How to Enhance Your Paintings

[Music] so I am very excited today because I get to talk about one of my most favorite things in the whole world which is brushes brush work brush Strokes I just I love it so if I look any tanner than usual it is because I have been baking in the Sun for 2 weeks in Porto Escondido we did a beautiful art Retreat so if any of my art Retreat ladies are watching hello uh hola and um we had an incredible time so uh we did lots and lots of painting we were like parked out right on this incredible Beach we had the most amazing sunrises and sunsets every day it was a blast and I just loved getting to know all the artists uh that came on this Retreat we had a lot of incredible conversations and so it was it was really great so I have been a professional artist for um gosh since 1996 so I don't know what the math is now is that 25 years 28 years 27 years something like that I you know started out right after college and um started painting uh for the decor Market uh after a year of working for a company uh doing that I went out on my own and I've been basically unemployable ever since I've worked with dealers Consultants designers I've been um selling my work in galleries to collectors also my husband is also an artist and we have four kids who are now grown uh they're all adults and they all also paint uh professionally and sell the artwork that's just a little bit about me in 2010 I opened Milan art institute to help artists turn their passion for art into a profession that is why I do what I do because I like you just want to paint all the time I love painting and a lot of people you know want to be a full-time artist but they you know have to make money at a job and they haven't figured out how to earn enough money with their art to be able to do it full-time as an artist and I wanted to change that I wanted to sort of disrupt uh the art education field and have a fast track to being able to gain the skill find your voice and be able to sell your art work for a living in this Workshop we are going to talk about uh brush strokes and how to use brushes so I have all kinds of brushes here this is uh brushes that we made um our fearless set so they say right on it Fearless because we want you to be Fearless with your brush strokes and that I find is a lot of things that uh that holds artist back from making beautiful brush Strokes because it feels like a little bit nervous to make that big of a statement and make that breast stroke and is it going to be right and am I going to just have this Big Blob of paint on my uh canvas that I'm not going to like so that's why we called this set fearless and it's a mixed media set so you can use it for acrylic or oil um I usually use these for acrylic and then I have a different set that I use for oil there's all kinds of um different types of brushes I'm going to go into all the different kinds of brushes and how to use them this is a really really cool brush uh and this they're all cool actually I don't know I it's hard to know which one is my favorite so I really love them I love how they look each have like a different color on the ends so you know kind of by sight when they're laying on the table you know your your mind starts to remember which brush is what based on the color um and then I have uh all these brushes I got big ones little ones and I'm going to show you how to use them how to make different kinds of brush Strokes I'm going to work on this um half half painted uh painting it's not finished yet and to demonstrate all the different ways to use these brushes I'm using oil today but whatever I'm uh teaching you can use um oil or acrylic I'm using oil though because this painting is so far has oil on it I also have a little bit of galid in here so I'll use uh some solvent and some galid to thin the paint um sometimes I use thick paint just as is with no medium in it and sometimes I want to thin it depending on the effect I'm trying to get so I'll go into that as well uh the first thing though I want to show you is what not to do so I'm going to show you first what not to do then I'm going to show you what to do and then after I show you what to do I'm going to show you what my favorite brush is and why but first let's talk about what not to do so what you don't want to do is use the same brush the whole time that is definitely a no no so a lot of people pick a mediumsized brush and just use it the whole time for everything and they don't change up the shape they don't change up the size or the type of fiber or hairs that that it has and so they get the same old breast stroke all the time and what ends up happening on your painting is you're not able to really have a variety of brush Strokes that really speak so you want to use lots of brushes I would say on average from start to finish I probably use at least 10 12 brushes most artists I know when they're first starting out probably use about three brushes and so if that is you change that up you should be using at least 10 or 12 brushes and not just out of obligation but because you really want to because you found all the different things that they can do and you want those different effects in your painting the other thing that you don't want to do is blend every everything so there's this default that people have I see a lot of people have it so I'll demonstrate what what not to do this area here on the cheek and looking at my source it's light bluish color just mix up a light bluish color throw a teeny bit of a compliment in there just so it's not so bright and then what a lot of people do is this sort of dbd dab dab dab dab dab dab dab dab dab blendy blendy dab dab dab and they want to erase almost like an airbrush did it and they just want to erase everything they're doing and it's just blendy blendy dab dab blend blend blend so it's got this kind of flat look to it and then when it starts to get darker then they just basically add a little more paint into it less white same color no variety and then they begin blending a little bit darker blend blend blend and then they go oh it's got to go darker still and then they blend it even darker and that's how they get that Hollow of the cheek and so it has this really like ah I don't know it's like you're you're you're just erasing you know what what could be there and a lot of people too what happens is they intend to make brush strokes and so they go okay I'm going to I'm going to make a brush stroke I'm going to do it and so then they put a brush down and they go oh my gosh oh that is that's so bright that's so like evident and it makes them feel worried and scared and like that is too flashy so then they go in and then they start blending everything with what's there and then they feel better and like okay that's better now now it doesn't show as much and it it and so now you feel safe and my theory I could be wrong and maybe people are different but my theory is because I used to be a blendy blendy smoothie smoothie and what happened is is when I put the brush stroke and it felt so strong and evident and showy and flashy this thing inside me would scream and say who do you think you are don't be so flashy don't be so flamboyant don't put it out there so much and something inside of me it was subconscious would want to hide it and cover it up and let it disappear and blend and smooth into everything around it and at first you know I thought well that's just like how I paint you know that's my style but then I realized it was definitely coming from a place of weakness because I felt so you know um bad when I would see something like that like a brushstroke and then what I learned as I became more comfortable stepping into my power and stepping into my true self and who I really am and allowing myself to be seen and heard then what I realized is that brush stroke as soon as you add a few more around it that also show the form and you just plant like another one next to it and another one next to it there then by association by just being around other brush Strokes that also are you know kind of flashy it begins to make sense with the form I learned that this is how you you start stacking these breast Strokes up you can begin to really make something Beautiful by allowing the brush Strokes to show sometimes you might want to have something really energetic in there and full of expression and now the energy that I added that that brush stroke there is recorded forever there's this little blue line and then that blue and then the light and then that and it went from here down you can feel the energy that went into it you can feel that intensity that that came with it you can feel that this one just sort of was kind of left there and that energy that went into it so however you deliver your brush strokes and they'll vary depending on how you're feeling what's going on in your mind as you're painting it could be the season of your life and the things that you're going through are overcoming they're all recorded in that brush stroke so I highly encourage people to leave those brush Strokes do not blendy blendy smoothie smoothie everything don't cover it up don't hide it don't let it disappear into the background let it show because people love to see it people can feel your paint they can feel your energy when you're painting but I would even go as far as to say that every everything in my life all the pain that I've gone through and everything that I've overcome in my life and therefore the authority and empowerment I have in that overcoming is recorded in my breast stroke it's every breaststroke is unique unque I can lay a breaststroke that nobody else can put down and you can lay down a breaststroke nobody else can put down it's never replicated exactly the same every single breast stroke is completely unique the hieroglyph of our life on the canvas and encoded in it is our overcoming is our courage is those things that have tried our metal and we've proven ourselves with that is why art is so healing that is why art is so emotionally effective it doesn't matter as much about the image the image can move people but it's those brush Strokes that really grit people it's the brush Strokes it's the energy the the delivery of the paint that really really truly moves people so you know these tools that we have these brushes and all their shapes and sizes are swords our weapons to change the world with when as soon as you come out of that thinking that we we are making the painting and it doesn't matter what brush I use I can just pick my favorite brush and just use it the whole time and we start to realize that every one of these brushes has the capacity to harness our energy or harness what it is we want to say in a specific way and that when we combine our intent with what these tools can do you're going to have so much expression and life in your canvases that your paintings could even make people will cry there is a time and a place for blendy blendy Smoothie smoothie you can create contrast where you have an area that's really smooth and Blended out and just this soft sort of backdrop so that when you add those brush Strokes it makes a a real statement so I'm not saying that you can never ever blend but I think it should be done with intention and not just a default of what to do okay so the last thing you do not want to do do do the stab and dab so what is stab and dab you want to use a lot of different brushes we know that you don't want to just blend everything by default because you are afraid to let your brush Strokes show and it feels safe to cover them up and then the third thing you do not want to do is stab and dab so stab and dab is when I am working on an area and I take the same brush and I just do this dab and dab stab and dab right and then go back and I do the same exact brush stroke and it stab and dab and stab and dab and so you end up with this sort of monotonous brush stroke that you can't get away from typically the stab and dabs are on this round brush you just don't want to do that your brush should be moving in all kinds of different ways this that that this up down over up right you should always move your brush in all kinds of different ways stab and dab is stab dab stab dab right your marks will be arbitrary they won't mean anything and so those aren't good brush Strokes so stab and dab is not what you want to do you want your brush Strokes to go with the form and so if you see a square shape of a light there hit it like that if you see another one that's kind of long then you hit it like that if this one over here is kind of turned then you do that right so your brush is always moving in different directions according to the form according to um the shape that you see and you're emulating from from your Source or what you're looking at those are what not to do now I'm going to move into what to do but as a segue I want to show you guys how do you resurrect dead brushes okay we all have them we all have those brushes that I have a bucket right here of dead tormented awful brushes so this one has is full of clumpy bits of oil it was left too long and you can see on the edge it's just like gross little oil boogers to get that clean would be really difficult this is just stiff at the ends and over here on this corner it's super stiff okay so this is no longer soft like it's supposed to be there's some in here that actually make noise it's so trashed there there's no it's hard like you could hurt somebody you could stab somebody with that like you you probably can't even go on an airplane with this one there's so many brushes in here that are ruined here's oh my gosh this is my favorite so we have a a a little boy that comes into the studio who's about um you know a little over 2 years old and he got c a hold of this brush and he put it in um acrylic paint acrylic plastic paint and this is completely and utterly ruined there's there's no no way to use that brush it's and it's one of my favorites it's not my favorite but it's one of my favorites which is a script brush and it's ruined so this fan brush it it doesn't it doesn't do anything that it's supposed so you get the hint you get the idea all these brushes are super ruined um they're they're hard they're stiff you know gross so what you do with your brushes is you find a bucket you stick them all in like this you want to use this Murphy's soap okay and you can just get this at Walmart Amazon and if you live in Europe or Australia or some other part of the world and you don't have this brand it's basically you can look it up it's wood clean cleaner concentrated wood cleaner so it's like for wood floors you can read about what the ingredients are and then find what it is in your country so I'm pouring a whole bunch of it in this bucket I'm going to let it sit for about two weeks you don't have to do anything except just make sure they're all in there these are some brushes that I just took out and they were all hard and ruined and now they're soft and usable and some got kind of misshapen the cheaper ones will be you know misshapen um other ones you can kind of form by you know doing this while they're still wet and they'll sort of go back to their form then when you're all sad and crying cuz your favorite brushes got ruined they're not all you have to do is put them in that Murphy soap so back to what to do so now we told you what not to do now I'm going to tell you different things that I do and what they're for so this big brush I'm going to start with the filberts so anything with a round tip like this is called the filbert brush these brushes I'm going to paint with them in a minute but you they work great for portraits because a lot of things like cheeks or lips sort of have that shape um I like to start with bigger brushes first and then put like a big brush stroke down um like this I got to cover up my stab and dab um and then I like to stack bigger ones on [Music] top [Music] taking a little bit of a compliment and putting it next to [Music] it every time I get new paint I try to get a slightly different color so it doesn't have that monotonous [Music] look [Music] so this is all just basically with the same with the same brush and then I can go to a smaller filbert and get a little bit more of the details on there and stack stack up some other brush Strokes and typically what I do in the order um of of what I do is I I like to use my Big Brush all over um and then kind of come in with a a smaller brush um after um instead of you know doing it like I'm demonstrating here where I first put the um the Big Brush and now the little one and work an area I usually work all over first so then if you want more variety still I can use I can switch to this smaller Square brush and begin to add you know some other other shapes in [Music] there and if it starts to feel like it's getting muddy or it's all kind of blending and your brush Strokes aren't showing um then you can just you know keep moving around and come back a different day um you you want your your brush Strokes to kind of um you know Stack Up and and for them to still be seen so again my favorite thing is to kind of more move around and not just stay in one spot and you can use like the side of the square brush like I'm doing to kind of get that sort of scumble look that's in there um so if you look at these lines that are kind of over his eye um that's kind of one way to do it you I'm just using the side of it and just dragging it down like that so the square brush um can get you some nice lines as well so let me go back to this I'm going to kind of work this area here with this big filbert I think you also want to kind of um match your energy to what it is you're painting and how you feel about it so these Rings you know are kind of soft and swooping so I want my energy to kind of match that a little [Music] bit [Music] um and I want to use the soft brush to get these sort of uh blurry soft uh you know rings and shapes that are behind there and then just to show you like back to a square brush what it can do is if I want to begin to Define um some of those layers a little bit more and maybe hit some of this gold in there then I can use it um flat like I did there um for this sort of shape and then I can also use the tip right because we have a nice sharp edge here for that tip and get [Music] some of that more detailed type ring right so that was all with the square brush so you can use it flat or you can use the tip to um to kind of get those lines so then of course we have this big this big flat brush um which I think could be good for down here um in the clothes and that sort of uh background clothes clothes shape and then we have this kind of sply stuff so I can kind of try to use that edge there to get you know that effect that I see there but the main main thing you guys is if you just use 12 different brushes every painting and every time you're moving to an area you're sort of Behaving differently with it based on what you're doing you're you're going to have enough variety and expression in your painting that you know will make it really really beautiful and sophisticated so um that's just the main thing and and you guys will figure out all the different things your brushes can do um so what I'm showing you is like you know the all the things I've discovered and how I use them and you're going to have your own um sort of discoveries um so this beard here a lot of people you know back to the stabbing and dabbing will think like I have to paint every hair on that beard and just make these little x's and crosshatches and that's not really you know how it works um I can uh use the side of it and sort of make that sort of scumble scribbly you know beard beard look and then add layers on top of that so um all these all these brushes are just different kinds of tools that you have at your disposal to use however however you like while you know while you're constructing your painting so um pallet knives are also kind of a cool idea so one thing you could do to also is um you know put put some paint down that's you know maybe thick so I can um you know sort of add some paint where do I want it and um and then you can kind of you know move some things or scratch into it you know with your pallet knife the other thing you can do is add the paint with your pallet knife right uh like that oh my gosh look what I did okay so most people would be all panicked maybe I did it for a reason to show you how you take care of it so it's okay if things like that happen so I got this Big Blob um on his cheek and so I'm just going to like scrape it off okay best I can and then I'll get my Rag and kind of get the rest off and then I'm going to ignore it and just paint right over it okay so there's not enough paint there to influence and so I'll just go over it with the brush stroke and it's no big deal so back to what I was doing I added that with the pallet knife which is what got me into trouble and then I can move it with my brush right you're not married to the shape that that that pallet knife got but there's a nice little expression in there I even like that little dark thing that's in there um that you know really kind of adds to it so now I'm going to fix that so if you mess up your painting and you put it down a brush stroke you don't like or that you know just doesn't um do it for you it's totally fine um you either will cover it up with another brushstroke or you will um uh you can always wipe it off so uh that's typically what I do happens all the time so Dino are there any uh questions anybody has on there um yeah we have a question um so Tori ma is wondering what is the best technique for painting hair okay that is a good question so I don't have a lot of hair oh I do right there okay so I'm going to show you um another brush that I really like and how to paint this hair right here so typically I don't have a good example of of hair with like highlights and all that but typically what I do with hair is I start with big brushes like this and I put in all the sort of I block it in darks and lights um then I let that dry and then I might glaze over some of the lights um with another brush uh I mean another color a glazed transparent color and then I let that dry and then I come in and do the highlights with a more detailed brush so right here he has this hair um that I'm going to do uh and I'll start with a um this filbert here and I'm just going to kind of block in the general shape of that [Music] what you don't want to do with hair is get your little pointy brush and draw like little worms every individual hair um and and then you know and not let it have form and come and go you you really want to block in the shape the hair makes and forget that there's individual strands so I'm going to um uh just kind of come in here with this brush and I'm trying to just kind of get that [Music] shape [Music] I have to paint the hair before I can paint the and let that dry before I can paint those golden you know blobs lights they're not blobs they're lights okay so this is sort of setting me up um for the details now um you can use one of two brushes you can use uh did it go you can use a script brush here we go so a script brush is more common and I'm going to dip it in galid and I'm going to get my color here so and I'm I'm thinning the paint so that it'll go on really really fluid and then I'm rolling it into a point with my script brush okay and now this is where I'm going to get that actual shape and darken it and this is just kind of the blurry behind it so so you just have to be gutsy and just plant your brush and and kind of whip it and then go get more paint the other thing is if you hold your brush in the back of your brush you know towards the end if you hold hold it up here and you like then you have to be really steady with your hand and it'll be clumpy so I hold my brush back here at the end and I keep a really light touch and touch and I try to use my whole arm um to get that nice fluid movement and I might even practice at first you know getting that until I like touch down and can do it um and you can go different directions so that's the script brush now the other brush you can use for hair or Line work is this sword brush so this I've actually not used one of these very much this is a very recent discovery and I'm I'm it's it's my new love I I really love this brush now so it's called a sword liner and this is what it looks like when it's dry but it all kind of forms into a point um so this one's a little bit fatter than this one and so I'm going to get you can get really cool effects with this so I'm going to have lots of galid and then some paint and because it's so floppy I suppose you could like kind of I'll just I'll just do it for fun but I bet you can like whack it and you know make interesting marks with it I've never done that before but just occurred to me cuz it's so floppy but what I've been using it for is to make really cool lines so you can get like a a lot of really neat effects with it you can get really thin lines you can get thicker lines so that's like another way um to get to get that hair effect you know go like fat to thin to Fat to thin you know and move it like that you can you can get some really neat um Line work work with these um this painting is going to be a hot mess by this cuz I'm showing you all these different experiments but it's okay I'll just paint over it so that is I don't know I don't know if you guys are impressed with this brush like I am but it is so much fun um I was just talking to Esther about this brush and she said that um uh she calls it her Leaf brush and she makes leaves with it so I don't know uh it goes into this really cool point and it holds a lot of paint so you can get like nice fluid lines for a very long time with it it is it is really fun so those very thin lines that are up in here on the crown I could get with those and it could be really really cool okay another thing to show you with these uh round brushes so I talked about the square brushes I talked about the filberts so just to review uh filberts are these round tipped brush brushes they come in all kinds of different sizes you can get itty bitty ones um this isn't a itty bitty one but it's a pretty small one so when you have smaller shapes that are round like you know up in here um on the eyes or in the nostrils um you can you know those these are kind of more meant for the smaller shaped things like lips nose whatever and same thing with the round brushes so here we have you know sort of a fatter round brush um and then maybe a more medium round brush there's some really really big round brushes like this one so they come in all different sizes and then a little one so for eyes what I think uh is great is if you sort of use maybe these three different size brushes so you have um your sort of medium Square brush your sort of small filbert brush and your small round brush and then you can even go down to a smaller round brush still um so this would be really four good brushes to use for uh an eye and I actually in the beginning would probably use first filbert I was using so to do eyes I just want to illustrate how many brushes you need um to do eyes really really well uh and when I say eyes I just mean the whole eye like the whole entire eye not just eyeballs I would probably use these four brushes and I would probably start with this big filbert and I would you know Block in with that um with that big filbert um all around uh I've already done that then I would probably move to the square brush and I would get the angles anywhere I have sort of sharp edges angles um anything you know down here sometimes you you want some um nice Square marks let's see M so you can you know add that and then maybe one over here and um and then you just sort of begin stacking these uh brush strokes and of course they're going to look don't don't get worried if you have brush Strokes that you know stand out in the beginning because after you add some some more they they start to make sense at first they don't make sense so you have to like wait until you have more in there I should be looking at my source and not making it [Music] up [Music] so this just kind of gives some angles and some structure you know to the eye um and then I would go down to this smaller filbert and and sort of add the more round the more round brush Strokes is there any other questions Dino or okay uh so Amanda King is wondering what is the best use for fan brushes oh that's a good question honestly I don't use fan brushes much but let me see how I could probably use that so the two different ways to use a fan brush well probably more than two different ways um is so here we have a fan brush so they come in lots of different shapes and sizes and again this is not a brush that I use very much but you can use it as a blender so um you can take an area like this that you know got a little wild and you can start you know blending with it so that's one way you can kind of drag things down see how I did that and it got like kind of Blended um so those are the different effects you can get with it um so one way is to blend another way to use it um is uh for sort of texture like um let me see what do I have on here I suppose the beard um so if I want to kind of add some texture with the beard here um right it can it can maybe do some sort of uh crisscross applesauce right for for texture do you see how it's doing that and so that that could be another you know use of it so there isn't like in my opinion on any of these brushes like one most definite positive way the fan brush is used for cuz you see like those Bob Ross videos right where Bob Ross is making the happy trees and he takes his big fan brush and he you know goes dab dab dab dab dab dab dab dab dab dab dab dab and he makes these like tree shapes with it so it's not like that's what this brush is destined for and that's all it can do is our dab dab dab Bob Ross treat it's it can be used however you want um I don't use it mostly because I just kind of forget about it but now that I did use it a little bit I can see there's some cool effects that it got if I added this to my sort of collection of brushes and I had it around I'd probably use it I just think I forget about it and I don't have very many and maybe I subconsciously associate it with Bob Ross and happy trees and so I haven't picked one up much but there's nothing wrong with them the only thing that I would say is wrong with them is if you use these exclusively to blend and it's your go-to to blend everything um so I would say that that's that's probably what you don't want to use it for um so just like all the rest of your brushes or pallet knives or you know scrape out tools or all the tools that you have available to you it's another tool that can get you different effects but the same rules apply variety you want lots and lots of variety you don't want everything to be same same so you don't want to stamp with it over and over again you want to use it as a tool back to the eyes um on this little this little tiny round brush um what you can do at that point is start stacking up your brush Strokes with all the little um details so I have here a dark part at the inner part of his eye I can you know just plant a brush stroke and leave it plant a brush stroke and leave it and you can begin to you know add some nuances in there like there's a nice little kind of turquoise spot there you can begin just adding all kinds of crazy colors so I can just take this red it's not even in the painting this doesn't you know really exist in the painting and I can maybe put it um you know right here just for effect you know and maybe I want to put a little blob there for effect right so these little sort of I just um one of our mentors Heather Bailey calls them Tic Tacs so adding these little Tic Tacs of color you know this bright turquoise around the eyes and just like various little um shapes you don't want it to be all same same right you want it to vary is is kind of a cool way to add some expression into things that maybe deviates from The Source um but still makes sense and so using you know five six seven different brushes on the eyes you're going to get a a much more expressive eye that has more variety to it and really really looks you know interesting and expressive and beautiful and still true to form the other thing that you can do with these round brushes uh or for that matter the script brush um this is something uh John does a lot if you have say texture in the background and you want to kind of jazz up this this texture with some some of that um what you can do is you want to use thicker paint so you don't want to um put galit or anything on it and you can very lightly sort of drag it you know vertically or horizontally like this um so it's sort of parallel with the canvas and you can get like if you were trying to make sunrays you could kind of do that with sunrays by you know moving it in different directions and it will you know give you kind of cool texture by using it this way uh so that's another thing you can do with these um of course this is like your best tool to make little dots um so this is like the best way to make details on stars or um if you have the little dots that you want to form coming down the round brushes are good for that so all these brushes are different different shapes different sizes different ways to use them I I think how you should sort of start your painting though um is with big brushes you want brushes at least this big or this big to start your painting and you'll want to begin being you know more expressive um than uh and and wild with it in the beginning um you know really having you know really cool uh brush Strokes in there and this is where you can like you know just kind of go nuts with it and add you know drippy things and get uh lots of paint on there and you know you can you know sort of drip and have different types of expression going on in there I can get rid of my Bob Ross marks so it's in the beginning that I think think you you have that like sort of high energy with uh the big expression and then as you bring it more towards refinement you're going to move down in your brush size um and that's why you need 12 different brushes to make a painting um I almost always start with this brush and in the beginning I told you um I would tell you what my favorite brush is and I would say that this is probably my favorite brush and then my second favorite brush is a medium-size fil so um and the reason I love this brush is you can scumble with it like this and get sort of like you know kind of Blended scrubby sort of sort of marks with it right um You can get this type of look with it you can just go and add a nice sweeping you know brush stroke into it it's it you can cover a lot of ground with this brush um I can use the corner of it and really like finesse some things and get kind of cut into my um my subject by you know painting in the background and using the corner so I I love this brush I use it all the time I use it for acrylic I use it for oil it's it's my favorite brush um and then then um this is probably my second favorite because it's very versatile I can use it like that way perpendicular to the you know in the using it the short way like that or you can use it flat and get a bigger brush stroke so I just found that you can do a lot with this with this brush but I'm going to tell you something that could like you know change your life and that is that having a favorite brush can ruin your paint paintings so don't don't get so in love with a brush and um even though these are my favorites I tell myself all the time Ellie put your favorite brush down Ellie put your favorite brush down because if I'm not careful I could use these two brushes for the entire painting and that would not make for a very good painting I have at least 12 brushes around me on you know that I can see and that I can grab I usually have three or four in this left hand i'm right-handed you know while I'm painting I have these brushes and then I have one that I'm working with so um having that many brushes around me um I've I've over the years practiced and learned I need to use all of my brushes and not just have them there but not use them so having a favorite brush and sort of sticking with it will wreck all your paintings try to like you know I don't know not be so in love with your favorite brush uh because really it's the variety and have having lots of different types of brush strokes and different things going on in your painting is what's going to make your painting um really beautiful really stand out your brush strokes and and the energy that went into them um the emotion that went into them will all be recorded in that brushstroke and the your audience and the collectors and the people that are looking at your art will feel it and your your painting will really grip them in their gut and it won't just be you know something that you kind of pass by it'll you'll they'll be arrested by it because those brush Strokes are so impactful so uh really really work at um figuring out what all these brushes do and practicing now in order to pull off water in order to pull off say you're painting a waterfall well you know that trick I showed you of using the side of your Square brush and your round brush to kind of get that scrabby look that's how you do a waterfall right you're going to you're going to um paint I'm not going to tell you how to do a waterfall but anyway that will be a great trick on how to do a waterfall uh if you um were painting clouds you are going to want to Stack up all kinds of filberts big filberts down to smaller filberts so thanks for being here and uh I've really enjoyed it and I'll post this finished looking good um uh hopefully in the next week and then um you guys can see it all right I will see you next time

Channel: Milan Art

Views: 39,445

Keywords: concept art, dimitra milan, milan art institute, art podcast, contemporary art, art, art skills, artists, artist, art school, art education, classical art, composition, texture, professional artist, professional artists, create drawings, learn art, art program, art haul, watercolor, watercolour, acrylic, oil paint, oil painting, how to paint, how to draw, learn painting, best art skills, artist mentor, art mentors, art mentor, pro artist, pro artists, learn to draw, art blog

Id: DpGmGUBzcVY

Length: 53min 33sec (3213 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 20 2024