Quick Tip 287 - 3 Essential Brush Strokes

within your comments i get from time to time questions that really don't require a full quick tip but when i put together a number of your questions i'll have a quick tip is that that's what this one is it's a combination of things that you ask about or you've commented about in the comment sections of various quick tips you've you've watched so one of those that is repeatedly asked is about do you need to use medium when you start a painting how do you put the paint on thin enough without using medium how do you layer paint without one color mixing to another and that sort of thing and also uh how do you control the the lines the brush how can you make thin lines there are three essential brush strokes this is a technical thing three essential brush strokes that every painter should know how to do [Music] i've got them listed right here so that you can make an a verbal note of them as i'm working the first one has to do with all the prima layers when you're painting all the prime all of prima means completing a painting in one session that means if you're working with oil that the first layer is going to still be wet when you put a second layer on or even the third layer so how can you do that without causing without the paint mixing from that top layer to the layer underneath all right so here's the way you do not need to thin the paint with medium in order to make this work so i'm going to show you um how you can do that and and still and have control of the mixing of the paint so and you can do that with any brush now i we couldn't take every brush i have and show you i'm going to show you with this brush this is a flat brush this is my little rosemary 274. so this is a flat brush but you can try this with all kinds of brushes uh with your bristle brushes uh flats with your bristle brushes oval or other brushes you might have and then find the brush that works the best for doing this and because it is the way you move the brush the way you pick up the paint that counts it causes the results here not necessarily the brush itself although that does play a role so here we go building the all of prima layers now suppose you start you've got a shadow layer uh and you start with a darker color when you pick up that color and for one thing i've shown you this in another quick tip one thing pick up the paint at the edge of the color so you can control the amount of paint that goes on if you need to come to another section of your canvas to even the paint out on the brush that's a good idea too now if you if you have the paint um loaded in the brush so that it's not so that it's not piled up you see not piled up on the brush like this but covers the brush then if you if you then stroke it like this and stroke it several times if you need to like this you get just a little bit more paint i've sort of been showing you that kind of overdid so i need a little bit more but it needs to be flattened like that flattening the brush so that you don't have a real thick layer i've not found a way to say a thin layer without it sounding like i'm adding medium to it but without medium create a thin layer of paint without medium you can do that by stroking it several times if your canvas happens to be very very textured you'll have to stroke it more the smoother the canvas surface is the fewer times you have to stroke it also if you have the canvas surface slightly very slightly dampened uh with a mixture of poppy oil i use and gamsol or it could be linseed oil and gamsol but it should be very slightly damp and not so that it wets your finger when you pull it across the surface all those things are technical they enable better painting all right so and you might even experiment with how much paint can you load onto the brush you see that's a little bit thicker can you see that just a little bit thicker but it's still i'll put here to pull it smooth on the brush and let's see what that is and also that when you stroke you don't stroke this way but you stroke this way so that the paint glides onto the surface of the canvas in in stroking back and forth in kind of a crisscross motion then you can apply a very relatively thin layer of paint and still not have any canvas showing through now i will show you what i mean by how you're holding the brush if i'm if this is the canvas like this this is what we don't want to do and this is what a lot of people do they'll they'll do their entire painting by painting on the tip of the brush but you have the option of tip and belly and if you if you will use the tip let me just do this like this so you can see if you will push the tilt then you get a very slight uh bend on the brush and then pull it then you have a better chance of the paint gliding onto the canvas rather than sliding and leaving bare canvas so if you practice that little technique that works very well now so that's the bottom layer suppose suppose then within that layer you want to you want to raise some of this value just a little bit in that case you go to uh on the next value up and in this case i've got a value line here so i'll go to my next value up here and i'm going to pull the same amount of paint onto the brush can you see that i don't have it all piled up i don't have it all piled up but i do have the belly of the brush covered very well you may have to practice a bit in order to find just how how much you need if you need to even it on the brush you just pull it against the canvas palette to even it up let me just get just a little bit more of that now now watch how this will glide over the surface just like that one stroke and holding the brush again holding the brush more at an angle a little bit more parallel like that the paint will go on without mixing in i'll do that again i'll go and pull just a little bit different color or get the color just a little bit lighter and again you see not piled up on the brush glide it onto the surface and it sits on top now if you want to mix it but then you you change the tilt of the brush like this you the more the the closer are the more parallel or perpendicular rather you have the brush to the canvas the more mixing is going to happen you can use the tip to mix you can there's several angles of the brush on the canvas in in that will allow that mixing to happen you find that and if you want to mix it then you can just pull the brush through and allow that color to mix you can use the corner like i'm using here and allow that color to mix in if you want to sit on top then you do that now i've got the question quite often how do you put a very light color on top of a dark color when it's wet without causing it to mix in well we're on the same theme here now wash all the dark color out of the brush so first of all you need a brush that is completely dry and so i like to wash mine out by pushing on the corner of my brush washer right here rotating it in my hand and allowing the color to fall off and i have always keep a pad uh down below me here where i can blot it then i get a clean paper towel to show you here then i do this you've seen me do this before if you watch many of our quick tips probably where i then squeeze the brush and i move it back and forth like this that helps for that liquid to move out of the brush onto the paper towel now then i'll check it to be sure it's dry you can tell by what's up what's on my finger if my fingers are wet the brush is still wet you don't want that solvent going into the paint so always check it to be sure it's dry all right i'm going to the lightest color now i'm going to pull that lightest color and again i'm going to load that color there it is so that the brush is covered there's enough paint on that brush to go onto the canvas a little bit more and if you'll notice when i'm loading i'm not loading like this i'm not using a rose grape but i'm loading more uh parallel more parallel having a brush a little bit more parallel a tighter angle onto the palette itself and then if i hold that brush what we call the belly of the brush you hold the belly of the brush almost parallel to the canvas itself i'm going to reload that because here you go like that then you will have that you'll be able to layer that white paint now if it if this happens and this will happen if this happens that it ends up pulling a little bit paint off what you do take a paper towel wipe that off the brush go back into your color i'm gonna have to mix more color in there uh so just gonna be sure i have you gotta have enough color on there it doesn't work all right here we go load that belly love that belly and there you go so you can have and push some white in here to show you you can have a lighter color sitting on a darker color where the darker color is wet by the way you control the brush all right so there's your first thing how to layer or build a la prima layers how to layer one wet color on top of the other now as you get further further into the finishing of the painting you can put thicker and thicker layers on but you keep that you work those layers each layer a little bit of the first layer relatively thin without medium and then the next layer has a little bit more paint in it and one on top of that a little bit more paint and then once you reach that point where you're ready to finish you can plop big blobs of paint on just using these techniques and it will work all right so there's your first one now the next one is creating a thin line how do you use a flat brush without going to another brush or how do you use you can use a a filbert brush for this too but i'm going to use the flat brush for this how do you create a thin line all right once again start out always with a clean dry brush you don't want too much solvent in that don't want any solvent in that brush at all or else it will contaminate the paint and you will have paint going on too thin you'll lose control all right so creating that thin line uh let me just use color right here you can you can create this thin line either on top i'm going to load both sides of the brushes here this time before i loaded one side of the brush i could have loaded both but um this works better if you load both sides of the brush now look what i'm doing i'm pulling the brush down into the paint like that on both sides and i have a nice chisel edge on the brush you see that chisel edge let me work it put just a little bit more like that to be sure it's absolutely a chisel edge you see that all right then i can i use the tip just to adjust the tip and the corner of the brush and don't pull it too hard and there you go you can get if you have just a slight angle let me show you what i'm talking about here and here again each time reload just a slight angle let me show you what i'm talking about get a little bit closer to some that you can see instead of going straight down like that you pull the brush just at a slight angle like that just like that or it could be on the other side to a slight angle where you're on the tip of the brush but you're putting most of the pressure see if i can do this here there we go right there you're on the tip of the brush but you're putting most of the pressure on the top side if you're coming down vertically most of the pressure on the top side as you pull the brush most of the pressure should be on the side opposite i guess you should say that the direction you're pulling so if you're pulling this way this way that most of that pressure is right in here if you're pulling this way like this most of that pressure is right here so the pressure is not on the back side a lot of people will do that and see what you get if you have that pressure on the back side of the tip of the brush it's going to make it thicker the line thicker another way i make a thin line and by the way you can get that line just as thin almost as thin as the brush itself you see like that by putting less pressure on the line itself another way i make a when i'm especially when i'm making um organic thin shapes like limbs in a tree or something like that you might have seen me do this in demonstration where i use a stamping method again having the brush as a chisel chisel tip and i will do something like this depending on where it's going i'll stamp it turn it slightly and stamp it again and give it a little as it goes into a taper as a limb will go into a taper towards the end just a lighter stamp a lighter step and then eventually just kind of let it taper off that's another way you can get a thin line without having to change brushes so practice that that's the thin line now another one that um seems to reflect people is something a situation like this uh where you have dark color sitting on light color but not like this for example let's just use i'll just continue this suppose this is a an area of shadow so i'll just place that suppose it's an area of shadow paint's already there the paint is dark paint is wet and area of shadow and beyond that shadow you have an area of light now if this were grass we'd be using green or we'd be using uh if it were dead grass we might be using a very low saturation of yellow so let's just say right here let's put a light color right here and it does it does work in reverse too so i could actually do it both ways so let's just put it on both sides and show you how it works both ways but we need more paint than that on the lighter on the on the color uh well on the if it were the darker color and then you had dark weeds or a dark pole or something that's moving up over that lighter color and then you would need more of that darker color applied now that might have sounded a little bit elusive so let me see if i can explain that a little bit better let's get this all get a lighter a little bit more that lighter color here wiping off the palette knife pulling a little bit more of the light in here and keep that light enough to show you this little technical maneuver but you'll find this um i don't like to say this is how you paint grasses or whatever you might find this useful in a number of ways and you won't know it until you see it you can say aha i know how to do that i know this little technique so i'm going to show you both ways i'm going to put the lighter color and put a little bit more paint scoop a little bit more paint onto the brush and put a little bit more paint right here like that now i'll put a little bit more right up here now let's show you what we can do there you can actually use the paint that you've already applied to the canvas i'll show you two ways to do this so if you have suppose you have the edges of grass here and you want to have a show want to know how to show that or it could be almost anything it's something textured this time what you need to do is to get the brush totally dry like this take all the paint out of it totally dry and just sort of mess it up a little bit like that you don't want a chisel edge for this one then you take that the back side of those bristles and here's what you do you apply the back side of those bristles to the paint already there and give it a flip up see what i'm talking about you'll find that very useful let's put a little bit more paint down there in that light it's right in here because you do need enough paint in the light to show that but there might be you might need some edge some edges softer and you might need some a little more distinct and i'll put some paint there all right let's clean that off now and let's get that going and we can push that right in here and there we go see there another way you can do that is to load the brush like this where you're not making a chisel but you i'm going to show you here first where you're actually loading it by pushing just the bristles letting the bristles kind of crawl a little bit like that so that you're loading not all the bristles but just those bristles on that back side of the brush so you can load it like that so those bristles on the backs on the bristles of the back side of the brush pick up the paint and then you lay it down just so those bristles come up there you go just like that so you can do that on the back side too where you see i already did that a little bit where the dark pulled in like if you have light grasses in front of a dark shadow here the lights catching the light rays are catching onto these blades of grass that are going up that's what you want to show this is a wonderful technique for showing that but you may have other other things that you can show that with too and you see in doing that also we might have if we've got tall grasses in the light we might also have tall grasses in the shadow and then if you're going apart he said do that automatically do the same thing there where you will allow just the back side of the brush to pick up the color that's already there and push it into the other color now i think you will find you this all these are technical there's no magic here it's not inspiration it's looking at a subject analyzing what needs to happen there in the way of paint and using the brush and then interpreting that in what you do here that's technical and the inspiration is part of what drives that technique but if you don't know this if you don't know if you don't have the technique if you don't have the technical part then you see this wonderful something that's going on you won't know what to do about it so i think if you find if you will practice these you can build the muscle memory in the way you hold the brush and the way you maneuver the brush in orbit in order to make all three of these very special brush strokes or types of brushwork work for you be sure to 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 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Channel: In the Studio Art Instruction

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Id: gQqFyQlqH9k

Length: 21min 38sec (1298 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 16 2020