Watercolor Painting for Dummies (14 page)
Read Watercolor Painting for Dummies Online
Authors: Colette Pitcher
Tags: #Art, #Techniques, #Watercolor Painting, #General
Flat brushes are good for wetting paper for backgrounds and foregrounds and for applying color quickly to large areas. Flats are good for making buildings and other rectangular shapes. The edges make lines, and the corners make details.
Bigger brushes work for bigger spaces and paper. If you’re working on a big painting, a 3/4-inch flat brush makes painting a big, sweeping sky go quicker. For a looser style, use a bigger brush than you think you need for longer than you think you should. Start big and work your way down in brush size as you develop detail. Some artists simplify shapes and leave the detail out altogether, so they need big brushes. Some artists like to paint every hair on the cat, so they need itty-bitty brushes for loads of detail. I keep a 1/4-inch, a 1/2-inch, a 1-inch, and a 2-inch flat brush in my brush kit.
Try a variety of brush strokes with your flat brush (see Figure 3-2):
For a
wide stroke,
hold the brush so that the wide part is flat against the paper and pull down.
To get a
thin line,
have the wide part of the brush facing you, then pull the brush either left or right so that you’re painting with the thin edge.
Figure 3-2:
Brush strokes using a flat brush.
Make
circle, fan,
and
hourglass shapes
by holding the brush handle perpendicular to the paper and touching the brush hairs lightly to the paper so that they remain flat and don’t get mooshed out of shape. Turn the handle in place. Keep turning for a complete circle, or stop halfway for hourglass and fan shapes.
Achieve
fine detail
by tilting the brush so that only the corner touches the paper.
To make
scallops,
shown in Figure 3-3, hold the brush at a 45-degree angle (so that the thin edge points to opposite upper and lower the corners of the paper), pull down, round off the bottom, and curve the brush stroke to pull up moving toward the right (or to the left if you’re left-handed).
A calligrapher uses this same stroke to make thick and thin lines in a single stroke. Make a whole border using this stroke. It will look like a scalloped edge of thick and thin lines.
Figure 3-3:
Painting a scalloped line.
Even though the ferrule on a round brush is round and holds the hairs in a round shape, the brush tip is very pointed. You use this pointed tip for tiny detail, and then you can push the brush down to use all the hairs for a big mop area. I can paint an entire painting using a #14 round sable brush. It looks big, but it has a delicate tip.
Try some brush strokes using your round brush (see Figure 3-4):
See how small you can get. Make a line using just the tip of the brush.
See how big you can get. Push the hair down to the paper and pull a stroke.
Make a combination of small and big. Start small and grow big.
You guessed it. Do the opposite. Start big and diminish the area.
Make a row of commas and apostrophes by pulling up and down on the brush.
Put your thumb at the base of the hairs right at the ferrule and splay the hairs out like a fan brush. You use the brush like this for ratty texture like grass.
Figure 3-4:
Brush strokes using a round brush.
The
liner brush
is a relative of a round brush, only the hairs are twice as long. Use a liner brush to make long thin lines. Hold this brush near the end of the handle and flick your wrist to make the line. These brushes are great for drawing sticks, twigs, grass, and any long lines.
