BLENDING (My approach to it and tips) || Oil Painting

Hi! In this video I want to get back to the question about blending. My approach to blending has been changing over the last year or so and I want to share my thoughts on it now because I do get a lot of questions about it. I want to start by saying that there are so many different styles of painting, many of which don't require you to perfectly blend everything, even if you're painting realism. If you look at the works of great realist painters you'll see that up close their paintings are quite messy, you can see the roughness, some brushstrokes, but at a proper distance it all comes together and that's a great approach in my opinion. It shows that you don't have to blend it to the point when it's too smooth to paint in a realistic manner. In fact, if you over blend your subject can start looking artificial and not as real. I strongly believe that the key to making a portrait look realistic is having the right values and I talk about values all the time. You know it's how light or how dark the colors are. And another big thing is tones. In these examples we can see so many tones blues, greens, reds and all kinds of hues. In my view you have to get the right values and the hues in the first place and blending comes second. Now I want to share with you sort of my approach, some things that I do when it comes to blending. So first of all take enough paint on your brush. Never skimp on paint because it can make things harder for you. But at the same time don't go too far the other direction either. It's going to be just as difficult to blend colors when the layer of paint is too thick. Secondly, look at the blending as rather making soft transitions. That's all that it is. Soft transitions between different tones or values. And how to do it? Well I believe one of two ways. Put a mid-tone color in between the colors you need to blend. Kind of like this. Or just softly push one color into another creating a transition that way. Whether you do it with a small brush like sometimes you see me do in my real-time painting videos or bigger brushes, it doesn't really matter. Find what works better for you. And the last point I want to make is try to touch the surface very lightly. Like sliding the brush on top of paint that mixes colors a bit more in a certain area. No pressure on the brush whatsoever. Touch the surface lightly and make the paints flow into each other. When I started doing it myself it has been one of the turning points for me. I'm not exaggerating. I could actually see my work improve when I started to paint and blend colors more softly, more lightly, etc. And that's about it. At the end of the day I think the more you paint and practice the more natural it feels and becomes. To the point when you don't even have to stop to think about blending and such. So I hope this video was helpful to you. Have a wonderful day and I'll see you soon!