manifold

Hello there,
So I'm attempting to improve as a painter and I've decided that it'd be a good idea to keep a written account of issues I'm tackling, techniques I'm working on, and the like. Maybe I'll get some pictures that don't look horrific (I'm doubtful but ah well). I don't suspect anyone will read this, but I feel it'll be a good exercise.

The chronicles of painting eMagnus' sword
I can do basic base coat, shadow, highlight, and make a table top quality piece. But I want to do better.
I'd like to work on NMM, I like the effect and think it looks great. It also forces me to work on brush control, and blending. Both things I think I really need to work on.
In the recent past: I've also started to thin my paints more. As a consequence I've learned I have to wipe a bit more off to avoid releasing a flood of paint that goes charging off towards the rest of my paint job. I started out with ridiculous levels of water/paint for highlighting which amounted to ~8:1 water to paint. I was trying a technique that involved painting super thin paint on and wicking it to where you want it with a second brush, with this ratio and technique I was able to split the paint into atoms and then from there into several pieces and apply each piece individually. This technique provided no visible result. So I added another drop of paint and went back to an attempt at layering/feathering. Since I didn't wipe my brush off enough, and tried to do this to quickly it wound up leaving chalky rings of paint every where I didn't want. Back to the base coat.

Last night I tried layering again but wiped off the appropriate amount. I was mixing the greys I needed from black and white. This ended in a very rough effect. Not waiting long enough for the paint to dry resulted in the paint getting wicked everywhere by the almost dry paint.

This morning I went back with black and shaded the parts I wanted darker. It looks mediocre now up close, and okay from far away (read: It sucks terribly and isn't even table top quality yet). But it needed to dry before I screwed it up worse.