Blending Techniques

Guide to Coloring ~ Dry & Wet Blending

Awhile back I did a post on how to blend colors in the most basic way. Today I'll be sharing some bit more stepped up ways to blend. As I got further into the chapter on blending, it talked about 4-5 more ways to blend your colors on a drawing or piece.

There are many techniques that help utilize your blending and allow it to appear smooth and neat! One type is called dry blending. Dry blending basically means what it says, it is where you do not use any wet or liquid forms to blend your colors instead you would use a tool or item that is different that what you used to color with (Couch 72). There can be many tools that can be used for dry blending, like paper towels or tissues and colorless blending pencils.

For my dry blending I decided to use a paper towel. "This technique is best used with colored pencils...it can produce smooth, even, clean-looking surface in your coloring and can often remove the visible pencil strokes that pencil blending sometimes leaves on..." (Couch 72).  Blunt blending is one of the most simplest techniques in the dry blending category. It turns your drawings into nice finished picture that turn out really clean and beautiful.           

  

First I drew a basic picture, if you
can't tell its the top of an umbrella.
Then you color in the picture staring
with the darker color on the outer side
and work your way down with lighter
colors. It can be messy!

Here is the final result as you can
see by comparing this to the first
picture the colors are much more
blended out and smoothed together.
You can not see many of the
marks from the coloring before!

The blunt blending was done within a minute, all you need to do is get a paper towel and rub all over the colors you want to blend one at a time on your picture. Make sure to apply some pressure for better results. In the end you get a very nice subtle effect.











In addition to dry blending, there is another way to blend called wet blending. Just as the name suggests, wet blending is done with some sort of liquid. Before beginning a good tip is to make sure you have a thick enough paper for wet blending because sometimes the liquid may bleed through (Couch 73). Wet blending tools include water, rubbing alcohol and colorless blending markers. If you are new and do not have many tools i always suggest going with the easiest tool available, like water, which I will be using.

When using water it is called Water blending. "Depending on the color medium you are using, something as simple as water and a stiff paintbrush may work best for wet blending...coloring tools such as crayons or wax-based colored pencils wont work with water" (Couch 73). When doing water blending, waxed colors are not the best ones to use, you should go with watercolor pencils and water-based markers or even pastels at times for best results.

First start by coloring your picture,
again use darker on the outer and
lighter on the inner. Does not have
to be nice coloring. Just start by
placing colors at a certain part.

Next you can use a Q-tip and dip
it into water or rubbing alcohol.
Then gently start blending your
colors by area. Increase pressure
and add more water if needed to
get the effect that you want. Repeat
this process to other areas of colors
you want to blend.

Here is the finished picture! I went
back and blended the center as well.
The colors all blended nicely and
mixed well. You can still see how
 it goes from darker to light but
 in a more toned and mixed way.

As you can see there are many more ways to blend your colors on your drawings. These two methods required some extra tools that can be easily found around your house. Simple blending where you just use two colors is really nice and easy, but these pick it up and show other unique blending styles. Even though they may take a bit more time, the outcome is worth it!

Do you think the two color transition blend is much nicer or do you think the wet and dry blending give a picture more depth?

Do you know any other ways to blend your colors?

Couch, Peg. New Guide to Coloring for Crafts, Adult Coloring Books, and Other Coloristas!: Tips, Tricks, and      Techniques for All Skill Levels! Fox Chapel Pub Co Inc, 2016.