Make a mark with Anything

When I teach about mark making I tell my students that they can make a mark with anything and we all know of some crazy mark making using natural things, kitchen utensils, credit cards, water pressure hoses to name a few. However I was thinking about what I teach about the use of brushes. Over time we get to know our favourite tools. I love to paint with sticks and use pallet knives but much of my work is still brushed on. There are several sorts of brushes and some really specialist one and we can make our own. Let come back to the humble round. The one with a bit of a point that you find in most sets of paint. This is a great brush for holding paint, mixing colour, blending on the canvas and making a variety of lines by varying the pressure that you use it. Japanese art uses a sort of round brush and created a wide variety of black marks on white paper. It is worth learning how to paint like that so you can vary your marks with just that one brush in your work. My other favourite brush is a flat and I have many sizes of these. I like the straight edge you can get to a mark. They are also good for cutting in along a straight line. You can make very think lines or turn it on it's side for line lines.

Watch my YouTube demo

Flat Brushes