Acrylic Painting Tutorial Tips for Better Brushwork

Hey everybody, Ben here from Cineflox Studios and I'm back with another tutorial for all you acrylic painters. Actually, it kind of applies to oil as well. We're talking about brushwork today so stick around. Now simply picking up a paintbrush and just putting it on your canvas however you want to, yeah that's kind of what painting is. But when you're more conscious of how you're applying that paint, the viscosity of your paint as well as how you kind of hold your brush and what angle, what direction, how long your stroke is, that's the kind of stuff that brushwork entails. So there's three main factors we're going to be looking at today. First your brush size, style, and stiffness. Second, how long of a stroke you're making. And third, your paint load and viscosity. So the first factor we're going to look at today is brush style. So I've picked up just a handful of brushes I have sitting around. I think these are probably the most common. Your rounds, your flats or brights. This is another sort of a flat brush, that's for a different thing. And filbert and a fan. So really it's these four that we're looking at. Now of course there are other brush types but again, these are the most common so that's what we're going to focus on today. So flats and brights kind of have a very similar stroke to them. I'll grab a little bit of paint here. You're going to get a nice sort of single stroke, really at any length. And it's going to be square, because that's the shape of your flat brush. In addition to the basic square shape, of course the brush itself can also turn on its side and get a little bit thinner of a shape as well, but that's sort of what you expect out of a flat. A round on the other hand, well, it's going to be sort of a round long line, rather than being real angular, it's kind of just, when you imagine a line in your head, that's the kind of stroke you're going to get out of that. A lot less angular, a lot more curvy, you can get a whole lot of other shapes just with the round brush. And of course, just like the flat, you know, turning it either on one side to make it fatter or upright to get even a thinner line. That's probably what you're going to be expecting out of a round brush. Now filberts are a little more interesting if you've never used one before, it's kind of like a flat brush but the top rather than just being a straight line that's rounded off at the top. So your stroke with that is going to be, again, rather similar to the flat brush, but with a more rounded edge rather than that flat angular edge. And it also allows you to get a lot finer, thinner lines when turned to the side. And then of course the fan brush, of course it depends a little bit on how much paint you put on the brush, but we're going to get to that in a little bit, is going to give you a bit of an arc. And the variations in the bristles are going to allow you to create all kind of little variations at the top. That's why I use this brush to paint grass a lot, is because you get all those little extra frills to it. And up on its side, you get the lines, but the lines are broken up a little bit more as well. So being conscious and knowing exactly what you're getting out of each brush kind of makes a pretty big difference. Now your brushwork also depends on how long of a stroke you're actually going to be using. So I'm going to grab my flat again, actually it's a bright, I do this a lot. So for short, simple strokes, and sort of what I was just doing, often times you're holding the brush real close to the ferrule, maybe even up towards the middle a little bit, but a lot of times it's short, it's simple, and if you're using your four joints of drawing, that being fingers, wrist, elbow, and shoulder, these movements for short strokes are going to be usually limited to your fingers and to your wrist. Now for a long stroke, you can hold it relatively close, but it tends to be a little bit better if you're holding it back towards the center, or even all the way back towards the back of the brush. This is actually why there's long handles on paintbrushes, so you can really kind of step back while you're working, and paint much longer, wider strokes that still have the same expression that you might get out of a short, small stroke. And if it's not a short stroke, or a long stroke, you might actually just be tapping with the brush. So you think, okay, short strokes, long strokes, crisscross strokes, these are basically just short strokes or long strokes side to side, or you can tap, of course, to create that little bit of a texture effect. Tap on one angle, tap on the top, tap the whole thing. These are all variations of just using the same brush, but doing different types of stroke. All of these, again, these are a type of brushwork. Now another thing that determines your individual brushstrokes is how much paint you're using and how thick or thin that paint is. Now for me and my acrylics, I'm usually using heavy body paint. Now for anything like this, you saw I kind of loaded some paint on the brush, but I left it relatively smooth, I didn't grab a crapload of it. But if you do end up grabbing just a big heap of paint, what you're left with are big thick areas of your painting, things you can do any variety of stroke with to create actual texture up on your piece. This particular technique is known as impasto painting. Now my go-to for most paintings are real soft haired bristled brushes, that's just a personal preference for me. Now if you're using a brush that maybe has a bit of a stiffer bristle to it, that use of heavier paint is going to create more brush marks. It's going to look almost like you dragged a rake through your paint. So if you're into zen gardening, maybe you want to use a stiff brush for your paintings. So if you're doing an impasto painting technique, if you're using a stiffer brush, you're going to show a lot more strokes, a lot more strokes in the bristles, regardless of how many layers you put onto that piece, and softer bristled brushes show fewer marks and tend to maintain more of those globs of paint. Now if you're not using a crap load of paint, maybe you're using a smaller amount, maybe a very very small amount, to a point where you're doing a dry brush technique, and just moving a small amount of paint around your canvas to create more subtle areas of color. Alternatively, and depending on the different color you're using, if it's a more transparent color, or if you're just thinning it out a little bit, you can use a smaller amount of paint to create a glaze. So in this case, I've thinned the paint, and I'm not using as much actual paint itself, because of course it's thinner, and I'm doing so in order to create, rather than just a solid black area, an area that's more gray. And of course, using a bit less paint is really good for stamping. So sort of what we were doing before with the stamping your strokes like that, I use this a lot of times when I'm making trees, or as I mentioned earlier with the fan brush, stamping in some grass. So that's sort of a cover of what you can do with heavy body paints, but what about something softer? Or even thinner? I'm talking really thin. I've been using these Golden High Flows a bunch in the past few years, so this stuff is oooh, very drippy. Also very messy. This stuff has the consistency of an ink. It is super thin, super watery in sort of its appearance, but the pigment load is still very high to what you might expect out of a heavy body paint. So thinner paints often will create a much flatter look to the piece, but if you're really into doing more graphical stuff, more detailed stuff, or even some techniques with glazes, the thinner paints can often be a huge advantage in that regard. Plus with a much thinner color, you don't have to keep dipping back for more paint, so it's really good for creating those super long strokes. Hey guys, I'm working on the video edit and I realized I forgot one factor to this, so it's not going to make sense with the rest of the video when I say three factors towards the end, but another thing that makes a difference in your brushwork is whether or not you're pushing with the brush or pulling with it. In this video I mostly kind of pull with it, but if you kind of push upward, that makes a little bit of a difference as well. So remember that brushwork has two factors. One, the brush, obviously, but two, also which type and which viscosity of paint you're using. Like any other kind of art, remember to test everything. Know exactly what your brushes can do. Do a test sheet, something like this. Hang it up on your wall if you can, or just have it there as a reference. Knowing what your brushes can do is really important, and being able to reference back to that and say, oh yeah, I can get that shape. Let me just do that and turn it and see what I can do. Really it's a working process, you just figuring out the problem at hand and how to tackle it. And I know that brushwork as a whole, in a lot of ways, and a lot of painters kind of think, well, that kind of goes without saying, but at the same time, if you can really be conscious of focusing in on what those brushes do, that can really improve your painting. So if you remember nothing else in this video, just remember, it's something to not necessarily overlook, but just something to be conscious of while you work. So as always, if you learned something, hit that like button. Consider supporting me on Patreon. You can subscribe if you're not already, and this has been from Cineblock Studios. See you guys next time. Also additional fun thing this week, link in the description box below, is a test run for a podcast. Basically it's just like, how long can you talk about one single art supply? This test run was on graphite. It's me and a friend for 30 minutes talking about graphite. It's pretty neat, so go check it out.