How to BLEND Digital Art for Beginners 🎨

In this tutorial, I'll explain the basics of blending color digitally. I'll demonstrate how to blend in Krita, Photoshop, Corel Painter, PaintTool SAI, Medibang, ArtRage, Rebelle and ClipStudio Paint Pro. Plus I'll also show you a few techniques for blending without blender brushes.

MY DIGITAL ART & YOUTUBE GEAR:

DISCLAIMERS:
I earn revenue from affiliate links. All opinions presented are my own. In the event I am paid to promote a product, I will say so in the video or description.

00:09 - Intro
00:19 - Defining Blending
01:44 - Blending Demos
01:56 - Corel Painter
02:32 - Photoshop
03:15 - Medibang
03:48 - PaintTool SAI
04:15 - Clip Studio Paint Pro
05:13 - Rebelle
06:26 - Krita
07:40 - ArtRage
08:44 - Blending In-Depth
15:15 - When to Blend
15:44 - Blending Alternatives

#BlendingAR #KritaAR #RebelleAR #ClipStudioAR #PhotoshopAR

[aaronrutten]

What are your favorite blenders? Comment below.

[HerkRants]

I use Krita, and I tend to use a blender almost as much as a brush. I use the one that looks like a white stipple stick. Since I set up Krita differently, I don't see the names. Oddly, the little pop-ups don't show unless I switch to my mouse. Using the blender small it will easily drag colors around, and enlarging it allows more even blending on a larger scale. The other one I use a lot is the one that looks like a sort of loop. It's great for things like horse hair - make it small between two colors and jag it back and forth a lot and get the effect of layered hair. Also, that one will extend and curve lines of color.
Side note: after trying the newest Krita I had to uninstall it and reinstall the older version because they dropped the reference picture pane. I really need that and cannot work by using a layer instead.

[Alfos]

Thanks a million for this tutorial mate.
I've been going through blending tutorials all over youtube, never being able to fully wrap my head around how digital blending works.
It just felt like there were dozens of ways to do it but with an unexplained secret that I just wasn't getting.

Thanks to you though I finally can see where I was going wrong but more importantly got to see that there were far more ways to blend than I'd realised ^_^

[Blaedin]

Thanks a lot, this helped me finally find a use for the smudge brush.

[artygracja]

I use Rebelle 4 and to mix colors I use the options of a brush. There are a few for blending and I love the way how easy and natural it looks.

[KataraVtuber]

Great info on blending two very diff colors. Thanks!

[KimperialMarch]

I don't know how I only just came across this video, but it's very informative and useful.

[beckssnz]

thxs i was looking on how to blend in krita and this was very helped

[percy]

this was exactly what I was looking for, I just got my intuos pro today :D

[FineCurry]

I've learned a pretty neat trick for SAI, Although it isn't default there's a way to make a blender that doesn't make any additions to the canvas, it can be used for a blender. That said, I haven't used it enough to know if it's good or not.

[scoobyes]

Hey, how about Autodesk SketchBook? Does it have nice blending?

[annavannoni]

Aaron, I now have a deeper understanding of the blending process, the same thing happened to me when I tried to blend the color green! Yucky grey-green color which I wouldn't say was a true green digitally! I use Painter Mobile app btw! Thanks for the information!

[TheKevphil]

So glad you found something GOOD to say about Clip Studio Paint! ;) Both CSP & SAI have "Smooth Watercolor" brushes. They don't look all that much like watercolor, but they do have an interesting behavior. If you press lightly over existing colors, they (sort of) blend, but if you press harder, they cover with whatever color is selected for them. So you can achieve some subtle effects. In fact, it's the default "look" of much of SAI is attributable to this stock variant.

[TheWinnieston]

Great tutorial! I was looking for the stuff that is in Krita and ibispaint X. These techniques work for what i need right now, but what is the math stuff called?

[kailam]

For Paint Tool Sai, click on the brush labeled "brush", under its settings, there are a few options for blending. Fiddle with those to get the blending to work. :)

[jan_harald]

one small correction...
color on a computer is different, IF the developers are lazy and use old tricks, someone made a video on it, these old tricks aren't needed anymore though...

[kaimemes]

In Photoshop I use tool presets from a YouTuber named "Draw With Jazza"(I'm sure you've heard of him), and he has a paint brush like blender for blending
If you use Photoshop I would seriously recommend his tool presets, he made a video on them,
And in Photoshop there are tools for blending even by defualt, you just have to look through the hundreds of default brushes
(And I forgot to mention, his tool presets are only 5 dollars)

[Wuffindy]

In medibang, you can make custom brushes and get more type of brushes, you need to have an account and logged in to the cloud.
After you have access to the cloud, you can try up all type of brushes, but if you want to make a custom blending brush. You can add a flat brush and then customize the ease of mixing colours ( changed now to something )

[jonathanmisetich]

Incredibly helpful. Really. Hey Aaron, are you going to do a live stream any time soon? I have more questions that I would love to get your input on.

[narkfestmojo]

I use the Gimp to draw and it uses the simplest blender possible (you might call it a smudge) it samples the layer (ARGB) multiplies by the brushes alpha pattern and opacity multiplier and then pastes. My lines always looks like crap, so I use the blender to smooth and soften edges and it works quite well. When I switched to Corel Painter 2018, I wanted to recreate the Gimps ultra simple blender and just could not do it. Corel Painter can be made to do something similar, but it only captures RGB, not alpha, bit of a shame and I've switched back to the Gimp because of it.