Tag: acrylics

A Brush with Brushes

As someone who has used water-based media for years – watercolor, acrylic, gouache – I am used to using just one brush for the most part, or two if I need a different quality. A round, a flat. That’s about it for watercolor or acrylic or gouache. Of course, different sizes matter as far as what I am painting, but with a couple of good brushes, much can be accomplished. I just take my brush, swish it around in water, and then on to the next color.

Oil painting does not allow this. To clean a brush means to work at getting it clean, and that work is best done at the end of a session when all is ready to be set aside. This means cleaning the brushes in mineral spirits to get rid of the oil. This is done after wiping excess paint off and discarding the rags or towels. After the mineral spirits comes a bar of soap and hot water. Squish and swish the brush in the soap, rinse. Repeat if necessary. Set aside to dry after reshaping the brush, and you are ready for the next session.

I have done a bit of observation and a bit of reading about brushes. Some oil painters say you never need to wash your brushes, just clean them off by wiping and using some mineral spirits. For me, this is a disaster in the making. My habits are to use the same brush with rinses in between, and oil painting does not allow for this – at least, not the way I paint.

The classic picture of an artist is with his handheld palette, beret on head, easel in front of him / her, and multiple brushes being held in the hand holding the palette. It makes sense! Brushes with different colors, different values, different shapes to create different strokes. I watched a lot of oil painters, and some do hold multiple brushes. Some even go so far as to have the same brush in 3 editions – one for light, one for medium, and one for dark values, with other brushes exclusively used for blending. Recommendations for brushes are also as varied as how and what to do with brushes – what shape, what size, what material, how much to spend.

Well, for now, I need to focus on clean brushes. Mud was a very common byproduct of my earlier days in watercolor, and now I have to fight the same problem with oil painting. I need to retrain how I use brushes altogether. I have also found I need to determine what kind of brush I like. Watercolor works with both soft and stiff brushes, depending on desired effect. Soft brushes are the best, IMHO, for gouache. Acrylic, like watercolor, can vary with the need of the painter – hard, soft, round, flat, filbert, fan. Right now, I prefer softer brushes for oils, but I know that this will change as I become more comfortable with the medium.

Meanwhile, I think cheap brushes for 3 values will be my default for now – and it won’t be easy!

Across the Dunes

I enjoy gouache a lot because you can rework places and easily blur edges to soften them. That is a lot harder in acrylics. I decided to give it a shot. It worked rather well for the sky, but like gouache, the whites in the clouds darkened more than I thought they would. On the other hand, I did work on the sand a bit, using very thin water glazes for the shadows. That worked out pretty well.

I realize the key to “getting” acrylic painting is to just keep doing it, experimenting, trying. Each painting, successful or not, is a lesson.

Acrylic paint on unprimed Arches 140# CP. 9×12.

Road through the Hills

About six weeks ago I started this painting and then all the chaos of insurance and plan choices and lost mail brought most of my creative life to a screeching halt. It was emotionally exhausting in a lot of ways, but those details really are not important today. Instead, this painting is finished at last!

Details first: acrylic on gessoed 16×20 CP Arches 140# paper. Borders of paper taped down all the way. I probably spent about 10-12 hours on this painting.

There have been multiple iterations of this painting. In the original, a tree was in the right middle front foreground. That disappeared last night. Then the road, which disappeared dead center, was reworked and made visible through the trees this morning. The suggestions of vineyards in the background disappeared, too. Too many stripes – I was looking for a zebra.

To finish the painting, I decided to work in middle of the night last night, and from 10:30 pm to 2:30 a.m. I painted out nearly everything except the blobby middle that I knew was not what I wanted. My husband, who is no art aficionado, always has good advice on painting problems. He and I agreed on the issues. So, this afternoon, I spent a few hours working and reworking it until you see the finished result above.

I have not done a lot of painting in acrylics, but each painting I do brings new experiences. I still tend to be a dabber, but am working to think about how I move the brush more, such as long horizontal or vertical strokes, or suggestions of something with just a blob (not a dab!) of color. I need to work in acrylics more to build more confidence in my brushwork.

So, here you are, on a gravel road in the backcountry, enjoy vineyards and olive groves, somewhere in a Mediterranean country on a hot day in summer.