I'd like to know how does one go about "fading" colors when painting? I am not good at painting but with all the talk of The Natural's painting has somewhat renewed my vigor to learn when I gave up and threw in the towel with hand brush painting.  :'(

I see now that an airbrush will make this easier to learn but as a visual learner, I am having difficulty figuring out how to do this without the second color covering the first.

An example of what I am trying to describe is beautifully shown in Idlove2fish's avatar or many firetiger color schemes. One color "fades" into another color.

Thanks!

It will sound like I am being smart, but I do not mean it that way. But practice. PVC pipe is good to pratice on. With the airbrush the more you use it the easier it will get.

The second color does cover the first color in a lot of instances. With translucent colors you get some cool looking color transistion as the to colors combine. With opaque colors then it is just a where the paint is very finely misted to gain the transistion.

Start out by painting light to dark. This will allow a little of the "over spray" to fall back onto the lighter color creating begining to the transistion you seek. The exception is when making scale patterns, as sometimes you will spray a light opaque color over a darker color to achieve a desired look.

You can use the scale pattern to help in the transistion also.

Eric

Every painter I know has a different style of doing fading and blending but here is how I do it. One note here a good quality gun and pressure regulator will simplify the proces a lot. I use an Iwata gravity feed gun and usually mix my paint right in the cup.

1.  Prime the bait

2. Starting with a light belly color, for this lets say white, shoot the belly of the bait and about half way up the side. ( your colors will vary but the process is the same )

3.  Next I will add a couple of drops of the next darker color to the cup and mix it in the cup with a craft brush. Spray on a piece of paper to clear the previous color until you see the mixed color appear. Spray this color a little higher on the bait with each color change. In the avatar those colors would be, in order, White/ trans. yellow, / flo. yellow(chartruse) another couple drops of flo. yellow/ trans. light green.

Like Ernel said, practice. experiment with pressures and with thinning of the paint, there is a lot of variationin the viscosity of paints even with colors from the same maker. It takes a while but it will all come together for you.

Guys,

Thanks! I am going to follow those steps religiously.  It seems that the purchase of an airbrush is my next step. Bye bye hand brushes. ;D

If all you have right now are brushes you can still do a reasonable job of blending, it requires more time but will work and time.

You have to build the colors up in very light washes. Thin your paint on a plate, glass or wax paper till it is very thin and starting at the belly brush on very light washes, drying between each coat with a hair dryer. Use to do a lot of duck decoys and birds before I got an airbrush and this is the system I used to get soft transitions between colors.

Man, that is some awesome advice!!!  I am going to practice on some scrap pieces of balsa I have in the garage. I am planning to use water based acrylic paint. Should I thin with water, and if not, what should I use?

The use of a dryer is just genius. Wouldn't have thought of that in an eon. 8-)

Water will work fine to thin but adding a couple drops of Windex to it makes it even better. Make sure the wood is sealed and primed before doing the blending.

Then windex it is.

Lastly, what do you use as your sealer between paint coats?  I finish my baits with Dev Con 2T as the finishing coat, but I think it would be a bit thick as an inbetween clear coat.  Perhaps something like Min Wax polyurethane?

Thanks again.

I do not usually seal between paint coats. About the only exception to that is when painting a bait that has a lot of small details or stencil use, then I use Createx clear and dry it very well before the next cloor. If you make a mistake with the next detail or color then you can wipe if off, I usually use a Q-tip, and paint it over.

regarding thinning:

someone over at tackle underground posted a fine example of the difference between thinning acrylic paint with water and with windex.

here is the link to the experiment: http://www.tackleunderground.com/forum/hard-baits/12438-thinning-water-based-acrylics.html

notice how the water-thinned paint just beads up but the windex-thinned paint is a fine, even mist.

D, Thanks!