Once my papers from the last exercise, Tonally Graded Washes, had dried I made up the same colour mixes again but this time painting the second colour over the dried wash I had set aside. There were noticeable differences in the way the paint and colour behaved.

The colours did not merge in the same way, in the first exercise the colours made new colours and spontaneous patterns as they merged in the middle but in this exercise the wet layer faded into the dried layer. Merging in this way gives you more control as  the result is more predictable.

 

From there I went on to look at other pigments all acrylic and I found out that some pigments were thicker than others. Below is a wet and wet overlaying wash of sand over raw umber, with the same amount of water I found that the sand was more opaque than the raw umber so rather than run into the more transparent colour it had to be worked in. However, a wet and wet wash of raw umber over sand had the opposite result with the raw umber running into the sand.

From there I wanted to experiment with two contrasting colours and so chose a yellow wash over fluorescent pink, again wet and wet, what I found was that the colours blended well together forming layers of orange as the layers of wet paint mixed into each other.

From there I chose to do some glazes with several colours over two different coloured backgrounds, one a bright yellow the other, raw umber. I found that bright pigments remained strong over the bright yellow while they toned down over the mellower raw umber.