Hi ! 🙂

1) If you want to go for my usual technique of washes and glazes (which is by no means the only one to achieve blending), it seems to me that, from what you tell me, you need to dilute your paint more (or control the dilution better). Put less paint on your brush, perhaps. Only by seeing some of your work would I be able to advise you properly on this one…

The gist of the technique is getting only a little dilute paint on your brush, and paint a “veil” of pigment over the surface you need to highlight or shade. By painting more and more “veils” over a smaller and smaller surface, you increase the opacity, and manage blending.

Now, about the Foundry system… It’s not just the “three tone” thing, it’s a whole painting method, with a guidebook and everything.

While Foundry paints aren’t bad (and their range is indeed impressive… I believe I’ve done a review article on them), you will probably have noticed that NONE of the miniatures painted with the Foundry system is blended, properly or otherwise. They simply don’t try : that’s not their thing. So don’t try this system “as is” if you want to achieve blending.

While indeed very easy, I believe this “system” is a gateway to buy more paints than you need (although that’s never a problem), and won’t ultimately teach you anything about painting.

It won’t teach you about colour : even if you don’t use the method and start blending, you’ll get used to shading yellow with a darker yellow and highlighting it with a lighter yellow, and you won’t consider highlighting yellow with, for example, a fleshtone or a light blue… or shading it with brown, or purple. You would have considered it if you had known about colours or if you had observed real yellow objects : purple is the complementary colour to yellow, it’s quite logical to use it to shade yellow.

It won’t teach you about realism : in nature, shadows DO NOT work that way. Ever.

It won’t teach you about colour temperature, value, or saturation : All tones are at one saturation/value/quality for what they represent, and do not vary. Shades and highlights are never warmer or colder than the base tone.

It won’t teach you about mixing : if you follow the system to the letter, you’ll never have to blend again, and mixing paints is discouraged because you simply buy the proper “triad” for the colour you want.

It won’t teach you about dilution : you’re encouraged to use as opaque a paint as possible for the thing to work. The paints are fluid enough that you can paint from the pot… which is a bad habit, and which you should never do if you want your brushes to survive more than a week.

It won’t teach you about light : the direction of the light is barely treated, and the colour of the light is irrelevant to the system : you get the colour triad to paint such and such object, this type of object will always be painted with that triad, shaded and highlighted the same way… never mind if the scene represented is at night, at noon, at dusk, underwater, or with weird source-lighting glows.

What can I say ? This system is a grid that one adopts to basically stop wondering about what colour to use. Just like anything “systematic” or “automatic”, it’s mostly good when you break from it.

It’s facile.

I do believe it’s never a good idea (both in painting and life in general) to stop thinking or stop experimenting.

Following it, you would never even think of painting a black cape, say, by basecoating it in a dark purple, shading with olive green and black, enriching the tones with prussian blue, and highlighting it with elf skintone, then putting on the final highlights with ice yellow (Which is one of the common ways to do realistic black capes on larger scale miniatures).

That said, the Foundry system will give you quick and easy results for tabeltop quality models, by merely reducing painting to a step-by-step paint-by-numbers here-are-your-ingredients-follow-the-recipe kind of activity… There’s nothing wrong with that, especially if you’re chain painting and don’t care about light and blending, or if you can’t be bothered with all that Renaissance painting and fluffy art stuff.

Who knows ? It could happen. I prefer to think most of my viewers don’t belong in that category, but I may well be deluding myself.

Whatever the Foundry system is, and whatever it’s undeniable redeeming merits are, it is at the antipodes of what I have been trying to teach here.

I certainly would be bored to death, painting like that… but I’m always for whatever works : if it’s what you need, if it’s your style, go for it !

If you’re precise enough and if you dare to “break” the triads every now and then, it yields interesting results. I have one or two friends who use it to some extent, quite successfully so.

2) I don’t know exactly how fast you’re painting, you haven’t told me. Speed comes with experience, I’m afraid… But you’ll indubitably get there. “Longer than most” is very relative… I’ve known master painters who spent weeks on a single piece, but on the other hand the superhuman Angel Giraldez manages studio quality in one afternoon. Thomas David invented and perfected airbrush pre-shading techniques in order to turn out studio-level work in record time… (I’ve done a tutorial on pre-shading and a few on spraying and chain-painting ; not as in depth as what he does, but the lessons serve their purpose).

With my technique (which is by no means the only one, as I’ve told you) opacity comes with many layers, and you should perhaps let your basecoat be more translucent, as long as it’s sufficiently homogenous. It does seem to me that dilution is one of your problems, but I can’t tell without seeing your work proper. See what I did for the Britanan : most, if not all of the basecoating was semi-transparent.

In any case, one can’t go wrong with Raphael, and the number 2 is a pretty standard brush… if you require more precision and control for delineating basecoats, you could use a number 1 or number 0, as Raphael brushes are slightly bigger than most (yet they keep a sharp point, even at bigger sizes). Technically, you can paint anything (even small details) with a number 2 Raphael brush, but you and I know that it’s much more comfortable to use different brush sizes.

Right… I think that’s about it…

Sorry about the Foundry system rant; the range has its merits and the method is made to be an easy way to paint in steps, but it does give you bad habits as an artist, and doesn’t help you understanding colours.

About that, I’ll refer you to my series of videos on colour theory… Or any good book on painting and art that covers those basics.

I hope this has helped you. Don’t hesitate to ask again if you need more information ! 🙂