How To PAINT BUSHES! Painting Techniques That ANYONE Can Do!

Hi everybody, it's Joanie here. Welcome back to my channel for another painting tutorial on acrylics. Today I'm going to show you four different ways to paint bushes. Two of them are going to be flowering. So let's go over the colors, the canvas, and the brushes I'll be using today for this tutorial. Also, have a look below this video in the description box for a full list of everything I'm using today and feel free to change up your colors, brushes, and canvas. I've got a 16 by 20 double primed and stretched canvas I'll be demonstrating this on and I have the following colors here. I've got titanium white, luminous yellow, hooker's green hue permanent, Mars black, phthalo blue, and luminous rose. The brushes I'll be using today are, so I'll be using a number 50 filbert brush, a 1-inch mop brush, a number 4 filbert brush, and a number 2 long liner brush. So let's go ahead and begin. For the first demonstration, I'm going to be adding a little roundish shape here with this large filbert brush. And I'm just going to get my brush a little bit wet to start and dab off any drips of water. You don't want to have too much water in your brush. It's always a good idea to have a little bit of moisture in there so the paint doesn't soak into the bristles and ruin the brush. So what I'm going to do is start off with a little bit of black and a little bit of green, and I'm just taking a little bit of each, not mixing it to make one solid color, and I'm just going to go in this area here kind of just tap in and around kind of an oval or round shape. It doesn't have to be perfect. Okay, I'll take a little bit more green now, and I'm going to take a little bit of green and my yellow, a little bit of white, mix those together to get a little bit of a lighter shade and a little bit warmer. So I've just got a bit on the end of my brush like this, and what I'm going to do is just go ahead and tap and stipple in and letting those taps go out of our original shape that we created. Let me just pick up a little bit more of those colors. So the idea is to build up some highlights while keeping some of the dark in there as well so that we have a 3D effect. We've got our deep dark shadows, and then we've got lighter shades here. So we have a little bit of dark dark green with the black and then adding some warmer greens using our luminous yellow and white. Now you could also use a cadmium yellow light or lemon yellow and create different shades of green that way, cool shades of green and warm shades of green. So I'm going to come in and make this a little bit lighter by adding a bit more white with my green, less of the yellow this time, and I'll add a few more little highlights here. One thing about acrylic is that it will dry a little darker. Okay, so there we go. We've got a little push there, and I'm going to just take what's left on my brush here and just tap in a little bit of a grassy landing down at the base. Come in with a little bit of green, a little bit of black, and tap right down here for just a little bit of a gradual shadow next to this grassy area here. So I'm going to rinse this brush out and we're going to move on to our next bush. For our next one, I'm going to go over to this side, and I've got a clean brush. I'm using the same one. This time I'm going to take a little bit of black, a little bit of green, and a little bit of blue. Again, I'm not mixing to make one solid color, and I'm going to make this one more of kind of an egg shape right side up. Okay, like this. So see how all those three colors just blend together beautifully directly on the canvas. You don't have to mix them up on your palette unless you want to. However, I like picking up the colors I'm using, tapping into them a little bit, and then letting them mix so you get all these different shades. Now the next color I'm going to take is some white. I'm going to go back to my green-blue with a little hint of black in there. Less black this time though. So we're just going to start adding a little bit of white in with those colors. I'm going to start going and tapping up. I'll pick up a little bit more white because I can see this is still just a little bit too dark. Now I'm building this bush up with the branches going up in this direction. I'm going to add a little bit more white, a little bit more of the blue, and little taps. So this is one of those types of bushes that you can add to a landscape that is a little bit in the distance and you don't have like full-on close-up detail of each and every leaf. You can just get all this texture very quickly by tapping. And if your brush starts to split apart like mine has here, that will help you create all these little separate leaves. I'm going to go back into my green, a little bit of yellow, and I'm just going to add a little bit of a grassy base here. I'm just going to pull in with a clean brush a little bit more of the yellow and the green and a bit of white here. And just add a little bit more to this area here. Okay, so now let's start adding some different types of bushes and I'm going to change my brushes up. I'm going to use this one first just for our bush itself, and I just need to get a little bit more of my green. Okay, so I'm going to take some black, some green, and I'm going to come in here and just add another circle like so. Let's get a little bit more black in there so we can really build up some depth in this one. We've got just a little bit of a shadow base down here and I'm going to rinse my brush out. And this is where our smaller filbert brush comes into play. We're going to use this with a little bit of water on it just to moisten, dampen those bristles. And what I'm going to do is take some white, some yellow, and some green. So I am just going to kind of mix it up here in this area so you can see what we're creating. There's a little bit more green. Once you've mixed it, you want to have a little bit on the end of your brush. And what we're going to do is start adding some little leaves. So it's going to be a really quick and easy little tap, and then push, pull, and let off. Tap, push, pull, let off. And then once you get the hang of it, you can keep making them. You can have them go like in little rows, almost like how a little fern would look. And then have them coming out in different angles. Push, pull, let off. So I'm just going to continue to layer over and then get a little bit quicker. I'll mix up some more here. So filbert brushes are excellent for all sorts of things, and I use them quite often in my videos. Leaves, in particular flower petals. But let's just stop and take a moment to look at the depth that we're creating here. So if you step back, take a few seconds to just step back a few feet from your canvas and have a look, and you'll see how we're building up an image to be 3D. So we've got to start with that dark base and work up to lighter and lighter shades. Now depending on how much light and where your light source is coming from, it may vary. This tutorial isn't about the light source, so don't get caught up in that. Just specifically learn the layers of shadows to highlights and random placement for messier looking bushes. If you want something a little bit more ornate and tidy, then you can paint it that way. But once you learn these basic simple steps and rules, you can really go ahead and paint almost anything. Any type of bush, tree, leaf, branches, it's all the same. So I'm going to add a little bit coming out here. I'm going to add some here in the front as well. Pushing that paint to load the end of my brush. This is going to pick up a little bit more of the yellow and the white. There's still a little hint of the green in there. I'm just working the paint out of the where the ferrule meets the bristles. You don't want the paint to get stuck in there and ruin your brush. We really want to focus on loading the end of the brush with the paint and use the end of the brush and then load again. And you can also add the same layers of paint, dark to light, by drying the layers off in between if you want. Now, we all know that acrylic paint dries really quickly and if your layers are drying really fast and say you applied your dark green black base and it's dry already when you want to come in with your lighter shade, that's fine. The only thing you might notice is that you may have less shades because I'm painting wet on wet. It's a little cooler in the space I'm painting right now. So every time I go and pull in my little leaves here, my brush strokes, I'm pulling into the wet paint underneath so it's kind of mixing and making different shades so you can see so many shades this way. Now, sometimes that can be annoying and we don't want that but just kind of try both ways. Experiment and get a feel for what you can create and how you can create different shades and tones that way. I'm going to go into a little bit more yellow now, a little bit more green. There's a little bit of white in there, but I want to get back to this kind of light olive green and I want to add some down here. Get a little base here at the end on either side and I'll add a few more leaves here with a little touch of that. I'll just add a little bit extra white this time along with our green, a little hint of yellow for some extra light. Let's see how you can just simplify what you're painting by breaking it down into basic shapes. So we've got circles, ovals, and they don't have to be a perfect circle or oval, but just simplify it by starting like that. Start with a dark base and if you're working on, you know, like a red maple bush, like something for the fall, then you can add a little bit of dark red to your black and your green. That's a whole other video, but if you guys like this one, leave a comment below if you'd like to see a fall version. So I think I'm going to start adding a few little flowers in here before my pink starts to run right off the canvas altogether. I've got a slippery palette surface. Actually, I know a lot of people want to know what I'm using for a palette. I use a couple different types of palettes. Waterproof is key. So anything waterproof is going to hold your acrylics a lot longer and keep them from drying out. It's going to keep them wet. And this is actually a canvas still in its plastic wrapper. It's wonderful and you can clean it off after, you can peel it off if it's dried. So if you're curious, that's what I'm using. But because it's upright like this and gravity is happening, that's why it's kind of slipping down here. But I'm just going to take with the same brush. It's clean now. I'm going to take a little bit of my rose and a little bit of white. I'm kind of just swirling them around to get a bit of a marbled effect and we're not going to approach these flowers as like hyper-realistic and zoomed in full detail. We're going to just do this impressionistically like we've done everything else. And I do have tutorials. I'm just tapping in here. I'm just tapping like little mounds. I do have a whole playlist of how to paint flowers. So if you want to see different types of flowers, ones that are full detail, like really just hyper-focusing on a flower, then go to that playlist because I've got so much there to show you guys and teach you in that playlist from impressionistic to full detail. So again, just lightly swirling it around so it looks marbled and we're going to continue just adding these little taps and dabs. Now your green base might be wet. It may be dry. You can take the time by all means to dry it off so that you don't have your greens mixing in. Or you can go ahead and just be really careful. And if you accidentally, if you happen to pick up a little bit of green here and there, it's not a big deal. It might just look like there's some leaves within those flowers. Just try to not like over blend or over tap in any one spot. And look at how much paint that I'm using as well so that I have this kind of feel even more like it's 3D. It'll be a little bit textured. Once it dries. I really really love this technique of just picking up the two colors and a very light little stir and swirl and look at all the different highlights, light and dark pinks that you get. I love it when that happens and it's just like hardly any work at all. We didn't spend too much time trying to build up the shapes of the petals, the light and the shadow. We're just tapping on a little bit of this color and that color together and then you kind of just get that instant top of light and shadow within your flowers. Okay, so I'm going to rinse this brush out and now we're going to go ahead and start working on our next one. Now for this next bush, I would like to create some different types of leaves and flowers. I'm going to kind of do something similar to hydrangea bush and I'm going to use this mop brush here for this one and I'm going to start off with my blue. I'm going to just take about a little this for some reason this phthalo blue always dries out quicker than other colors. So I'm just going to add a little bit of water with my little handy spray bottle here, a little bit of green and a little bit of black. I'm going to do a cool shade of green base and I'm going to come over here and I'm going to just start tapping in sort of a round bush shape. Funny enough, this is also the same kind of step I would create, I would use to create just one big hydrangea flower. I'm going to take a little bit more black and green and I'm going to come in and add little sections here just tapping and leaving some spaces to give us a little bit of depth and I'm going to rinse this brush out. I'm going to take my small number four filbert brush, some green, there's a touch of black in there and I'm going to come down here at the base and just add a little bit of grassy area for our hydrangea bush to be sitting on and growing out of. It really helps to have a little bit of something underneath your bushes when and when I'm I'm adding a little bit of this luminous yellow something under here when I'm demonstrating the bushes, but you can see it doesn't really take too much work at all. Just a little something like that, add a little bit more yellow and green in there. Okay, so now I'm going to take some green and some white and I'm going to create heart-shaped leaves. So what I'm going to do is push, wiggle, wiggle, let off. Go around the other side, push, wiggle, wiggle, let off. I'm going to take a little bit of blue in there with that. Add a few more. Now this is wet underneath and I'm getting different shades wherever I add these leaves because I may be pushing into some of the black so that's that is going to give me different shades of greens and different lighting as well. So if you notice with my brush stroke I'm going and I'm kind of like shaking a little bit as I go that's going to kind of make it look like the serrated edges of roses and hydrangeas. So a little bit they kind of get a little jaggedy looking so if you want that look that's how you do it. You can leave a little bit more of a space in between or you can just make them a little bit rounded and skip that. So we just want to have a little bit of green in here. I'm going to just push, tap, and dab and then I'll be coming over some of these with the hydrangeas but I want to add a little bit of white in with my blue and green now so we can get some light hitting some of these leaves. Okay, so I did take a moment to dry this off and I'm going to come in with a little bit of blue and pink now and make some purple. The blue, the purple, and a little bit or blue, pink, and a little bit of white and I'm going to kind of do the same thing not over mix. So I have a little bit of each color and then what I'm going to do is just start adding these little taps. Push, tap, turn my brush and I'm going to add a whole bunch of these to create one flower. Hydrangeas are so beautiful. I love how from afar they look like one flower, one big flower, but you look close up and they're tons of little flowers packed together. Okay, push, tap, leave some spaces in between. I have some here on the outside. I've got quite a few tutorials on how to paint hydrangeas if you guys would like to see more. They are one of my favorite flowers. I'm calling it pink. It's actually a luminous rose but you can use like I mentioned at the beginning of this video, there's so many different colors. You can use any shade of blue, pink, purple, and a little bit more white there. There you go. Okay, and let's just keep going along. I've got some really beautiful hydrangeas in my garden that, well not at the moment because it's just about the end of February. It's actually February 27th, 2025. If you guys are watching, wondering when I was filming this, I've got at least three different types of hydrangeas in my garden. One's a raspberry one. It's really pretty. It's mostly pink and then I've got one that's more of like a periwinkle blue and then I've got another one that I swear has hints of like turquoise with like phthalo in it. It's almost like iridescent and especially like in the fall time and partially through the winter as it's kind of dying and drying off, it goes through this stage of the colors changing and it's quite beautiful. I wish that I actually picked them and dried them to hold that color and and just keep them for something decorative, having a little vase. Okay, so just all these little taps. Gonna add some smaller ones kind of maybe on the other sides of the bush. I'm gonna come in and add a little bit of white. I'm just rinsing my brush out so that I can have more of a clean base here. So a little bit of pink, blue and white and add some lighter edges and tips to these petals here. So I probably, because it's still so wet, all the other colors are so wet, I probably don't really even need to be mixing any of the blue and the pink there. I think just going right up here with a little bit of white will give me enough of a highlight. So you can kind of push turn or just a little tap. I'll just add a little bit more here. I want to keep some of the edges and areas a little bit dark so we have a nice balance of light and shadow. And I might even just come in here and take some of the pink and the blue, no white, and just add a little bit of depth here, some darker tones. I think this would be a nice balance because right now they're all pretty much dark or already kind of the same color mid to really light, like mid-tone. So look at what happens when we just come in here with a little bit of that gorgeous purple we make with the phthalo and that pink. That makes all the difference. So you're probably wondering what I was going to do with the liner brush and I am going to take a little bit of white on the end of my liner brush, just right on the tip there, and I'm just going to go and add a few little dots and dabs, at least three in one area, and this is just going to give us a little bit more of a look of hydrangeas. The centers of each little flower on the big mounds of flowers have these little I don't know, they're little seeds or just little white dots. So that's all I'm doing. I'm just adding one, two, three there may be more. I'm not looking at a hydrangea right now. I'm just making this up from memory and of course there are lots of different types of hydrangeas. So paint them according to the photo and the type that you want. I hope that you guys were able to get a lot out of this video today and that you enjoyed it and I want to thank you guys so much for watching. I'll see you all very soon in another video. Take care. Bye!