- pollypainter wrote:
- ...but find myself wanting to thin it down to make it flow or to blend it in some cases. How far can I go?
It's generally not advised to thin or dilute your paint too much. If you add a great deal of extra medium it will take much longer to dry than necessary. Adding no more than 10 to 20% medium by volume is a good range to limit yourself to. Some mediums are better suited to blending and leveling into a smooth surface than others; stand oil or "painting" mediums, for example.
- Quote :
- What about a glaze? Is a glaze a lot of oil to a little paint?...
A glaze is a transparent layer of paint that shows some of the color beneath it. You don't necessarily need more oil to create a glaze, but that's one way to do it. A glaze can be made of paint that uses more transparent pigment (Hansa yellow instead of cadmium, for example.) You can also rub or wipe ("scumble") a layer of paint on making it thin but not diluted.
If you want that glaze layer to be more fluid then you'll need to add a medium. It's not advised to make a glaze from paint that has only been diluted using water or thinner since that makes a weaker and less flexible layer (fat over lean.) Some brands and paints within brands are oilier than others, which makes them better suited for glazing. You might also try safflower for glazing instead of linseed, or using thinned polymerized oil (stand,) or pre-mixed "painting" or "glazing" mediums.
By the way, I also prefer not to use the painting brush to mix paint on the palette since it tends to create a poor uneven mix of medium and paint, and it's harder to gauge how much medium you're adding. Use a palette knife instead and save the brush for applying paint.