A little while ago, Jaime Lawrence asked for some examples of experiments with on-model blending. This drew me back to an old blog post, Mixing Things Up. The blog talked about mixing issues with wet Turbo Dork paints. The general, you can wet mix/blend metallics to your heart’s content; however, mixing TurboShifts often leads to unexpected results. Keeping these general points in mind, I created four examples of wet-on-wet blending for this post.

• Mixing most Metallics results in relatively predictable new shades of paint. However, paints like Pearly Gates and Black Ice, which have strong underlying silver tones, do not behave as pure "white" and "black".
  
  
• Mixing a Metallic and a TurboShift tends to create a paint in which the color of the Metallic dominates, wiping out the shift effect.
  
  
• Mixing two TurboShifts often results in unforeseen results. TurboShifts have the appropriate balance of light-bending prisms to achieve the desired color changes. Combining them can destroy that fine balance. Using two TurboShifts in the same color spectrum, e.g., blue with blue, seems to work best.

Metallic-Metallic

The first example is of a Thrasher Snail (Reaper Miniatures) with sections of its shell done in red and golden brown (black matte base, Redrum on the top, Death By in the recesses, and blending in between). As predicted, the blend resulted in a rusty color. The smooth transition shown in the photo was aided by the fact that I was able to get good coverage and blending with a limited number of coats.

TurboShift-TurboShift (Sky Above)

In thinking about how to show some interesting TurboShift blends, I revisited the idea of TurboShift triads from a previous blog post (A Fresh Look at TurboShift Triads). I had recently found the Cloud Giant (D&D Nolzur's Marvelous Miniatures) in my box of unpainted miniatures, and I thought of Sky Above, the old name, for the trio of Cloud Nine, Miami Sunset, and Lunar Eclipse. The cape was too inviting as a place to try a blend. However, please note that I only used the shadow and the highlight of the trio. There is no Miami Sunset on the figure below.

This second example, shown below, illustrates the individual colors of the two TurboShifts as well as the combination: matte black base; Cloud Nine on the bodice and the top portion of the cape; Lunar Eclipse on the skirt and the bottom of the cape; the blend in the middle section of the cape. Cloud Nine (pinkish-purple) and Lunar Eclipse (reddish-purple) have similar underlying colors.

I have a confession to make before moving on to the next example. Since TurboShifts require several coats to bring out the shift, I had difficulty using just a true wet-on-wet technique for the mid-portion of the cape. I started with the wet-on-wet technique but then abandoned it. I finished off the top and bottom of the cape with more coats of the single TurboShifts. Then I used wet paint mixed on my palette to enhance the mid-region Cloud Nine with Lunar Eclipse in a 1:1 ratio).

TurboShift-TurboShift (Radium/Electrum)

Two midrange TurboShifts that were just made to go together are Radium and Electrum, with their shades of yellow and green. In fact, the pigments for the first batches of these two were accidentally switched, making Radium really Electrum and Electrum really Radium.

The photo below shows this Dragon Lord (sculpted by RN Studio) with the top edges of the webbing of the wings and the belly in Radium and the bottom edges of both in Electrum. The center of the wings and the front pooch is the blend. On the upside, the small surface area to be covered allowed the wet-on-wet application of the paints to work as intended. On the downside, the visible transition area is limited.

TurboShift-TurboShift (Cheat Day)

I personally fell in love with this Duncan “Shadow" Louca model (Female Samurai) when I saw her on Etsy. I knew I wanted to use her for the fourth example for this blog. Then, to pick paint colors, I returned to the idea of a TurboShift triad. In this case, I used the old Cheat Day highlight and shadow colors with pinkish-purple and purplish-pink.

In the photo below, the dress, including sleeves, was painted in Sugar Rush (top) and Let Them Eat Cake (bottom) with a wet-on-wet blend used for the area in between. In this case, although the blended area is visible, the dark purples of the Let Them Eat Cake dominates the paler shades of Sugar Rush, subduing the overall effect somewhat.

Conclusions

Wet-on-wet blends with Turbo Dorks paints are most easily accomplished by sticking to the Metallics. In contrast, doing such blends with TurboShifts can be challenging. As illustrated above, using light and dark shifts with a general overlap of colors works, but may still require a bit of a workaround to bring out the transition.