Question about creating acrylic glazes

Question about acrylic glazes:

To quote part of your instructions on creating acrylic glazes, you say to:

“Select your main color, dab some on your brush and swirl it on your palette, loosening up the paint. Add a quick dab of water and/or glazing liquid to increase the fluidity of the paint. In general, you want the paint to be thin, not thick, in order for it to be a glaze.

Next, select the other colors you're interested in, and mix them into your main color.”

Here’s what I don’t understand:

When you are doing glazing, you mix all the color to your main color?

You don’t do a glaze for every color?



When painting photorealistically, it is important for the colors to blend together seamlessly. So when I said “main color”, here is what I meant:

Say you are painting a red apple. The majority of the apple will be red, but some parts will be in shadow and some parts will be in light. The dark parts of the apple may actually be deep crimson or dark brown, and the lights parts might actually be white. When you look closely at the apple, you’ll see that the “red” apple actually has all these different colors in it.

For most of the painting, you will probably choose red as your “main color” and mix other colors into it to get a more seamless transition that will create a sense of solidity and depth, but for the parts in deep shadow and in bright highlight, you will choose crimson, brown or white as your “main color” for that particular portion of the painting.

When you are glazing, each color you create or adjust will become a glaze, so in essence, you are creating a glaze for each color. This is what helps the paint transition smoothly from color to color.

I hope that helps. I realize it can be tricky trying to describe all this stuff in words. Once I have the proper equipment, I’ll do some video tutorials about painting photorealism which will hopefully answer this question more thoroughly!