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Reasons To Love Dry Brush Painting

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'Dry Brush' is a painting technique where very little paint is applied to the brush and the brush is then wiped on a cloth and / or scumbled over a spare piece of paper until there is almost no paint left on the bristles. Having created an almost dry brush, this is then dragged, tapped, swept or pressed across or on the artwork to create a range of effects. The amount of paint you leave on the canvas is proportional to how hard you press. I love using this technique because it creates effects that are somewhat unpredictable and could never be deliberately drawn. You can also build up layers to create deeper tones, or put one colour on top of another to optically mix different hues. When using this method with acrylic, almost no drying time is needed so you can work really quickly and often the results have the feel and appearance of using pastels, charcoal or pencil. Because of the minimal paint load, you can also use thin or absorbent papers that under normal circumstances (wetter or simply more paint) would severely buckle.
The method is also ideally suited to underpainting, giving a sense of movement or combining with other media such as marker pen, biro, pencil or simply 'thicker paint'.
Here are a few examples:

"Taking The Air II" (below)

This is a mixed media painting of two wild horses roaming free on Dartmoor in Devon, England. Here you can see how many different effects and tones can be achieved with essentially the same grey. Once I'd blocked in the main shapes and allowed them to dry, I was then able to work into them with biro (for the foliage) and Sharpie (for the horses). The distant hills are painted in blue and left without line to create a sense of distance and to provide just a hint of colour to the image.

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"In The Winter Sun" (below)

This sheep with lambs drawing incorporates a very simple use of the dry brush technique. Here regions of grey have been put down as a simple first indication of where to place the animals. These have then been drawn over with felt pen. Although the dry brush is minimal, it lends a sense of weight to the animals and provides some atmosphere with the hint of distant trees in the background.

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"Overlooked" (below)

This is a good example of how dry brush can simulate the appearance of pastel, particularly with the blue of the dress. The paint being dragged across the paper in much the same way as a side-on pastel stick is used to shade in areas. Here, the line work is also done with a brush but in the conventional way. The over-laying of thicker white paint to create the hair provides a nice textural contrast and demonstrates how the illusion of different surface textures can be created.

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"Day Dreaming" (below)

Back to monochrome for this study of a young woman pensively resting her head on her hands. Guiding the brush in the same direction as the surface contours of the object depicted is a useful way of conveying form as shown here on the arms and hair.

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