroke and then use either a sponge or dry brush to blend out the colour into the base.

The techniques:One of the key aspects of working with face and body paints is that they are relatively quick drying, unless you are using a cream product which will offer a little more manipulation time. In order to mix or blend two colours of paint on the skin they need to be of a similar consistency. This doesn’t necessarily mean they need the same amount of water mixed with them as some pigments require a little more moisture than others to activate them.

Get Technical TECHNIQUES

The Beauty of Blending

By Helen Eyrewww.catswhiskers.biz

apply to the skin easily like foundation giving a good smooth covering and feel comfortable to

touched on to it; if it does, the paint is too wet.

You can either work with a dry sponge and wet the paint to activate it or use a wet sponge and dry paint. Both methods will work so long as you can control the consistency of the paint that you are using. The correct consistency of paint will

Tiger

For a blended base: Apply two colours side by side. using a sponge, drag colour from one side into the other. Always move from one colour into the other then lift the sponge and repeat.

to the sponge loaded with the other colour. Repeat the action but this time dragging from the opposite direction.

Things that may go wrong and how to correct them:The consistency of your paint is generally the key with blending. If one of the colours is too wet it can effectively wash off the other and if a colour is too dry it will lift and become patchy.

For a smooth blend you need to drag both colours into each other. so you need to remember to

your paint is drying very quickly you may need to reload your sponge for the second direction but take care that the paint is damp and not wet or you’ll wash off the paint underneath.

To blend out a line over a base: Paint your line with a brush that is fully loaded with paint.

starting in the thickest part of the line using either a dry clean sponge or a dry clean brush, drag the paint away from the original brushstroke to one side. For the best effect, blend out in the same direction.

Make sure to keep one edge of the original brushstroke intact to provide the sharp

give it greater impact.

If the paint in the original brushstroke is quite wet you may need to dry your sponge or dry brush on a cloth to control the blending as you go, otherwise the wetness of the paint may lift the base colour.

In some instances, such as animal faces, dragging out the line in one direction like this can create the effect of fur or hair.

In abstract designs where this technique is used you are generally looking for a smoother blend and therefore a sponge loaded with the base colour can be used to blend back towards the original brushstroke.

www.illusionmagazine.co.uk Winter 2009