Quick Tip 278 - Holding the Brush

one of our viewers asked in so many of your tips you're holding the brush as a baton rather than as if it were a pencil or a pen could you explain that and more about brushwork in general well let's sling a brush [Music] a lot of people don't realize that the way you hold the brush is actually going to determine the quality of your work and there's really not enough emphasis placed on holding on the way you hold the brush from doing various things in your painting so let's just start with the basics one is the way you hold the brush is going to be determined by what you want to happen up here so you might hold the brush one way to do a preliminary drawing you might hold the brush another way to do a block in and then might hold the brush other ways depending upon what kind of brush it is so we can't go thoroughly into that but let me give you some basics on holding the brush for one thing avoid avoid holding your brush like this the reason you avoid that is because it causes stiff strokes it'll cause your painting to be stiff and so if you're holding your brush like that that means that we need to do some exercises to get you holding the brush in a way that it works best for you one way that you can do exercises is to begin by with a small brush like this one that will just make marks and try this exercise now see if i can show you this on the camera try this exercise just to get you going and i'll show you how we can take that into your finding your own personal brush stroke allow your shoulders and your elbow to be a part of making the brush stroke now that should always be a part of your painting process where your body's involved in the act of painting not just your fingers or not just your fingers and wrists but having your whole body involved in the in the painting process is going to give you a more fluid and alive painting but holding your brush way down like that and just using your fingers won't give you that if it does it will be a miracle that i've never seen so here's the exercise for you first of all just pick up a brush a small brush of any side and hold it on the very tip like this and then hold it straight out and allow your shoulder not the elbow not the wrist not the fingers allow the shoulder to make the mark now i'll show you what i'm talking about here so i've got it's a small brush and this brush makes good uh good lines but the intention here is not going to be necessary to create images to show you however well to the practice part first so i'll just pick up a color now loading the brush you want to load it so that it has enough paint on it to allow the brush to come to a chiseled tip like that so below the brush like that now we'll hold it at the end now watch here um can you get me all in there watch here stand back have the uh the arm completely straight and allow the shoulder to make the mark allow the shoulder to pull the arm down and make the mark make a vertical mark and then allow the shoulder to make a horizontal mark you see that will become awkward at first but if you practice doing that where you just allow the shoulder to make the mark then you can begin to allow the shoulder and the elbow to make the mark now the shoulder and the elbow should play a large part in all the brush strokes you make yes that's right that if you allow them to play that part if you create enough you get do enough exercises so that you can allow them to play that part um you'll see how much more happy you're going to be with your work because it's going to be more lively now i'll show you what i'm talking about here i'm going to use this image as just an example and i'm going to aim towards just doing a very loose preliminary drawing of that image with this brush so i'll just pull some paint into this brush and just now i'm going to stand back and what i'm going to do is i'm going to allow the shoulder no there'll be some bending of the wrist because of the activity but mainly it's going to be the bending of the elbow and the shoulder so what i'll do is i'll look at this i'll look at this image and i will simply allow the shoulder and the elbow to form a loose preliminary drawing of this image you see you do you see how this the elbow and the shoulder that are playing the larger role in that you can twist it you can do whatever you need to do there but you allow just the shoulder and the elbow to do that you can go to pixelmate.com and you can get images apples oranges bananas fruit images are really good for this because they give you something to follow without it getting too complex so that's the exercise for allowing your hand your your body to be involved in the way you hold the brush now that doesn't mean that in order to get really good paintings you've got to hold your brush on the end there are a lot of schools as the classical schools a lot of the ateliers they teach their students to always hold the brush on the tip like this and to paint in this kind of motion you can do that if you're uncomfortable doing that that doesn't feel quite at home for you you can move your hand down just a little bit on the brush and you can hold it this way or you can hold it this way depending on how much depending on really what you're doing you'll notice that in my demonstrations there'll be a lot of times i'm holding the brush like this with my thumb on top or there'll be other times i'll give it this kind of of a position to give me just a different kind of control you had fun those things for yourself the downside or the danger of holding your brush like this uh when you're holding it further down on the handle is that you'll start doing this and this is going to cramp you in making a really dead looking painting you just try to do that the idea is to hold it in such a way that your elbow and shoulder are the main players in the way the stroke is made elbow shoulder wrists very little activity in the in the fingers at all until you get towards making very very small details um okay so that's with this brush the smaller brush now that activity of elbow shoulder and somewhat wrist as i said should be a part of everything you do as far as your brush strokes go but the size of the brush and what you're doing with the brush is also a big part of it now this is when making lines when doing block-in work and i'm just going to do just some really a rough little illustration for you to show you what i'm talking about when doing block-in work my tendency is to load the brush holding it this way but you see my position i have found that if i hold the brush about this position this distance from uh from the bristles themselves that feels right i'll hold it back further here sometimes and it might creep up just a little bit but most of the time i'm going to be somewhere about right in here nevertheless the elbow and shoulder and some a lot of times the feet a lot of times it's a lot of knee motion a knee a feet action that can cause that that you'd really get involved in how you make that brush stroke but with the wider brush like this you have those you have lots of opportunities for that so uh see if i were going to do just a quick block in uh first of all i love the brush now this is important i load the brush i'll start with uh i'll start with a darker version i'll start in the shadow area right down here i'll load the brush with the colony notice how i'm loading the brush i'm loading it by pushing into the paint not flopping my bristles right down in the middle of the paint but loading it by pushing into the edge of the paint that gives you more control and how much paint you pick up and if i'm going to mix colors i'll mix one color and you see i'm putting that paint on the back side of the bristle then i'll move into the next color and pull into the edge of that color or sometimes i might go this way with it and and watch the mixture i'm getting to be sure i'm getting the mixture i want and be sure i get enough paint in the brush to make the mark that i want now the next thing in using the action of the elbow and the shoulder the next thing is to observe the directional movement of the image itself now see that the directional movement of these darks are going like that and this is block in this is to set the stage so i will then most likely hold the brush like this i push the brush and i begin to move it in the direction and whole and reloading the brush sometimes i'll make two or three strokes with the same brush log but depending on what i'll need to do i'll hold the brush like this and allow it to move you see i pull it with the elbow and shoulder okay load it again get the color i want in it and i hold it right down here now i'll pull this time this direction this time this direction and when i pull that brush she asked for brush strokes in general so this is combining the whole thing together i place the brush at a slight angle place the bristles of the brush at a slight angle not this way this just scoops paint up but if the brush is if the bristles of the brush are touching the paper the canvas in a slight angle like this it deposits paint it it deposits even more paint if it's held at a parallel angle but for blank in usually about a man and a 45 degree angle something in in that range will get the job done now if you rehearse this many many times you build it into your muscular system you make muscular memory and then you don't have to think about it anymore it's an automatic process okay so let me just do that a little bit more here and again i'm following i'm following the directional movement that i see in that shadow area so i'll place the brush down push the edge of the brush against the edge of the shape then pull it in the direction of that shape and you pull it you leave the brush on the canvas for as long as you see or as far up the shape or into the shape as you see that particular value so you see that's just a basic practice and if you can get um a simple sub now here if you can get a simple sub and practice what i'm showing you right now as an exercise not as making a painting but as an exercise to train muscular memory uh then you will you i think you'll see the benefit of that okay so as i move up the side i will place the brush at the edge and i can i'll just hold it at a slight angle and pull it you see that's the movement right there where the on the elbow wrist is some movement in there but the elbow and the shoulder are guiding the brush so that's a really good exercise for you to do in practicing the allowing the brush to be an instrument allowing your body to be the instrument the engine that moves it so your body is the engine lay that brush down it can't do a whole lot by itself turn on the engine and allow the energy to come from the shoulder your shoulder your elbow and a little action in your wrist and then learn how to place the brush in such a way that it uh for it it touches the edge and then it moves in the direction of the uh whatever direction is within the subject itself now that's with the blocking and you can then build variations that's basically the movement it's where you find to hold the handle of the brush how you grip it now you can do this kind of thing with gripping it like this but you see that cramps it if you're holding your if you're holding it like that pencil grip you're trying to do this kind of thing you see what i'm doing here i'm pulling down i'm all cramped but if i put my thumb you see how open i am and how free i am to allow that brush to move in whatever way i want to so these are not just rules just to be rules but they're methods just like if you were golfing if certain way you hold your golf club if you're hitting a baseball you've got a certain way you hold the bat you know it's going your your body is participating in that in order to pull put that ball where you want it i've seen that on tv and and in even musicians especially musicians that are of um violin players they use that bow that's certain way of holding that bow so that it it makes the sound they want it to make um i won't go too deep in all that i'll get in trouble if i do all right now we can go to with the refinement how do you hold your brush when you're refining the tendency of so many people is to when you're in that stage of building what we call building details it's just refining and adding uh adding more refinement to the shapes well i just repeat myself it doesn't matter the tendency of people is to get nervous and tight when you get nervous and tight you're going to tighten up your painting and it's going to defeat the whole purpose so what you try to do with your in the refinement is to find a brush the size of the refinement you need to do and when you do that uh you keep holding the brush the same way you don't change the way you hold the brush but you keep holding the brush the same way now let's see if i can can give you a little example here um suppose i need i haven't got enough here to really do this but i can show you suppose i need to scumble to have a scumble here to show this kind of glazy feeling over the apple i still hold the brush the same way i turn it like this i hold it closer to the surface and pull it with my arm my elbow and my shoulder not like this if you do this this is what's going to happen it's going to taper off on you pull it with elbow and shoulder if if i need um just a tiny little uh refinement uh let's see what's an example of that well let me just get right up in here if i just need a tiny refinement where i just need to change something to a lighter value pull the paint in the brush the way you load the brush with the paint determines also a lot about what happens but what i'll do here now is not go to the fingers hold the brush the same place the same way but i'll get a little bit more wrist movement the wrist movement comes out during the refinement phase not during the blocking phase and so then i'll place a brush here and then i might give it a little bit of wrist movement like that but you see it's still elbow and shoulder it's no matter what you're doing as long as you keep the elbow and shoulder movement into it you're going to make a more lively painting so the important thing is consider this an important exercise consider this an important thing that can improve your painting and do the exercises it takes lots of practice because building the muscular memory is is the foundation of what's going to enable this to happen without you having to think about it especially if you're in the habit of doing this so i would suggest that you go through this quick tip as many times as you need to practice what i just showed you how to do and see if you don't see a difference in the liveliness of your painting overall be sure and view all of our quick tips while you're doing so subscribe to the channel click on the bell so you'll always get a notice when we produce a new quick tip which is every week if you have a question leave it in the comments section and we'll make a quick tip for you also take a trip over to dynamize.com where i have full length lessons downloads dvds lots of other stuff there some free stuff for you and while you're there you can subscribe to the newsletter and that way you'll always be informed every time we do something new [Music] you

Channel: In the Studio Art Instruction

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Keywords: in, the, studio, art, instruction, in the studio, art instruction, Dianne Mize, SauteeLive, online art lessons, online art classes, online art instruction, how to paint, how to draw, fine art, easel, palette, canvas, brush, painting, oil painting, watercolor, gouache, quick tip, pastels, pastel, 278, Holding the Brush

Id: PYWiAhEjzeM

Length: 17min 42sec (1062 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 15 2020