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What is Over Blending?
Over blending is what occurs when you mix your paint too much on your canvas. When you over blend you create problems within your work.
Why should I avoid over blending?
I usually avoid too much blending in order to create more interesting brushwork and to create a more interesting color harmony. If you over blend, you create two problems:
- The first is that you lose your brushstrokes and so the surface of the painting is less interesting. Now that is not necessarily a problem, because you can create very beautiful work with a highly blended surface. But a highly blended painting has to compensate for its lack of interesting brushwork in other ways, or it becomes too photographic and not interesting.
- The second reason is that you lose the harmony between color patches. This is a difficult concept to understand, but basically it’s like destroying the keys of a piano, and adding thousands of extra keys all of which are slightly out of tune.
In practice
In this section of my sunset painting (below), you can see how the color variations in the sunset have been left as individual brushstrokes, each with a definite color. They have not been completely blended. There is a relationship between the different colors of the various brushstrokes. The secret is to make those patches of colors harmonious. You usually do this by blending on the palette (not the canvas!).
Sunset Over Zhaosu Grass Plains, by Barry John Raybould, 32.8cm x 40.3cm, Oil on Linen, 2017
To learn more about how you can use brushwork to describe forms and texture, see the Brushwork lessons in Workshop G of the Virtual Art Academy Apprentice Program.
Thank You
Thank you for taking the time to read this article. I hope you find it useful. If you would like to get free painting tips by email, please sign up for my free tips newsletter.
If you are interested in a structured approach for learning how to paint, take a look at my online painting classes.
Happy painting!
Barry John Raybould
Virtual Art Academy
What The Students Are Saying
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Before repurposing my vocation into avocation, I spent 20 years in the corporate world as an instructional designer and performance consultant creating training curricula for diverse clientele from NASA to General Motors. I know curriculum development and how to guide a learner from beginning to certification. VAA is the only online learning program I have… Read more “Only online learning program I have ever discovered using a training industry best practice”
Since I started the programme I can see improvements in my composition and use of colour
My painting “Primitive Pots” recently won the award given by the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour at the recent selected exhibition of the Society of East Anglian watercolourists. I have been working through the VAA course for over five years and would highly recommend it to anyone wanting to improve their painting. There is… Read more “Since I started the programme I can see improvements in my composition and use of colour”
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I joined 5 years ago when I didn’t know anything about oils, painting, composition, or drawing. Barry’s way of teaching is extremely well versed in many aspects of painting. His building blocks of learning is the best I have seen. The academy is designed well and the community of fellow students is engaging and friendly.… Read more “Building blocks of learning is the best I have seen”
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I never had formal training in painting and my style has always been very realistic, slow and not at all artistic, just a copy of a photograph. When I got word of the course available through Virtual Art Academy, I was very excited for the opportunity to learn what I never knew about painting. VAA… Read more “An excellent foundation on so many aspects of painting”
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After a thorough research, my personal conclusion is that the Virtual Art Academy (VAA) is, by wide margin, the most comprehensive, in depth and well-organized painting course available in the internet. Unlike most tutorials and color mixing recipes commonly found online, VAA’s philosophy is rather to provide the students with detailed information about all aspects… Read more “The most comprehensive, in depth and well-organized painting course available online”
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I joined 2 years ago with my daughter. We have both learnt so much and have enjoyed our VAA time together. My daughter is now 13 and already produces amazing paintings. The Virtual Art Academy is simply the most comprehensive art instruction I could find anywhere online, and trust me, I had been looking for… Read more “The most comprehensive art instruction I could find anywhere online, and trust me, I had been looking for a long time.”
I started learning oil painting with VAA from scratch. Just one year later my paintings started to sell
The Virtual Art Academy program is really comprehensive and gave me all the information and directives to learn painting in one package. The material is very well organized, just beautiful to look at and motivating to carry through. The online campus is a wonderful place to meet other artists and receive critical feedback on my… Read more “I started learning oil painting with VAA from scratch. Just one year later my paintings started to sell”
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I finished the VAA course a few years ago, but always refer to the notes, rereading the course many times. This is not a course the day you are finished, you are done. No, you keep practising the assignments getting better and better over time. When I look back at my work when I had just… Read more “No need to buy expensive art books…. Just do the VAA 4 year course. I still refer to it”