Loading A Brush With Paint

Many painters paint with lots of paint, a heavily loaded brush.  I don’t typically paint that way.  I like more control for how much paint is applied at a time. And I often paint in translucent layers.

However when painting Plein Air, outside landscapes which are time limited – due to the sun moving across the sky.  I paint faster and tend have more paint on my brush and try to not fuss with where I decide to place it so there is a more fresh appearance to the marks and strokes.  Plein Air painting demands immediate decisiveness.

 
I also tend to get different color changes happening in single brush strokes loaded with bits of different colors on the brush at the same time, allowing them to mix slightly while on the canvas.  This technique in particular, makes paintings magical and exciting to my eye.  I do not "mix" as in stir the paint to blend it while the colors stream out of my brush. I let the brush marks be as they happen.

For this reason, even though I will mix colors on a pallet or container, I rarely ever mix a large batch of the same color paint. I tend to mix a few brush strokes worth of paint at a time if I am after a particular color.  I do not see the world in flat sections of color so I paint in variations and blends.  And I prefer the varied versions of color that flow out of a brush while painting. 

However when painting a large smooth sky on a mural, it does help to have sizable batches of particular colors to cover large areas and have on hand for further touching up.  And even then, that sky color is going to change from top to bottom; from a darker more red tone, purplish deep blue, high in the sky, to a faded light turquoise beige at the horizon.

I am not drawn to even flat unchanging colors, typically known as "graphic" blocks of flat unchanging color, such as in old poster art where printers had to make a whole new plate for each color and minimized the color options to keep the process simpler and the cost down.  I love the antique poster prints, because they had a lot of layering.  Yet posters later on. got simpler not more complex.  Painters are not limited to certain colors and we can mix colors to please our eyes as we see fit, so that is what I enjoy in painting. Seeing the painter's choices by seeing the brush strokes and the colors that happen more spontaneously.

While painting, I load a brush, 1/3 – 2/3’s full of paint.  It optimizes the capillary action that urges the paint to leave the brush.  I try to keep paint from building up and drying at the top end of the bristles where it is secured to the brush handle. 

 

There is a fine balance between manipulating the paint on the brush as it is put down, and moving, altering, or mixing with the paint on the painting.  I often dab the brush on the pallet before I put it on a painting.  This allows me to first check the flow (moisture and color), and second to remove some paint first in order to manage not putting on too much paint down at a time nor to have the liquid be in excess.  I also dab, to adjust where the paint is on the brush. I want the paint near the point end of the bristles when I want to lay it on the painting.  I want it further up the bristles if I am blending and do not want the full load to arrive on the painting all at once., especially if I want to manipulate what is already on the canvas before I let the paint on the brush join the paint on the painting.

I rinse the brush as needed to change colors, get rid of muddy colors, or to freshen up the moisture inside the bristles to keep the bristles pliable.  Drying paint will limit the flexibility or movement of the brush.  I frequently rinse a brush well, and dry off excess water (or solvent) before collecting more paint.

 
Due to capillary action, if a brush is too dry it will pull up paint or moisture off a painting into the brush, which is something to know about so you can use that when you want to, and don't have it happen when you do not want that effect. And it is good to know how to lift something if you want to remove paint or moisture.

While painting in acrylic paints, I use a clear matte or satin medium for blending.  It takes very little pigment to add color to a painting. And having a medium to extend the pigment versus water helps the paint bind well, and the paint with less pigment will remain the same consistency as paint versus becoming much too watery or thinned and runny.

Apply This Skill To Become A Better Artist.

Observation.

Beyond hand/eye coordination, and a desire to make art, one key technique in creating art, is Observation.  Paying attention.  Looking, seeing, looking again, and seeing – repeatedly, for hours on end. It requires a unique meditation type of patience.

This post is about representational art, which is one style of Art, and a great skill for artists to master.  When artists have this ability, they have a choice to use it or not. Without this ability artists are quite limited, and are often intimidated by the task and afraid they will get the details wrong.

The first step to accurately represent something in a drawing or painting, is first see it well.

Noticing, and observing is learning and recognizing, assimilating what is being looked at, and understanding the details of what defines it. 

Mapping out and placing representational details on a page or canvas to artistically recreate it, requires noticing features and reproducing those aspects, relative all other details, including spacial orientation and proportional composition.

Too many Art students learn to create without ever really paying attention to the item they are recreting, which leads to a serious disadvantage.

When I was in my last quarter of college before I graduated with a BFA, I took a Science Illustration class.  It was the single class that had far better artists in it than any of my other Art classes.

This class happened to be attended mostly by science majors, and only a handful of other artists.  You might think that the artists who had studied Art and painted for most of their lives would have out-shined the other students by a long shot.

However in this class it was the Science students' work that shown far better than the Art students' work. I noticed a remarkable thing: Science students' ability to pay attention; to observe, notice identifying features and then slowly meticulously document those details in marks on the page.  These skills are crucial in order to most accurately as possible represent a depicted item.

After watching Science students illustrate a botanical sample or a preserved racoon, I noticed very careful, deliberate, disciplined students accustomed to studying details, attentively observing what they saw. They were in no rush. 

Which led to me note a huge difference between Artists in my classes and the Science students.  Art Students seem to always be short on time, or in a frantic race to a finish, as if they were on to their next project shortly after the first one began.  

Artists I witnessed, looked at their reference item, briefly, sometimes only once for just a second to get an idea of what they saw, and then drew a lot, sometimes for fifteen to twenty minutes before looking up at the item again.  They tended to paint what they felt, or an impression of what they saw, without rechecking back to the reference item being drawn.  They carried on with their drawing or painting, from memory, and the image quickly became something either only loosely related to the item being drawn, or something else entirely. This lack of referencing the object being drawn, as a way of creating is prominent in Art Students.

In contrast, Science students frequently look to the thing they are drawing, always checking and rechecking the reference item for how it really looks, so they really get to know it, intimately; they study it all along.

So anytime you feel stuck, or unsure of whether you are representing the item you are depicting, stop, take a breath, slow down.  Look longer at what you are creating, just observe, study what you see. 

Observing will help you be more confident about what you see, which will help you make more confident marks, and give you more options to how you depict what you are creating. It is a perfect place to pause any time you feel stuck, simply see, relax, and carry-on.