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In this painting tutorial, learn brush techniques for adding fine detail and realistic texture to a carved bird. The demonstration explores brush control, paint application, and techniques for creating precise details that bring your painting to life.
Transcript
When I’m painting or when I’m teaching painting to students, quite often I really emphasize the importance of keeping it simple. When I’m detailing with my brushes, there are certain protocols that I follow that really make a difference.
The two brushes I’m going to demonstrate to you right now are the half inch oval wash brush and a good quality number six pointed sable brush. We’re going to start with the half inch oval wash brush. In addition to using it for applying your washcoats, it’s also nice for doing certain types of plumage detailing. For instance, if you want to do a scalloping technique, you can take your half inch oval wash, dip in a little bit of water and then dry most of the water off of it.
Pick up a little bit of pigment. In this case, I’m going to be using again, I’m going back to old reliable Burnt Umber and I’m going to press down with the brush and I’m going to do what I call a flare technique or or eyelashing. I’m spreading the brush out and I’m creating a cupped effect of the brush like this. When you do this, want to hold the brush in a vertical position and technique wise you’re going to be doing what I call a pendulum stroke.
Short spontaneous wave like motions with your wrist will give you a very nice feather effect. And just let the tips of the brush bristles touch the paper and you can see and you can almost see the patterns and the beautiful rhythmic flow. The longer you drag the brush, the longer those strokes and it gives you a soft feathery edge that just looks so beautiful.
I’m using a half inch oval wash brush and you can see the variety and the length of my strokes just based on the amount of pressure. And I’m using that pendulum stroke. Again, press down, pull up fast to create a slight cup effect, come down in a straight attack and in a pendulum stroke.
Takes a little bit of practice, but the combination of correct paint consistency and training your brush, you can get a wonderful feathered edge technique with this.
There are times also when the half inch oval wash brush for larger birds could be used for a type of feather edging. In that case, what I’m going to do is I’m going to flatten it into a knife shape like this so we’ve got a single edge, yet as I apply that edge to the surface of either your carved bird or this piece of paper I’m using, that even though just a couple edges of the bristles are touching the paper, they’re backed up by the entire body of the brush so it acts almost like a fountain pen. So, you’re always holding a reserve of paint so using my pinky as an anchor, I can get some very nice lines.
Not terribly fine but I’ll tell you what, for a half inch oval wash brush, it doesn’t do too bad.
As you apply pressure, you can create some beautiful shapes like if you have plumage detailing in some birds, use that pendulum stroke, you can press and pull. See, I’m getting a pointed end.
Red tailed hawk chest feathers have that exact type of patterning.
All that is is a pendulum stroke. You could do short squat strokes, could do longer strokes.
Very versatile if you learn how to use the brush correctly.
All of these different types of plumage variants are done just with a single brush. It’s not so much the tool, it’s how it’s employed that really makes the difference.
For finer detailing, a number six good quality sable brush with a beautiful point is an extremely versatile brush to use. Not only can you hold a large volume of paint in the bristle body itself, but the configuration of the point itself and how the bristles come together gives you the ability to go from fine micro lines to wide areas of washes. So again, it’s not the tool, it’s how it’s employed.
Some of the potential of this tool, again I’m going to be using just straight burnt umber and the first technique I’m going to show you is what I call sort of the little markings like kestrels for instance. Kestrels have these beautiful dark little ***** like markings. If you’re a card player, you think of the Ace of Spades, you’ve got a beautiful little marking and I just round the tool like this until I get a nice fluffy point on it like this. And again, employing the pendulum stroke, I’m going to come down and I’m going to just touch the surface, press and pull. So, very spontaneous.
And you can see these are almost perfect for the markings that occur on the upper chest of a kestrel. Now as you get up closer to the head, you’re going to get progressively smaller. Look at the variety you can get with that one tool and down, you you can get side flank feathers with the same type of pendulum stroke and then with lighter pressure.
Just beautiful technique with this brush here. Again, paint consistency is key. If the paint’s too thick, it’s going to want to cling to the brush and it’s not going to flow off of the bristles as efficiently and effectively as it is for me here. So, get in the habit of really getting used to getting the paint consistency just right on your brush. Again, your attack angle of the brush, the axis of the brush should be just about at ninety degrees to your work surface.
And again, it’s a pendulum stroke.
Usually takes me one or two warm up tries and then you just come through and you get beautiful little markings like this. I would encourage you to take time and practice this, not on your bird but on just a piece of paper and develop that technique and pretty soon it’s going to become second nature and you’re going to know what you want to do, know what you want to produce on the bird from a painting standpoint and it’s almost like magic fingers do your thing. And it just if you think it, you can do it.
Now, one of the things we do quite often is we want to get really fine lines. A good example of this is, say, the side pocket feathers of a of a waterfowl, and sometimes you want to show the splits as they flow up alongside some of the flight feathers. There are guys out there, my friend Pat Godden is a master at this technique where he can really lyrically get his feathers to show translucency and flow.
Many other carvers, the great Gary Eigenberger, Larry Barth, Gary Yoder, the list goes right down of the artists who employ this technique. To do this, you’re going to use the same brush, the number six, only this time, our objective is not to get a fine point on the brush, but we’re going to flatten the bristles. If you imagine my fingers being the bristles of the brush instead of a point, we’re going to flatten them almost like a chisel shape and we’re going to be using them to draw in our fine lines. So again, we’re going to be going with just straight Burnt Umber.
I’m going to put just a touch of this black, which was Burnt Umber with Ultramarine Blue mixed in it, and then I’m going to flatten this brush so that I’ve got just a sharp chisel point on the brush. You can see how it looks from the side, like that. Again, coming out of vertical axis on the brush using your pinky as a depth gauge, you could come through and just practice. Twist the brush a little bit and just challenge yourself and see how fine a line you can get.
I used to do this a lot when I was really teaching myself to paint. I would just start doing a whole series of lines and I would try to get them as fine as possible.
See, I’m still using a bit of a pendulum.
Now, in the studio where we’re videoing this, it’s a little bit dry so the paint has a tendency to want to dry a little bit more quickly. If that’s the case, you can humidify or simply add a little bit of flow medium to the paint or a little bit of water.
Practice doing these fine lines and before you know it, you’re going to get these things almost hair like. A good quality brush will enable you to do a lot of painting. Look at this, without even going back and recharging the brush.
I’m going to carry this little guy right off the page.
Not once did I have to go back and add any more paint. How does this apply to bird carving? Well, quite simply, if you want to show some splits, say you’ve got a feather.
Let’s put a feather, just a a there is no such thing as a typical feather, but we’re gonna do a feather coming off like this.
Okay. We have a say we’ve got a flank feather here that we want to show some a little bit of detailing. Well, I’m going to take some black and I’m going to come right back now and I’m going to, using my number six brush, flattening it to a chisel shape, and we want to put some splits in this feather, we can use that same pendulum stroke by starting up here with a fine point and gradually pressing down.
And you can put and actually paint even if there aren’t uncarved into the feather, can paint splits into the feather.
See how I’m just barely touching the surface and I progressively press more and it just you can do the most beautiful things painting in splits into the feather. If you want to show a little bit of feather elevation, you can on your carving, you can come around with either this black mixture or a complement to whatever the body color of the bird. Again, if it’s a if you’re painting a cardinal, you may take a little bit of green and you can come through like this and you can just ever so subtly edge that feather.
And what that does, it creates a bit of a shadow line on the edge of the feather and it makes it stand out, make it look like it’s gonna jump off the surface a little bit more. Don’t overdo this, but a little bit will really make quite a difference. Kind of hopscotch your way around the bird’s body. These brushes are very versatile.
As I demonstrated earlier with the half inch oval wash brush, we can do that same eyelash effect with the number six brush. We can just take flare it out a little bit into the paint. We’ll press it down, open it up like a little eyelash and you can do a little bit of a this is a nice technique for doing the heads of some birds when you want to just show a little bit of say songbirds or something. It’s another beautiful little technique to learn how to do.
All of these techniques are done just with this one brush. So I encourage you, don’t wait until you’ve finished spending so much time laboriously carving and texturing your bird. Practice this on your time. Take time because the time you spend learning to manipulate your brush and get the consistency of your paints just right, it will come back and it will reward you ten times over when it comes time to apply this to your card bird.
So I wish you a lot of luck with this and remember, practice makes perfect.