Finding a Happy Medium...

I tend to write my blog posts when sat at work waiting on things to update, patch or download. One of the joys in "working in IT" is that there are times when you just find yourself sat on your arse waiting for something to happen (and simultaneously praying that they don't, because if they do it would be BAD).

A lot of my time is also spent 'musing' over painting (I muse more than I paint), browsing CMON, BOLS, Warseer, the usual culprits. Sometimes I even have an idea^TM or decide to attempt a new technique or try out new tools.

This years Idea is to try out mediums. I've used vallejo glaze medium for a while now, but never with any true understanding of how it works, I just found that it thinned paints nicely and took some of the sheen out of inks. So in one of the moments of arse sitting last week, I sat down and did a little digging and a little research, trying to get a good understanding of mediums and their use thereof. Research complete, I went out a bought some vallejo matt medium and started to have a play.

The initial results you've already seen in my previous update, which basically had me adding the mediums neat to paint and seeing what the result was. I found that with the matt medium added to paint I was able to get quite a nice blend even with quite a stark contrast between colours (The base being Kantor Blue and the Highlight tones a mix of Ultramarine Blue and Fenrisian Grey). I did find that I had to glaze it afterwards with the Kantor Blue (mixed with glaze medium) to soften the transition. But all in all not a bad effort.

That being said the paint was still quite thick so the next phase was to start re-adding water to the mix. In the past I've stuck with tap water, it got the job done. But hey, if you're experimenting, why not go whole hog and get yourself some distilled water and cut out all that mineral gunk completely.

Using the mediums and water I found that the paint stayed wet (albeit using a rudimentary wet palette too,) and mixed really well, and stayed mixed for that matter. Coverage was good, but took quite a few coats. If I'm honest I think I thinned my paint too much in this first round. For basecoats and highlights I was adding a drop each of matt, glaze and water, and I think, not enough paint*. Also water really doesn't want to come out of a dropper bottle neatly for me, rather it wants to either gush, dribble or even pool round the lip...

I've seen people say that they mix up batches of medium/water mix - I may well experiment with this next...

So what did I test this all out on? Well I had intended on working with the Ultramarine Captain again, but ultimately the trollslayer model won out. I wasn't happy with the original green so reworking that seemed to be the perfect opportunity to do some testing. In the process the green became purple as you can see in the picture below.

I'll be having a further play over the next few weeks. In the meantime I've got to get those Epic bases done...

*that being said if you were taking your time and doing a quality paint job I can imagine that this'd be the desired thinness...