Don’t forget a great “technique” which is blotting. Since working on the 100 Day project, I don’t have my usual time to just let things “dry out.” So I have been drying as much as I can (which is only like 30 seconds!) with a hair dryer and then blotting what would’ve take a while to dry on it’s own.

You can blot with anything – obviously the quickest is just a paper towel. But any cloth or something that will absorb some of the paint and then what happens at least with the paper towel is that it “grabs” and lifts some of the paint and then blotting back into the painting puts that left over paint back into the painting. The effect is definitely just another fun technique. It also softens some of the paint.

But don’t forget to experiment with different kinds of paint. In this piece (Day 31 of the 100 Day Project), I deliberately started with the thicker Annie Sloan chalk paint and decided it was too thick and began blotting it out. It lifted the paint so it wasn’t in just thick globs.

You can also drop in paint from the tube right into your painting and force yourself to work with it as well. With this though, the orange was just too strong and I wasn’t feeling the “drops” so I used paper towel to blot the orange–which soften the effect. It also is a much thinner, acrylic paint (I think it was the fluid Golden paint) so by nature it will be transparent.