the power of feathering!

Hi Folks! 

I feel extremely sorry for the long silence this month! This really didnt went as expected

I caught Covid once again... this time at the wonderful Monte San Savino show.

And as this whole channel is a one-man show... if I am out of order nothing will works.

I am trying to work my way out of this pile and make up for it in the next months!

But let´s get back to our Goblin for now..

In this episode, we will be learning about the feathering technique.

Feathering describes the act of dissolving the remains of pigments on the surface with water. Therefore it is a technique that usually follows after the application of another technique like layering or glazing.

It is perfect to avoid hard lines between the different layers of paint.

Feathering is one of those techniques that require some speed because you have to be back at the surface with a cleaned wet brush before the layer of paint you applied before has set.

To avoid brushlicking it can be useful to move your paintwater as close as possible to your model.

We will be also using feathering in a slightly modified way where we work similarly to the loaded brush technique, but instead of loading the bristles with two different paints you are loading the brush with water and adding only one color to the tip of the brush.

This way you can place the color on the surface and feather it out in one go.

I wanted to show plenty of different feathering steps this is why we are breaking a little with the logic of this video series by showing the technique on two different elements of the model the shield and the backpack.

First, we will be painting the shield followed by the backpack and the treasure map.

next to the technical aspect we also want to talk a little about how to become a better painter.

the motto of this episode is:

Many of us track their selves in some way in our life, whether it´s 

your sleep cycle, your pulse, how many steps you walked, how many calories you had, or whatever... But have you ever tried to track how you paint?

And I am not even a fan of that of self-tracking everything, and you might agree and feel like.. okay this is my free time fun, I don't want to optimize every aspect of my life, this is about fun and joy and creating art.

I don't mean to push you into overanalyzing your life, But I think by observing us a little closer we can have more quality time at the desk, enjoy more what we create, and even achieve better results.

The following things are super different from individual to individual, from painter to painter. 

Try to analyze what makes feel comfortable while painting and use it to maximize the effect and stretch the time periods that you can work fully focused and to your highest abilities.

We all know it the smoother a painting session goes to more it makes you happy... so:

Try to figure out how long it takes you to feel comfortable and focused.

How long does it take you to get into the "zone"?

How long can you keep up that focus?

At what point do my thoughts stroll away?

But what do you do with the gathered information about yourself.

try to adjust your painting schedule so that you maximize your painting happiness.

for example:

You paint about 1-2 our every other day of the week but

you need very long to be focussed and feel comfortable for at the beginning of each painting session.

You might want to condense your painting time into one or two long painting sessions per week instead of 4 short sessions.

This sounds logical but as most of us don't really observe how they paint and just squeeze in some hobby time here and there, there is a huge hidden potential that you can easily tweak your flow of painting.

Many things influence our painting results and how we feel while creating.

Some of you better paint alone, others paint better in company.

Do you need silence, the tv running, the radio playing?

Do you paint more focused in the early morning or at night?

Try to see what get´s your painting mojo swinging and what helps you to create your best while enjoying your painting experience the most.

I would be happy if you share what you figured out about your own painting routine with us either here on Patreon or on our Discord channel.

Thanks for your support!