All About Glazing

There has always been a air of mystery about painting glazes. Many artists believe that glazing is difficult or even near unattainable to master. As a Many often don’t learn the extraordinary results glazing can bring.

In order to understand glazing you need to have some basic knowledge of colors and how they react with each other because you will need to be able to see what the colors you are using will do when placed over one another.

With oils you will need to have patience because each glaze layer you apply will take time to dry completely before you can apply the next one. Fortunately acrylics don’t have this problem.

So you are probably asking “what is a glaze anyway?” A glaze is just a thin, transparent layer of color of paint applied over another color or a grisaille. It is slowly building up the layers on top of each other modifying the original color underneath.

Glazing is not a requirement to painting, nobody says you have to glaze, but believe me the results can be spectacular and worth the time! Have you ever seen a painting that has a “glow” to it of that has an luminous look? If so you are probably looking at a painting that has been glazed.

Glazing modifies the color beneath it, for example lets look at a red rose, by applying a glaze of yellow over it will produce a orange-red rose which will actually glow after a few applications. On the other hand a blue glaze over the red rose will give it a red-purple color.

To make it simple; the orange-red you’re seeing is created by light bouncing back from the canvas, through the yellow into your eye, producing a richer color than if had just bounced back from the surface of one layer or red. When you look at the painting, the color is actually mixed optically which gives it a deep, rich color.

You can add as many layers of glaze that you want, it all depends on what results you want to accomplish. If you are glazing red over blue and you want it to look real purple then you may have to glaze several layers to accomplish this.

So now the question is; what colors do I use to glaze with?

Paint pigments or colors are classified as transparent, semi-transparent, or opaque.

Glazes work best with transparent pigments. Some artists think that they can glaze with opaque colors it they dilute them with a glazing medium, however the results just aren’t the same as with transparent colors, producing a cloudy effect . This is good if you want to produce a cloudy effect, you can use white which is called a “white veil” and it is wonderful for fog! Most of the time using an opaque paint only obscures the colors beneath it. Most of the paints on the market list if they are opaque or transparent on the tube, but the acrylics in bottles does not and should not be used to glaze with.