Watercolour Blending Medium

Blending Medium for watercolour is an often-overlooked medium that will slow the drying process, making it possible to blend watercolours for longer; water alone dries much more quickly. This medium allows you to create a graded wash with a near seamless transition as the colours change from one to another, or the colour is thinned out from full strength to a light wash. Here Permanent Alizarin Crimson and Cadmium-Free Yellow are brought together in a smooth transition from one colour to the other using only Blending Medium on cold-pressed watercolour paper, but you can also add water.

Video transcript

Hello,

Today I’d like to show you Winsor & Newton watercolour Blending Medium - and what a discovery it is for me!

Blending any two watercolours is a great skill to have - but it can go wrong very easily as the watercolour is only workable for a very brief window of time.

I’m using some highly transparent Permanent Alizarin Crimson professional watercolour and some Winsor & Newton Cadmium-free Yellow.

For maximum effect, I’m diluting the paint with medium only.

The blending medium will slow the drying of the watercolours and open the paint for

longer allowing more time for me to blend these two lovely colours. I’m using a nice thick brush and Winsor & Newton cold-pressed watercolour paper.

It’s perfect for creating gradations, as you have much longer to manipulate the paint.

It even extends working time when painting ‘en plein air’ and in hot climates.

Look how long I can work on this and how beautifully the cadmium-free yellow blends

with the Alizarin.

A bonus with this medium is once dry, you have a lovely stable layer you can paint over.

I hope you enjoyed discovering Blending medium.