Trail of the Brush: A Painters Guide

For oils you need thicker bristles to move the dense and heavy paint around. For watercolors you need a softer brush because the medium is very fluid. Acrylic paints are softer than oils but thicker than watercolors, so your brushes can be somewhere in the middle. Most brush manufacturers produce synthetic brushes made specifically for acrylic painting. These are more resistant and springier than those made for watercolor. They are durable and keep their shape well, and make a great choice for beginners.

The first time you use a brush it has a protective coat that keeps it in shape. With your thumb you can break that stiffness and test the flexibility of the bristles.

Even though natural bristle brushes created for oil paint can be used with acrylic paint, you may want to avoid expensive sable brushes. When painting with acrylics you need to keep your brushes wet or immersed in water for a long time, so that the paint does not dry on the brush, and this excessive moisture can ruin the natural fibers quickly. Fan — with fan-shaped bristles, they come in many sizes and thicknesses, and they are great for painting grasses, tree limbs, bushes, blending cloudy skies, and highlights. Natural hair is more suitable for soft blending and synthetic works well for textural effects.

Flat — with long bristles and square ends. They hold a lot of paint and can be used for bold sweeping strokes or on the edge for fine lines. Flats are very useful to cover a big area of paint, or the background. Slanted — the bristles are angled; good if you are painting on an easel and give you better control than flat brushes doing thinner lines and also large.

Rounds are useful for details and lines or edges, small ones are great for finishing touches. Round brushes blend very softly, especially the softer bristles. Rigger or Liner — thin and with long bristles, great tool for painting lines or text. Filbert — fuller in shape than flats, with rounded ends that make soft strokes, filberts are good for blending. After you block the paint in with flats, you can blend with filberts. Square Wash — can produce a variety of shapes and widths. Often has a short handle. Oval Wash — has rounded edges, flat ferrule and comes in many sizes. Useful for laying large areas of color, wetting the surface, or absorbing excess media.

Stencil brushes - they usually have short handles and thick stiff bristles, all of the same length, and mounted on a round ferrule. Household brushes — are handy for covering large areas quickly and laying colored grounds. They are inexpensive but will last only for a couple of paintings before the hair will start to fall out or get ruined. Palette knives — have a wooden handle and a metal or plastic blade. They may be straight or angular, great for mixing paint on the palette.

When you are mixing paint with your palette knife, work from all sides. Think of it like mixing cement or cake frosting.

Brush Techniques | John Lovett Artist

Keep working it until the paint is smooth and has an even consistency. You can also paint with palette knives: When painting, your brushes are your working tools. Of course, it is very important to use good quality brushes and top quality paint, but also to choose the best type of brush for the task at hand. Brush sets come conveniently assorted in sizes and shapes. Many sets are a lower quality, but they can still be a great choice for beginner painters, and allow you to get used to the different types and sizes of brushes without investing a lot of money into it.

Once you know what type of brush you like to work with, you can expand your brush collection and invest in higher quality, more expensive brushes of your choice. After many years of painting, I still enjoy using brush sets, especially when working with acrylics. My latest purchase has been the D'Artisan Shoppe set , and I'm pretty happy with it. Bent bristles, dry paint, loose ferrule, and other nuisances can be avoided by spending some precious moments at the end of each painting session making sure brushes are completely clean and stored correctly.

Always lay them flat to dry, so the water does not infiltrate the ferrule, making it loose or causing mold. Reshape the bristles with your fingers, and make sure that there is enough space for them, so nothing is touching or pushing them into weirs shapes while resting. From an economic point of view, brushes are quite an investment in terms of money, and unless you want your wallet to pay the consequences, you really got to protect your investment taking proper care of your paint brushes. I have a couple of fan brushes for my oils and one for my acrylics.

I have used them sometimes to blend skies and clouds and to make textural marks, especially when painting vegetation. Other times, I manage the same or similar results with other brushes or, for the textural marks, palette knife. It's all about what you like to do. I would recommend that you get one, try it out, and see if you feel like you need more.

Paint with the Mixer Brush

I love to learn how to paint. My husband bought me a big paint by numbers canvas. He said, use it to learn different brushes and strokes. Do you think painting by number teaches anything? Though I grew up in Italy, totally missing the paint by number phenomenon, I've heard about it and I've seen some wonderful examples of paintings completed that way.

Color-by-number images are created by very talented artists that apply complex color theory and excellent shape simplification. While you paint, observe how the colors interrelate and bounce off each other. Each color-shape does not make any sense individually, but when you put them all together they make believable and charming images. Analyze the subject and observe the areas of color.

Why did the artist design it that way? I think this can be extremely useful for a beginner to move to the next step: For strokes that are half of a color and half of another, use a flat brush and dip one corner in one color and the other corner in another color. If by double stroke you mean a split in the bristles that separates the stroke into two parts, I would cut off the middle bristles of an old brush, making some of the bristles in the center of the ferrule short.

This way you create two separate "bunches" of hair that you can use to make parallel strokes. Sign in or sign up and post using a HubPages Network account. Comments are not for promoting your articles or other sites. Hi Barbara, you probably have tried this already, and please let me know if it does not work for you, but for fine detail painting I would lean towards a small round brush. Since you are working on carved wood, I would choose one with stiff bristles.

Size numbers change depending on the manufacturer, but I would look for a size 4 or smaller. I am looking for a very fin detail brush that can stand up to wood. I do use acrylics.

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I quite often have carved text, best bristles are short and small to go down into shapes. How awesome Sandra, way to go! Those paint nights are a great way to break the ice and gain confidence with painting. They make it seem easy and fun, which painting truly is, but sometimes we let out inexperience stop us. Happy to hear that you are working on your planter project and buying supplies. Careful now, or you might end up like me with your house full of painting gear, lol! Best of luck to you on this painting journey!

Full Step by Step Rock Painting Guide

What a great article for a newbie like me! It really helped me to understand the different brushes and uses. I went to a 'paint night' a few weeks ago and discovered at 62 years old that I really really enjoyed painting! Something I've always wanted to try but had no idea how or where to start!! That class got me motivated. So far I've watched some youtube videos on different ways to 'load' the brushes and finally understand the color wheel! I'm now painting my old tomato planters to practice on! I've done 2 of them and must say I'm really pleased with the results!

Hi Lorelei, just give it a try again. Start painting something that you like, keeping your expectations low. As beginners we all end up a little disappointed by the first attempts, but keep trying. The great thing is that you can even paint over a painting and start from scratch. I hope you pick up those brushes and enjoy the process. Painting in acrylics is something I have long wanted to try my hand at. Years ago I purchased oils but found them difficult to work with and never made another attempt at diving into the artistic venue.

Easily create a symmetrical painting by allowing Painter to create a mirror image by reproducing brushstrokes on the opposite side of the canvas or multiple reflections of mirror planes. Choose from a library of included canvas Paper textures. Adjust, import or create your own and either cover or reveal texture using a variety of media types. Display non-printing Perspective Guides to create objects that give the impression that they are receding, or vanishing, from view.

When finalizing your painting it might help to add touches such as exhibiting paper texture, emphasizing 3D brushstrokes or applying directional lighting. Integrate intricate surface texture into your projects by selectively painting or filling portions of the canvas.

Use Texture Synthesis to automatically generate a larger texture for you. Open a photo, launch the Auto-Painting Panels and prep, auto-paint and restore details with ease. You can use images, textures, and patterns as clone sources. Use the Clone Source Panel to open the clone sources, change size and shape if desired, and paint from the embedded opaque or transparent images. From the File menu choose Clone or Quick Clone to begin photo painting.

Clone creates a new document with your image on canvas where Quick Clone clears the image from the canvas. A huge selection of brushes are noticeably faster — some as much as twice as fast. Launch a refreshing, professional interface that makes your artwork the focus. We have meticulously transformed the main user interface elements in Painter to reveal a darker theme that allows the interface to melt away and painting to take center stage.

Bring simplicity to your workspace with crisp, clean and responsive environment! Painter now features over redesigned icons to make things easier on the eyes, simple to understand and more efficient to use. Also try using modifier keys to precisely select values. Move to the right to zoom in, and move to the left to zoom out. Hold the Shift key and drag-click to zoom into a specific area of interest. Now you have all your zooming needs in one tool! Paint without any lag time with strokes that will always track underneath your Brush Ghost.

You will now see a cursor while painting but you can change which icon appears during brushing. As you rotate the stylus, your Brush Ghost will rotate with you and offer real-time feedback. Experience the intuitive way to simultaneously pan, zoom and smoothly rotate your canvas using two fingers on a Windows touch device. To reset your painting view simply double-tap with two fingers. You will greatly enjoy this natural sketching and painting experience.

Customize brushes, media content, palettes, shortcut keys and more to set up the perfect work environment. Plus you can import content from others to complete your toolset. Download version comparison PDF. Are you ready to see what you can create with Bob Ross brush packs? You've seen him before.

He's the soft-spoken guy painting happy clouds, mountains and trees in about twenty-six television minutes, using big house painting-type brushes and cooing smoothly "you can do it" to the audience. His Joy of Painting program is the most recognized, most watched TV art show in history. Best of all, these brushes are extra special because they are endorsed and approved by Bob Ross Inc. Grab your brushes and paint along with this live, "easy-does-it" painting approach to see and feel the magic happen on canvas. You will learn how to import the free color set, how to add colors to the mixer pad and how to create the hue variations required to make the various elements of the paintings.

Fill the canvas with color and paint a majestic mountain peak surrounded by trees and fluffy cloud filled blue skies. Travel deep into the forest with Karen Bonaker and discover the beauty and serenity of painting an elegant waterfall. Paint a tranquil snowy winter scene in the spirit of Bob Ross with guidance from Karen Bonaker. A collection of Bob Ross inspired artwork created with Painter brush packs.

Share your paintings in social media and tag BobRoss. When you buy a Download version, you can download your software, install it on your computer and unlock it with a serial number that will be provided after purchase. Otherwise you receive a download link to your software and serial number only. Your original serial number will be required. Click here for clear gloss rock sealer! In just a few hours your rocks will be ready to hide! You should have a painted and sealed rock with a label and a hashtag on it now, waiting to be hidden and ready to brighten someones day!

At the park, local store or shopping center, school, restaurant, hiking trail, anywhere! Check out other rock painting information here! Check out additional supplies for your hobby here! April 13, July 8, PaintedRockLife. The size of a painted rock generally looks something like this: Pat with a towel and let air dry completely before painting. Just make sure to watch them and be careful when removing, they will be hot! If you would rather purchase your rocks online so that they are relatively the same size and already cleaned, here are the rocks that I purchase myself when I need to restock: The paint brushes you need will depend on the project, so getting a variety is your best bet.

Check out some suggestions below. Here is an example of a label on the back of a finished rock: Adding labels to your rocks does a few things. It allows the finder to locate your rock painting community on Facebook and other websites. It also allows the finder to copy your hashtag onto their picture when they post it online. Well, a hashtag is just the pound symbol followed by a few words with no spaces in between.

The unique hashtag you create becomes a link that connects to all pictures of your rock online! To create a hashtag, all you have to do is make something up and write it on your rock!