Portrait painting Tutorial - Brushes & How to Achieve Looser Brushwork

welcome back everyone alex javaris here this video is going to be about the best brushes to use for oil painting and while we're on the subject of brushes i thought i'd also talk about brush work and how to achieve a loose painterly appearance when you work there are lots of different kinds of brushes and in this video i'm going to tell you what all these different brushes are and i'll be showing you what they do but before you go out and buy a load of expensive brushes you need to know that it isn't actually the brushes themselves that hold the key to bold painterly brushwork the brushes you see here belong to the spanish painter joaquin saroya one of the artists of the late 19th century we typically associate with bold reviewer of brushwork and as you can see his brushes do not appear to be in particularly good condition the artists of the past did not have access to the wide variety of good quality brushes we do today and yet they were able to achieve outstanding results so brush work isn't necessarily about using the best brushes but rather it's got more to do with how you use them so in this video as well as talking about brushes i'm also going to be sharing with you the practices you need to develop and the bad habits you need to avoid to help you achieve looser more painterly brush work but first of all here are some of the different kinds of artist brushes that can be used for oil painting which are made of a variety of different types of hair we have bristles made of hog hair which are the type of brushes most frequently used for oil painting because their stiffer hairs are more durable and hold more paint then there are brushes made of softer animal hair like sable mongoose or badger and we have synthetic brushes which are generally softer and offer an economical alternative to soft animal hair brushes which can be pretty expensive the other way we categorize brushes is by their shape the most common shapes are flat brushes and filberts which are flat brushes with rounded ends shaped into a point like an almond we also have round brushes i personally don't use many rounds other than these smaller round brushes called riggers that can be shaped into a point and used for details and then there are speciality brushes like fan brushes which can be used for blending and achieving other textured effects another important characteristic is the length of the hair shorter head brushes known as brights are stiffer and are used when you want to load up a lot of paint and here are all the brushes i've laid out for this demo i have hogs synthetics badger and other soft animal hair brushes flats filberts and riggers in a range of different sizes i'll put a list of the brushes i'm using in the description below and to show you what all these brushes do i'm going to be painting a self-portrait from life using a mirror but before we get started i want to show you this small thumbnail i did in preparation doing a thumbnail before you start is always a good idea because working on a small scale forces you to simplify your subject and it helps you identify some of the problems you'll encounter in advance the reason i did this thumbnail was because i wanted to pre-mix some of my flesh colors because the first thing you need to do if you want fluid visible brush work is to make sure you use enough paint so here i've used a palette knife to mix four piles for each of the main values the shadows the mid tones the main light and the highlights i'll put a full list of the colors i'm using in the description below i'm going to start off by placing a colored ground to remove the white of the canvas this is a gray mixture made with ultramarine and transparent oxide red diluted with solvent the brush i'm using is a large badger head brush you can use any large brush for this but i prefer using softer haired brushes because they don't leave as many visible brush marks as stiffer hog brushes here i'm wiping back the ground with some paper towel you want to make sure the ground is reasonably dry before you start painting on it or else it will get mixed into the paint and everything will start slipping around next i'm going to place my head on the canvas starting with the top and bottom the brush i'm using is a medium sized four hog filbert when you start mapping out a painting try to use a brush that isn't too small that way you will avoid getting caught up in any intricate drawing too soon once the top and bottom of my head have been placed and the scale i'm going to be working at established i'll then place the sides of the head and start mapping out the features here i'm placing a vertical center line that runs down through the bridge of the nose and the middle of the mouth then about halfway down between the top and bottom i'm placing a horizontal center line for the bottom of the eyes here i'm placing a horizontal line for the eyebrows and here's one for the nose these center lines are really important because they show the tilt of my head and they'll act as a guide for placing the features but i don't think they're quite right so i'm rubbing them out ready for another go here you can see i'm rechecking the tilt of my head after placing the center lines i'm going to indicate the main areas of shadow like the eye socket and the edge of the shadow on the forehead but that is all the underdrawing i'll be doing before going in with color first of all i'm massing in my beard with a transparent dark mixture made with transparent oxide red and ultramarine the brush i'm using for this is a large size 8 hog filbert next i'm using a large size 10 hog filbert to mask in the light side of my head if i had a more accurate under drawing i'd be trying to hang on to it so i'd be scared of putting down paint and my work would end up looking tight but by keeping the drawing really simple this allows me to put down the paint with big broad strokes i'm now using another size 10 filbert a clean one to mask in the shadows you can see that i've simplified my head into a few big shapes the light side of my head the shadow side the eye socket and the beard it's this ability to see my subject as large shapes or masses that's the real key to achieving a painterly appearance when you work if you want to apply paint with big bold brush strokes you need to work with big shapes you need to be able to reduce your subject into a few simple masses that you can block in with a large brush before you work on the smaller shapes and details this process of working from large to small is called mass drawing and it was how artists like saroya achieved their painterly style with the shadows and the lights masked in i'm next going to add the third main value the highlights which fall on the parts of my head that face directly opposite the light source the brush i'm using is a medium size size 4 hog filbert i'm now adding the fourth main value the midtones which i'm placing along the edges of the shadows this mid-tone represents a plane change in between the shadows and the lights which rounds the form so i'm starting to sculpt or model my head now if you want your work to look painterly it's the brush strokes that you put down during these modeling stages that you want to remain visible to achieve this the first thing you need to do if you want big bold brush marks is to use big brushes here i'm still using my size 10 filbert turn sideways to paint the front plane of my nose i also want you to pay attention to the way i'm holding my brush if you want your brush marks to appear loose you need to hold your brush loosely gently hold your brush by the back of the handle do not tightly hold the front of your brush in the same controlled way you would a pen or a pencil i like using filberts for modelling because their rounded ends mean that the marks they leave blend slightly when you paint them into other colors this saves me from having to soften their edges or do any more refining later on here i'm adding a much cooler version of my mid-tone to the edges around my eye socket another thing it's really important to try and avoid if you want to achieve a painterly appearance when you work is that you don't over refine you must try to be as economical as possible with your brush work if you keep going over the same areas again and again you will lose the freshness of your initial marks so try to touch the canvas with your brush as little as possible though this takes a lot of discipline whenever i watch these videos back i still always catch myself fiddling around too much the best way to avoid over-refining is to keep standing back and viewing your work from a distance from further away it will appear more refined because your marks will blend optically up close your work will appear too rough so you'll want to keep refining and fiddling around with it remember paintings are mostly viewed from a distance so ideally your work should come into focus where the viewer will be standing and up close it should look more choppy and abstract here i'm checking the angle at the back of my neck because next i'm going to start blocking in the background the brush i'm using for this is a large flat hog actually this isn't a hog it's a synthetic brush by rosemarie co called an ivory but it has quite stiff bristles which behave just like a hog do you see how this flat brush leaves a firm edge which is why i'm using it for the outline of my head against the background the firmer edges flat brushes give you mean you can use them if you want to achieve an even more blocky structured appearance with more broken colour and visible planes what's sometimes referred to as a tiling technique here i'm using a medium size 4 filbert to place the reflected lights on the right side of my head and next i'm using my large flat brush to place the background on the right side of my head which is a little lighter than the left so my head is now blocked in i have all the large masses and the major plane changes between them established and my head is definitely starting to look solid but can you tell it's me yet anyway i think i'm just about ready to start adding some of the smaller shapes and working on the features i'm going to start by refining the area around the bridge of the nose looking at the transitions in between some of the larger shapes it's important if you want your work to look painterly that once you get into these refining stages you try to avoid blending with your brush look for variations in color in between the larger shapes mix the colors that you see and keep adding more paint to add these smaller shapes i'm starting to use some of my smaller brushes but even so i'm still trying to use the largest brush i can get away with you want to use brushes that are slightly larger than you feel comfortable with the other thing to watch out for as you add these smaller shapes is that you don't cover up all the larger brush strokes underneath you want some of that structural brush work to remain visible so again keep standing back and try not to add too many smaller shapes try to use them sparingly i'm now ready to start work on the eyes here i'm placing a dark accent for the iris the brush i'm using for this is a really soft long haired synthetic brush called an eclipse coma by rosemary co the softer hairs enabled me to place these dark accents on top of the lighter colors underneath without the colors mixing together if i were to use a stiffer brush it would disrupt the paint underneath and the colors would be much more likely to mix so that is what all those fancy soft haired brushes are used for therefore when you need to apply paint on top of wet paint underneath and you don't want your colors to mix with one eye finished i'll then start work on the other eye here i'm very carefully rechecking their alignment however after placing the right eye it soon becomes apparent that there isn't enough room for it on the right side of my face therefore i need to make the right side of my head wider so here i'm using my palette knife to scrape back the right side of my head in order to repaint it when you notice a mistake with any of your smaller shapes or details like the alignment of the eyes it will often mean there's something wrong with the larger shapes underneath and in order to correct the mistake you may have to scrape back and readjust a whole section of your painting when this happens you must always be willing to do so because a very big part of achieving a painterly style comes from having the confidence to put down paint and the confidence to put down paint comes from knowing how to correct your mistakes with the right side of my head established i'm next going to start work on the mouth and beard now i grew this beard especially for this demo because covering the lower half of my face with hair means that there's less for me to paint so i'll finish this demo in less time but also because the hair of my beard provides some interesting textures and i don't have any hair on top of my head here i'm using an old worn out badger brush to create the soft edge between the hair of my moustache and my bottom lip i find the loose strands of old worn out brushes can be pretty useful for creating the appearance of hair now i'm quite extravagant with brushes and i use a lot of different kinds when i paint but you definitely do not need loads of brushes to paint with there are many very accomplished painters who produce fantastic work with only a few brushes in fact if you're a beginner i recommend starting with just a few good quality brushes then really finding out how to get the most out of them and everything they can do before you start experimenting with lots of different kinds you want to get really familiar with your brushes so that they become an extension of your arm and if i had to pick just one kind of brush to paint with the most versatile brush to use with oils is the hog filbert three or four different sized good quality hog filberts will definitely do everything you need you can use the flat side of the brush to mask in paint you can turn it on its side for finer work and the rounded ends mean you can paint things into each other to achieve soft edges another thing it's really important to remember is to keep cleaning your brushes as you work if you don't use clean brushes your colors will all get mixed together and you'll end up with a complete mess pretty quickly this is the reason i use a lot of brushes when i work but you can easily get by with just a few brushes as long as you keep cleaning them with solvent a really good way of keeping your brushes clean while you paint is to get a brush cleaner like this one the small grill inside is really good for scraping the paint off your brushes and the fact that they're sealable means you can save on solvent so they're more economical right here i'm using my palette knife to create the soft edge of my beard against the background and the effect it produces works really well but it wasn't intentional this was one of those happy accidents you hear artists talking about so i'm going to leave it which brings me to the final thing i want to say about brushwork which is that while i'm painting i don't actually think about the appearance of my brush strokes i find i've got too much else to think about trying to get the drawing values and color right so i just let the brush strokes take care of themselves whenever i start worrying about the appearance of my brush strokes i find my work loses its freshness and starts to look labored so don't overthink the brush work just make sure you mix enough paint use large brushes try to be as economical as possible with your brush strokes and just like your handwriting is unique you will naturally develop your own painterly style it's also key that you learn to recognize and work with the large underlying shapes that make up your subject if you want to learn more about this way of working my mass drawing course is available to watch on my patreon channel and with that i think i'm just about done so there we have it a self-portrait from life using a mirror which is a great exercise you can do at home i really hope you enjoyed this video i'll see you next time when i'll be showing you the proper way to take care of your brushes thank you for watching

Channel: SIMPLIFY Drawing & Painting

Views: 55,830

Rating: 4.9711666 out of 5

Keywords: Portrait Painting, Self Portrait, Joaquin Sorolla, Rosemary & Co Brushes, Paint Brushes, oil painting, fine art, loose painting, alla prima, expressive brushwork, oil painting techniques, painting tutorial, oil painting tutorial, how to use brush strokes, loose brushwork, fine art painting, portrait painting tutorial, painting techniques

Id: hDNinFaPA30

Length: 23min 5sec (1385 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 15 2020