SKIN BLENDING TIMELAPSE + TUTORIAL (Patreon)

Month 2 of our little patreon community!!!! This month, I'm gonna share my blending technique! I get asked about this topic A LOT. Because acrylic dries very fast, it’s harder to blend unless you have a retarder.Honestly, there's not much to explain about my blending technique but I'll still show you guys how I do it and hopefully, you can get some tips from this tutorial!

MATERIALS I used in the video:

Acrylic!

#10 round brush, #8 round brush

Foam boardPaper towel

Glass palette

NOTE! The acrylic that I use is probably in between soft body to fluid body so it's very easy for me to blend because it's already watered down. The blending technique that I use might be difficult for people who use heavy body acrylics, unless, as I’ve said, you have a medium like a retarder. 

STEP BY STEP PICTURES 

1. Start with color 1, which in most cases,  the darker shade between the colors you want to blend. 

2. Clean the brush completely then put the lighter color (color 2) right next to color 1. 

3. DON’T clean the brush! The leftover color 2 on the brush helps with the blending. Dip the brush to color 1. So by having the light and dark shade on the brush, it's like you already made the in-between or middle color. Paint in the middle of color 1 and 2! 

4. If color 1 or color 2 already dried out and you can't blend it with the mid color anymore:

• Clean your brush entirely (coz you don't want the super light shade to mix with the darker side)

• Pat it on a paper towel but make sure it's still damp (not entirely wet just damp!) 

• Blending color 1 and middle color: dip the brush into the color 1 then get a little bit of mid color mixture, but make sure you have the darker color more on your brush.

• Blending color 2 and middle color :same process as blending color 1 but instead of having more color 1 on your brush, add more color 2(or the lighter color).

• Stroke your brush in between the shades until you get the desired blending! 

(My gollliiieee, i hope this is not confusing!)

TIP: When blending, it's not just the technique that you need to learn, it's also essential to learn to mix the right colors from your reference picture. For example, on the chart below, if you know how to mix colors to obtain the middle colors, it'll be super easy to blend coz all you have to do is put those colors next to each other and tadaaaa you now have a gradient!

Working on multiple shades: 

Also, if you're blending multiple shades like this on the chart, There's the darkest color then there are a couple of middle shades then the light color. Now, it's not just like dipping it into the dark and light to make ONE middle color, now you have multiple.

Since we're working from the dark to light, you  just need to add a lighter color on your brush gradually. Basically, what you need to do is just gradually add color 2 on your brush. If you're working from the darkest shade first, to make the next color, add a little bit of color 2, then add a little more to make the next one, and so on and so forth until you make the lightest color you want to achieve.

 Make sure you add JUST A LITTLE bit of paint every time you work on the next shade! Again, don't clean your brush in between adding that lil bits of colors! if you feel like you need more moisture on your brush, just dip the tip to the water!

TL;DR/SUMMARY (hehe):

• Put color 1, darker shade.
• Put color 2, lighter shade.
• Mix two colors to make a middle shade.
• Add middle shade in between color 1 and 2.
• Blend color 1 and mid color by adding more color 1 to the mid color mixture.
• Blend color 2 and mid color by adding color 2 to the mid color mixture.
• That's about it. If you want a more detailed explanation, read the full tutorial! <3

SO that's how I do the blending! 

I will keep posting stuff about how i blend from time to time here! I'll work on face proportions OR shadows and lighting next month! Not sure which one to do because I feel like it's hard to explain how i do the face proportions without a voice over so umm... hmmm 

Thank you guys! Luv u take care my goober FRENS!!!