Painting Blog

12/6/2026

 

Hello there, over the past few weeks we have done some painting. We learnt about four painting techniques, the four painting types we  learnt are blending gradient, impasto, sgraffito, and stippling. These four painting techniques are very different from each other, and because of this, all four of the techniques are unique in their own way.

 

Blending gradient was the most simple one because you only needed two colours. You had to put these two colours on opposite sides of the paper, landscape or portrait, it didn’t matter, but I would recommend landscape. You had to have the lighter colour on the bottom and the darker colour on top of it or else it wouldn’t work. You had to paint the colours really quickly, or else they would dry. In the middle of the page there would be an empty white gap, and in that gap you would blend the two colours together to create a new hue in the middle of the page. If you had red above and yellow below, you  then had orange in the middle. If you had blue above as well as yellow underneath, you then had green in the center. There are endless combinations of colours, so many that you could have different sets of colours for each painting you do.

 

Another more unique type of painting is impasto. Although it seems weird, it is actually an Italian word. Impasto doesn’t use a paintbrush, but a special painting tool called a palette knife. With the palette knife, you would get a bit of paint on the side. Following that, you would start spreading the paint out on the paper with the palette knife. After using many colours, you would have lines and stripes of colours. Once you use many colours, you can put your palette knife on the side and start scraping it along the paint, and then you will have lines.

 

Sgraffito is another unique type of painting, but it only needs a minimum of two colours, like a blending gradient. First, on the paper, you can put a colour on the whole page or have blotches of different colours. After putting blotches or a solid colour on the page, you can add any colour you want over it, but it can only be one colour. This time, before it dries, turn your paintbrush around and use the back to draw; while drawing, it will reveal the colours on the back layer.

 

The last of the four types of painting techniques is called stippling. For this you need a small and dry paintbrush, the reason you need a dry one is due to it having to be hard rather than soft. Once you’ve got your paintbrush you can dip it in any paint you want but only a small amount. Once you get a small amount of paint you can start dabbing it on the paper but not to hard but just enough to make light blotches. You want the hold the paintbrush by the metal, lower bit so you have more control. You can use lots of colours if you want.

 

It has been very fun learning these four unique techniques plus it was very fun. I think they all were fun since they were so unique, I had lots of fun.

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