Digital Art : 3 Blending Techniques for Beginners

1. Intro : Hi, everyone. Welcome to treat blending techniques for beginners. If you knew the digital ours and you struggle with blending your colors together and giving a more polished look to your paintings, this glasses for you. I'll show you how I blend my colors. Using the blood to is much, too, how I create college ratings using any type of soft or think should. Fresh all three techniques, created different results and can really come in handy when banking also share a pure exercises review so you can get used to blending at your own pace. After you finish this class, you'll have all the information you need to start creating smooth, polished pieces of art. So let's get started. 2. Blending with the Blur Tool: we'll start with the blower to is the easiest one. And no matter we're painting somewhere you're using for digital art, you're sure to have access to the blood to before we begin. I would like to draw your attention to the two colors we have here. There are side by side. There's no space between them. But you see that in some exercises we can also have some space between the colors. It doesn't change much, but for now let's get back to the blow to and Photoshopped a blow to it can be found on the filter. You can see that there are a lot of different versions for the blue, too, but they all create the same result. So if I blur things enough, you see that there's 1/3 color that appears between purple and blue. Is this violent color that can be more or less? Move more? You blur it. The blood to basically creates a very smooth Grady in between two or multiple colors, so we can try it again with a different type of blur, and your seat at the result is basically the same you get. It's very smooth transition between the colors. So when should you use this technique? And what should you use it for? The blue two is not very precise. It creates amazing radiance so we can use it for your backgrounds, for example. But other than that, if you use only to blow to to soften your image is, you can very quickly overdo it and lose quite a lot of detail. You can select small portions of your painting on, blow them just a little bit, just a few pixels, and this will soften just a small portion of your painting. But to really blend different colors together, you really need to push the bloodiness like I showed you. So it's not ideal for more detailed outwork. I recommend it for backgrounds on really small portions of your painting that you'd like to soften. 3. Blending with the Smudge Tool: Let's have a look at this much, too. It's another very popular, too, that everyone has access to and find a shop. You can find it in your toolbox alongside your rush, your razor etcetera. So what does much to does is it uses any brush. You want to push the pixels around in your painting, and it kind of makes it look like fresh paint. It can give a very traditional look to your paintings, and the more you punched the pixels in one direction or another, the more the different colors blend together, just like in a traditional painting. And it also blurs the colors just a little bit because we're using a brush. This time, we can actually choose either capacity of the brush. And so the degree of blurriness and smoothness of the Qala great into creating though a 30% capacity this much ing and softer. I've been using a texture brush so far, but let's see what happens when using a more soft brush. I kept pushing my pixels around. It's a great way of blending small details or any hard edges in your paintings. If I use my brush at 100% capacity. You can see that I can even create shapes with my brush, but so far we're not really blending. The colors were blurring them a little bit. We're pushing them around. I don't still not creating this third color like I did with the previous technique. So let's try something different. You can actually create some really cool effects with this much, too. If you use more Dextre, Bush is at high capacity. I'm going to experiment with a few different brushes to show you some examples. You can see that with a large texture brush, you can really blend the green and the orange together and create a rod, a smooth grade end. It definitely isn't. A smooth is what we got with the blood, too. But having a little bit of texture is often a good idea. It can give the painting more character and a painted lee look that we couldn't achieve with the blow to this much do is great both for blending small details and rough edges and for creating interest ingredients with lots of different textures and a painted lee look. Experimenting is key. I often use this much do to correct shapes or small irregularities in my paintings. Experimenting with different textures can also work really well for your backgrounds. Finally, I really recommend is for blending different college together with them or painted Lee. Look both for smaller and larger areas of your painting. 4. Blending with Gradients: violet. Let's have a look at the third technique for blending colors, which is basically painting a Grady in by hand is the most difficult of the three, but also the most precise one. Because you have complete control over the whole process. It's really my go to technique. I use it all the time, both with self brushes and with texture brushes. I'm going to show you my process for both. But for now, let's have a look at this circle. If I want to make it look like a three dimensional sphere, I'm going to have to play in some shadows and some highlights and blend everything together so it looks smooth and realistic. So I start by painting all the different hues I'd like to use. This is basically my color palette for just exercise, and it's a very simplified color palette with just three or four values. I don't have more than that, because when I blend them, what I do is basically mixing them together and creating additional values in between. So I used a self brush of low capacity and I started mixing my values, and you can see how it gradually creates a smooth, radiant that goes from the lightest value to the darkest value. This is the perfect exercise. If you have never used this technique for blending because they don't have to pay attention to the colors, you're just mixing grayscale values, and the next exercise is or should be, how I blends multiple colors with both soft and textured brushes, so see you there. 5. Blending with Gradients : 2 Colours: we'll start the exercises with just two colors. As you can see, I left some long space in between the red and the blue so I can show you the blending technique in the middle. The first thing I do is suffering the edges of each color. When creating ingredient, you really want to avoid hard edges. Everything has to be smooth, so I'm using a soft brush to suffer the edges of each color, and that what I want is for just two colors to meet in the middle and to create 1/3 color. So it's very similar to what I would do if real paint I go back and forth between the red color and a blue collar. I'm just a lower positive done before, so that the more I do days, the more two colors are starting to mix together, and you can say this purple color of hearing. I'm going to use the eye trouble to a lot so I can select all the different hues that that are being created while I blend the colors. So we have some reddish horribles, some bluish corporals, and I just keep adding layers and layers of color to try and smooth everything from time to time and go back to the two original colors with my eye dropper to so I can select them again and adds some more red or some or blue to the mix, depending on the color I'm trying to create here. I'm really trying to find the middle color, so I'm not going to favor read of a blue or blue over red. But in practice, when you're in the middle of a painting and your blending colors very often, there would be one main color that is going to tent the whole blending process. But we'll talk about this more in the future video when we will have this technique into practice. For now, let's go back to it is grade in here. I'm using myself brush at an even lower pass ity now, and I'm applying large brush strokes so that degrade in is a smooth as possible. Speaking of smoothness, it's all very relative you can keep on adding brushed droves under the Grady, and it's perfect, like what we hide with the blood to you. Or you can keep some brush troves visible that's totally up to you. And now I'll show you how to create the same type of radiant with texture brunch this time , and you see that you can still create very subtle Grady ins between different colors while also adding some texture to your paintings. Let's switch to a different shape and a couple of different colors This time around. I'm using a texture brush. You can use any type of brush you like, as long as you lower the capacity of your brush, so blending the colors becomes easier this time around. The two colors are right next to each other, so I'm going to start mixing them together with large brush strokes and immediately a see that there's 1/3 color here, which is basically what you get when you mix pink and green. I'm going to select this third color as well and use it to something big radiant I'm creating now on the right side of the circle. I'm using more green, so I'm mixing green and that third color I got on on the left side. I'm doing the same, but we think that way instead of just having three very defined colors, there's this Grady in full of different hues. And the more I work on blunder get the more smooth and perfect. It looks. Even with a texture brush, you can see that the result is basically the same as with the soft from brush. What's important here is to take your time with ingredient. Usually the more colors you have, the longer it takes to blend them all together. Now this is old grade with, As I mentioned, I got the exact same result with the soft drum brush. So what's the point in using a texture brush? Let's say I want to really show the texture of my brush in my grill, and basically I'm going to use the same technique will be slowly merging my two colors into 1/3 color. But this time around, instead of brushstrokes, I'm just slightly tapping with my brush and creating all these marks. Of course, it's texture. Brush is going to create different marks, so it's really fun to experiment with all your different brushes. And so I still have a rather smooth, radiant. But my brush texture is really visible, and it's quite different from what we have previously is the perfect technique to use when it like the blend Teoh or multiple colors in your paintings. Because you had a lot of control over the blurriness and the softness of your colors. You can use it for just about anything from skin tones, the material renders or landscapes and the bending on the type of Russia use. You can create some really interesting textures that will give life to your paintings. 6. Blending with Gradients : Multiple Colors: Finally, let's have a look at the third blending technique with multiple collars this time. Once again, I'll start with the stuff from brush, and I'm suffering the edges of each color. I really want to avoid having this very hard edges in my grade. Ian's next amusing myself from brush at a lower, passive babe. Roughly 25% and I'm mixing the colors other next to each other, just like I did in the previous exercise. So for each couple of colors, I'm creating 1/3 1 and I'm using it to stuff in the edge between the two original colors. When you do this, make sure that your mouth losing your two original colors in the mix it's important to keep some little part of them separated from the third color. Otherwise, you might end up with just one muddy color and no Grady ins. Want to have all your intermediate colors? It's like to suffer into brilliant as much as possible by simply adding some brush strokes like I showed you and mixing your colors. Let's try the same thing with a textured brushed this time. At first I'm just softening the edges and mixing the colors and trying to find this intermediate color. Next, I'm using my brush of low capacity on just softening degrade into as much as possible and basically having the same result as with the soft from brush from the previous exercise. - So let's try to add some texture to our reagent. I'm softly tapping my brush on the canvas and creating oldest brunch marks everywhere. Well, still using both my original colors and my intermediate Hughes to make sure that I want Destruct my Grady. And so that's basically it. If I compare it to the previous version, you said that this new ingredient has much more texture to it. Again, it's a great technique. Does lets you have control over the softness of the radiant. You can use it with all types of brushes for some interesting effects. 7. In Practice: So now that we know how the three techniques work on their own, it's time to put that knowledge into practice Before we begin. I would like to insist on the fact that it's not about using one technique over the other. The three of them work best together. So in the short exercise, I'll show you how I use all three techniques. The blood Teoh this much, too, and my handmade credence. But I use them for different effects and a different stages of my painting process. So I've created the simplified pilot I'll only be using to seven colors for the study. But of course, by blending them together, I'll be creating a lot of additional Hughes. So at first not worrying about blending the colors right now, I'm just going to place my seven colors on the canvas and create this very simplified sketch. I'm just making sure that the general shape off the strawberry is more or less realistic, but I'm not trying to be really precise right now, So now that I have this very rough color pilot in the shape of a strawberry, I'm going to start blending my colors. I'm going to start we have the blow to going to blur my whole sketch. Not too much, just enough to soften a little bit some of the hard edges of the sketch. And then with myself from brush. I'm going to create a greedy in between the 1st 2 colors, just like I did in the previous exercises. By creating 1/3 color in the middle and suffering all the edges in the painting. I'm using my reference picture to see where it should place the darkest Hughes so that the strawberry looks three dimensional and realistic, and I keep blending the different colors together. And now I'm going to refined general shape a mess. Strawberry a little bit. Something really important to remember is that in general is good to have both blurred and sharp edges in your paintings. Otherwise, everything mixes up together, especially for have a background. So even when using the blood to on your whole baiting like I just did, it's good to go over some of your edges and erase them just a little bit and make them sharper. Hero have some sharper edges for believes, so it creates a contrast with the more bloody edges of the strawberry so back to my grade Ian's. I'm going to keep blending my colors together and creating a gradual mix between them to make my painting look more realistic. I'm still using the self drum brush right away. I'm going to switch for more diction. Brush in a few moments once all my colors on my grade IANS are smooth, so I'm going to add a little bit of sexual intra strawberry weapons extra brush. I'm just making sure that I'm not ruining my different colored radiance. I'm just going to quickly feigned all the little seeds all in your layer, and then I'll make them stand out with some shadows underneath. I'm just recreating what I see in my reference picture. Now everything I'm showing you here is it's just my personal painting process. I tend to use the third blending technique a lot, but of course you can adapt its tools to your personal preference. Instead of using the third planning technique and creating rations by hand, you can use this much, too, with a textured brush like I showed you, and create very painterly radiance and color mixes. That way there's no right or wrong way they're just different techniques. And with all these exercises, you can experiment and see for yourself. Which techniques would be the most useful to you and your painting process. So back to my strawberry, I'm going to add some highlights to my painting. And then later on, I'll blend them a little bit with this much, too. This more highlights and the little details I add here and there and believes that really going to add his additional touch of realism to the painting. It's my favorite painting stage when I get to really detail everything in half fun. - I'm also going to add some cast shadows under the strawberry to make it pop. So now I'm going to use this much, too, for all the small details, because there are kind of standing out for the wrong reasons. Everything else looks smooth and well blended a deceits, and the highlights are a little bit sharper. So using this much Teoh, I'm going to blend them a little bit for some of the seeds. The yellow is too bright, some lending it through the other colors and muddying it just a little bit. I really like to use this much to for the small details. At the end, you can also use it to rearrange some shapes Here. I'm going to just rearrange some of the leaves, and I think that's it. I used old three techniques to blend the colors for my color palette and create a small painting. I really recommend this type of exercise where you choose a small object and you painted with very rough shapes and colors. That's first, and then you detail it, gradually using this different blending techniques. 8. Exercises: Now that you've watched all the lessons, it's time to put into practice everything you've learned. I recommend you do the exercises in the same order as me to make sure that you understand each technique. Start with the blow to and breakfast blending different colors together, then breakfast lending color just this much to an experiment with both soft and texture brushes. Finally, practice painting radiance on your room and lending different colors both with soft on deck should brushes. Once you're ready, you can put into practice everything you've learned with mysterious small exercises. All the files you need are available for download, so grab your stylists and start painting. 9. Outro: Thank you so much for watching this class. I hope you enjoyed it. Don't forget to have a look at the all the exercises upgraded for this class has left to see what you're working on. So feel free to share your class project or just ask any questions you might have. 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