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In this painting tutorial, learn how to hold and control your brush for greater precision and consistency. The demonstration covers proper brush positioning and handling techniques to help you achieve better control while painting detailed areas of a carved bird.
Transcript
Gravity. It’s not just a good idea, it’s the law. Gravity could be your best ally when you’re painting with acrylic paints. One of the things that helps me when I’m painting and become a more efficient painter is brush technique, holding your brush.
When you hold your brush in a perfectly vertical position like this, gravity will draw the pigments away from the ferrule or the metal part of your brush, right to where you need it, which is in the tip of the brush. It’s interesting how often I see a painter who will be putting color on their brush and then they’ll be painting like this and they’re constantly going back and recharging their brush because when they shift the brush up like this, what’s happening is gravity is pulling the pigment away from the business end of the brush, limiting the amount of time that brush is exposed to the surface where it’s supposed to be transferring paint, and it’s not.
So when you’re painting, there’s a Japanese technique where you hold a brush between your thumb, your index, and your middle finger very comfortably.
You can use your pinky, as I do quite often, as an anchor point. And when I’m doing a lot of detailing, I will come down and I will hold the brush in a pure vertical and I will actually use my pinky as a depth gauge.
And in addition to being a depth gauge, it also works as a stabilizer too. So sometimes if I’ve had a cup or two of coffee or I’m a little excited about what I’m painting, I might start to shake a little bit. If you use your pinky to stabilize your hand, it eliminates that little bit of shaking that might occur and it also gives you much more control on your brush. But through the whole process, not just a wash coat application but for detailing, strive to keep that brush in as near vertical a position as possible and it will extend the amount of time you can paint and it will make the whole process a whole lot more enjoyable.