If you decide to find out what glazing is, it means that you are a beginner artist and are interested in various types of creative activity. A painting technique, as well as drawing or processing decorative materials, there are several. The best option is to try all the working methods and choose the one that you like the most, or combine several. This will add variety to your work and help develop your own style.
Definition
Glaze is a sequential application of transparent layers of paint with the condition of mandatory drying of the previous one. The objective of this method of work is to obtain complex shades of color by optically mixing "pure" colors, superimposed on top of one another. It is important to dry the first layer well before you start working with the second, so that there is no mechanical mixing of colors. Otherwise, you may get a dirty ugly color, and not at all the effect of transparency of work that you expected to receive. The same goes for the number of layers. They do not do too much. Depending on the materials used, no more than five are applied to one area. If you overdo it, you can, again, get a dirty color instead of the desired transparent pictorial effect of the lightness of objects.
Principle of operation
The main thing to remember is that glazing is the application of transparent layers of paint, that is, any pigment should be strongly diluted with water or another suitable composition. Colors for application are usually used spectral, that is, not mixed, but those that you already have in the set of colors. For example, to get greenish tones, the background is first yellowed in one or more layers, depending on the desired color intensity, and then the blue color is similarly used. Optical mixing of the yellow and red layers produces shades of orange. It is worth remembering that it is better to first apply a lighter layer, for example, first yellow, and blue on it.
Materials for work
So, you understand what glazing is. The paints that you use for work should be diluted to a transparent state. As a rule, watercolor is used for these purposes, which is easily adjusted with water to the desired concentration. Also use oil paints, and even acrylic. In the latter case, it is better to use a special composition to give transparency. When working with oil paints, a solvent or similar liquids are used.
As a basis for applying glaze, you can choose paper, primed canvas, fiberboard, wood and other blanks for decorative and applied work.
Glaze in painting
When creating paintings, this technique is used as an independent or as an auxiliary. In the first case, the work is created, as a rule, using chromatic shades, that is, the entire spectrum of possible shades. The second option involves the creation of a monochrome image, which is also called grisaille.
It allows you to concentrate on tonal transitions, creating the shape and volume of objects, without paying attention to color. Often the glaze technique is used to create undermining in oil painting (distribution of tonal transitions).
Step-by-step watercolor painting
If you decide to master the technique of layer-by-layer creation of a landscape, portrait or still life, pay attention to the complexity of the plot. Choose simple options. To work from nature, make a simple composition of several objects that will not change even after a few weeks of your work. Do not use flowers, fruits, or replace natural ones with artificial counterparts.
Another option is to copy the finished picture. This is easier if you do not take a complex plot. As a first experience, you can choose to make a copy of a picture that has a step-by-step explanation of working in photo or video format.
The general sequence of actions will be as follows:
1. Choose a plot and draw outlines with thin lines on a piece of paper (better than a special watercolor). Make the first transparent background layer. It can be either one shade or created in raw with a smooth transition of tones.
2. Dry the first layer and begin to fill sections of the picture with other transparent layers, bypassing the necessary details along the external or internal contour. Transitions from one color to another in one layer are best done smoothly, if this is not the border of the form, as in the example of the following illustration.
3. Dry the created layer again and perform the third one using the same technology.
4. At the final stage, the darkest and most saturated areas are created. Remember that they should still be transparent.
Wood glaze
Very interesting effects can be achieved using this technique in decorative and applied art. Often, wood is used as the basis for making souvenirs, as it is cheap, affordable, and the assortment of modern blanks is very diverse. To decorate the tree using different materials and methods. As for glazings, they allow you to change the shade of the original object while maintaining the texture of the material (fibers, veins, rings, if a wood cut is used). This can be widely used in your work, when you just need to change the shade of an object, for example, darken or give a decorative effect of aging of the surface, rainbow transitions.
Decoupage glaze
If you are engaged in the manufacture of souvenirs using tissue paper, the method of layer-by-layer application of transparent paint is also useful to you. Since a tree is often used as a basis for work, everything said in the previous section is easily applicable here. Although, in addition to obtaining a new shade of the background both on the tree and on other material, you can easily create unusual effects for the pasted images themselves, by either pre-tinting the background or with a napkin already pasted. A lot of effects allows you to get glaze. A master class in writing watercolor paintings is only a small part of the capabilities of the technique. In decoupage, you can create the effect of aging things, give the workpiece the texture of marble, precious stones and other materials. Also, with the help of glazing, it is easy to change even the mood, the impression made of the image used, to make it more muffled, if necessary.
So, you have learned what glazing is. This is a very interesting and useful technique. It can be used both for creating picturesque watercolor paintings on paper, and for decorative and applied works in order to obtain unusual effects.