This is a tale of three brushes for watercolor – my current favorites, and how I use them. I may have dozens of brushes — but these keep bubbling up the most, so I thought I’d use them for a short demo on creating a tile floor! It’s from a painting seen in my 30 Days to More Confident Sketching class.

Tutorial: A tale of three watercolor brushes  

Watch the video below and scroll to the end to leave comments or questions — or click HERE to watch it on YouTube and leave comments over there. I read both dutifully!

The brushes – and what they’re used for

Every brush has its sweet spot, and I do end up skipping around to different brushes than these….but lately I’ve found I could be quite happy with just these in the studio:

1. DaVinci Silverpoint brush (mop or quill, natural hair) – you don’t need THIS one necessarily, the silverpoint end isn’t a necessity. But having a nice big brush that points well is a huge help in covering large areas and getting big juicy washes. I find a lot of watercolorists just struggle to use that much paint or water – but that’s what makes nice loose watercolor work!
2. Winsor & Newton Kolinsky Round #8 – I didn’t use it in this demo for middle level details but sometimes do if the big brush is totally too big. But a soft natural hair brush is fabulous for splattering, as well as small wash areas.
3. DaVinci Cosmotop #2 – this is a synthetic little brush with lots of snap to it – which means “drawing” lines with it is more possible than my soft natural brushes. Depending on the size of details, I’ll also use a #4 Kolinsky if I need softer edges and broader coverage, or a #4 synthetic in the Cosmotop line if snap is needed. 

Know that I’m still looking for great substitutes for my expensive favorites. Really, I keep spending money on the synthetics, but performance still isn’t where I need it to be. At NAMTA I visited a few brush booths to hear their latest pitch, and since a lot of the natural hair comes from Russia, they’re making more efforts to create better substitutes, but the samples I came home with didn’t meet my hopes. I’ve ordered some bigger ones so maybe it’s just the smaller ones that aren’t great….so I dumped a crazy amount of money on brushes that are on the way to me as maybe a last pre-tariff purchase before everything skyrockets! I’ll let ya know.

Painting rock surface

The tiles, boulder, and bricks follow nearly the same process – mixing blue and brown to create various browns and greys, and using the big brush to apply color that just barely touches another rock or tile next to it so they do some bleeding. It leads to a lovely free-flowing, fresh look to the painting style and can really set off whatever else is in your painting.

Subscribe to receive blog posts by email:

Never too late to join in!

A bunch of us are painting together through the month of April using the 30 Days class lessons – though as I said in the video some started on April 1 and aren’t caught up to today…which is just fine! It’s a do-it-at-your-own pace class, and you can start any time of year. 

If you’re someone who thinks professional artists don’t have their own struggles or “aha” moments – you’d be wrong! All artists go through the same thing. Sometimes it’s learning a new subject, technique, tool, or color – just like you. We’ve all got areas to grow – and we all need some fresh watercolor discoveries to keep us energized and growing.

Loosening up

Sometimes we think of getting loose as just being splashy. But I find my definition leaning more toward “less detail.” Bigger marks, simpler brushstrokes, and being much less fussy over pushing for realism. Often if we can get loose with brush work, it provides a sense of movement we’ll never get if we’re trying to “replicate reality” with all that detail. Watch the video to see some of my paintings from April – some successful, some not – and a demo of painting some daisies!

Tutorial: Fresh watercolor discoveries

Watch the video below and scroll to the end to leave comments or questions — or click HERE to watch it on YouTube and leave comments over there. I read both dutifully!

Practice!

I know I struggle with little flowers – not itty bitty ones but small ones. So I’ve been sketching little patches of daisies like this on the backs of old paintings destined for the circular file! I start with lightest color first using a nice big brush to keep loose, then switch to smaller brushes and thicker pigment in each layer. I’ve got to hold myself back from treating the smallest brush like a pencil – that #2 is only for the finest wispy grasses and tiny leaves, not for outlining anything.

Play with color

Each time I’ve painted these little daisies, I’ve tried a different color mix – what a great way to practice a technique and study your own paints too. I’ve tried different colors for the shadows too, and I like the French Ultramarine best.

Subscribe to receive blog posts by email:

Work larger

Trying to paint tiny is sometimes the biggest problem in trying to loosen up. I’ve done so for a variety of reasons:

1. “to save paper” – to paint more things without ‘wasting’ it
2. “I’m not worth more paper” – until I get better I shouldn’t use it up
3. “I can’t do big brush marks” – because mine looked blobby

As for #1, it’s just paper. They keep making more. Use both sides, sure, but the more you paint, the better you’ll get, and you can always trim out sections you DO like and make a card from them, so don’t stress over the parts that didn’t work out.

Oh #2, we all have thought this – we bought cheapo paper “until we get better” but we’ll never get better using cruddy paper! It’s worth it to get the good stuff, believe me.

And #3 will never happen til you start practicing those big brushstrokes. No one’s good at it out of the womb, except maybe Joseph Z. Big beautiful brushes help you get loose by giving you plenty of water and paint to spread around; tiny brushes won’t cover much real estate.

These are just two of the bigger paintings with the daisies – you can see the rest of my April paintings here.

Never too late to join in!

A bunch of us are painting together through the month of April using the 30 Days class lessons – though as I said in the video some started on April 1 and aren’t caught up to today…which is just fine! It’s a do-it-at-your-own pace class, and you can start any time of year. 

Next video…

I’ll be sharing the technique for the brick floor, maybe some rocks – it’s another very loose one. See you Tuesday!