Watercolor Brush Control Exercises: Flat Brush for Beginners

1. Watercolor Brush Strokes Class Intro: What are colorists have incredible brush control. Now to learn brush control, you only need to practice. There are many ways to practice. You can just continue with your painting as normal. But I have some very detailed specific exercises for working on a flat brush to obtain control. Hi, I'm Daniela Mellen, an author and artist. In today's class, we're going to take a look at a flat watercolor brush. You can use any brush, any size that you have from a large to a very small and detailed brush. These exercises are designed to take a look at a flat brush and get a feel for how much pigment and water you need to create various strokes. Now the beauty of a flat brush is you can make thick and wide strokes or very thin strokes. And in the exercises that I have for you, we'll practice them. In class. I take each exercise and we repeat it four times. But you can vary that and repeat it as often as you like. If you find that you are struggling with a particular stroke or particular exercise, why not finished the whole page with that stroke? But if not, and you seem to be sailing right through them, just do your four repetitions and you'll see improvement right away. This class is for beginner watercolor artists will use a single brush and a single brush color. And of course, you can vary that as much as you'd like. If you'd like to create a rainbow of strokes by all means, please go right ahead. But this class is very specific. It's about creating the brushstrokes and the hand motions that are needed to create them. And by repeating them, will have them in our repertoire to use in the future. So gather your materials and let's get started. 2. Class Supplies: The supplies that we're going to use today for our brush control exercises include a few sheets of watercolor paper. Now I'm using eight by £1040 watercolor paper, but you can use a watercolor journal or any size sheets you want. We're gonna do a lot of repetition and lots of different strokes. I have my watercolor pigment and I just chose an ultramarine blue. But again, choose whichever color you'd like. I have my jug of water. And then today we're going to explore the use of flat brushes. Here I have three different sizes. I'm only going to use this number eight, this one in the center. But I wanted to show you the various sizes they come in because it's the same process. Depending on the size brush, it will hold more water and the marks will actually be made larger. So you'll use them for a larger scale, the larger brush and a little more control with the smaller brush. But it's the same technique regardless. And that's based on the brushes shape, the edge that you can achieve, and the width of the brush. In the next chapter, we'll start our first exercise. 3. Exercises #1 & #2: Line & Wave: So to start our first exercise, will do our exercise and then we'll repeat it four times. You can repeat it as much as you want. If you want a lot of practice, I suggest you fill the page with that different techniques. But for time should be sufficient. So I'm taking my flat brush and I'm dipping into my pigment. And just so that you can see it, I have a little palette here that I can use just to clean off my brush or sharpen that edge. And to do that, to sharpen the edge, I'll just repeat the stroke. And that helps the brush. The hairs of the brush form that nice sharp edge. For the first one, I want to make sure that my brush is soaked with water. It's not dripping uncontrollably off the edge of the brush. And I just want to create a smooth controlled stroke. And I'll start at the left side of the page and drag it across to the right-hand side, trying to maintain a straight line. And my goal is to have a completely solid line. Again, I'll make sure that my brush is nice and filled with the pigment. I start by setting my brush down and I slowly drag it across the page. And I get a feel for how much water is coming off the brush and absorbing into the page. So it looks very nice. I want to come back in and on that same line, go over it again, adding a little more pigment. And again, each time I go over this line, I get a feel for how much pigment and water are transferring off the brush. This will help me so that my next line, and I'll do four of them. I can get a feel with the amount of pressure to add. How many times I need to go over that line to make that happen in a nice even format. So again, I'll start here, gently press down and drag my line across. I'll continue this on my third one where I'm pressing down, dragging and even line and then releasing. Again, I pick up more pigment. And I can do this again. Now for the last one, I'm gonna do my line. But instead of going twice, I'm gonna go three times. I want to see what that does to the vibrancy of the pigment here. Each time I'll re-wet my brush. I'm looking for control. And just to go over that area, I've already set down the pigment and not looking to widen the line. So that's our first exercise. Will do the second one while we're here. And it's a slight variation on this first one. And again, we're gonna do for exercises. I'll take my brush and again, I want to fill it with water. I'm going to set my brush down and just add a slow, steady wave. Each time I put my brush down. I want that wave to be solid and filled all the way to the end of the paper. I can pick it up again, go just a little bit slower this time and match that wave. And again, I'm not trying to widen the wave. I'm just trying to go over it to make it a little more vibrant. For my next wave, I'm going to try and follow that design. I'll go slowly. I set my brush down and I just follow the existing wave right to the end of the paper. And then I release. I'm only going to go over one layer this time because I'm going over brush control and practice. I'm not trying to make it any more vibrant than it was the first time. And then I'll pick up the last amount, set my brush down, and follow that. I have my wave. And I can continue just filling up the page as many times as I'd like. This is good practice because I'm working on the tension of the brush, the smooth drag, and how much pressure I'm using a cross. And I have some very nice even waves here. I'm going to get a new paper and we'll start with our next techniques. 4. Exercise #3: Frequency Wave : So for my next exercise, I want to do a frequency wave. So it's gonna be a wave similar to the way we made the first time where our brush is not going to leave the paper. I'm going to load up the brush, but I'm going to start up top here with my brush only at a slight angle. Again, I want the sharp edge to start on the paper. And then I'm going to bring it up and down. This is my frequency wave. I can control the thickness of this wave by what angle my brush touches the paper. So as I raise the brush higher, I get eight thinner wave. And as I have the brush at more of an angle, I get the thicker wave. So again, I'll come back in and I'll keep this one all fic. And I'm just trying to press that brush, controlling it on the paper, making that wave. I'll come back in, re-wet the brush and just introduce more of that wet pigment, creating that wave. Now my goal is to have a nice thick center with just an interesting edge to this wave. Come back in and I'll work on reloading the brush with pigment. As I see it starts to fade. And I'll try and keep that in mind. So I'm working on not only the brush control, but getting a feel for the various amounts of liquid that I have on my brush. And I'll do this one more time. I don't want the brush dripping with pigment. I wanna be able to control it. And I'm just setting it down. I'll come back in, reload the brush, and continue. Again with this basic brush control. Controlling the shape. I'm allowing the pigment to run freely. And I have my little frequency wave here. We'll come back and work on our fourth technique. 5. Exercise #4: Sharp Frequency: So now for my fourth technique, I wanted to work on a frequency wave, but I want it to be very carefully controlled wave with a very sharp point of the brush that I'm going to hold perpendicular to the paper. Again, I may sharpen the edge of the brush, hold it down almost at a 90 degree angle, and create very short frequency waves. I'm using a little less pigment because to hold that sharp angle, I need a little less pigment on the brush stroke. And I'm just barely touching it to the paper, controlling it up and down. I'll do one more line and you can see how thin by comparison this line is. Come around and across. Do another row. Again, keeping my brush at the proper angle and barely touching it to the paper. Again. Cross. Pick up more pigment, sharpen the edge, and create that across. I'll do two more rows just so that we have four rows for each of these techniques. And this is very good practice. I can increase the speed which I go. But I'm always working on that same goal. I want a sharp edge, barely touching it to the paper and bringing that brush up and down. Again. I like to make sure that I've rubbed my brush to get that sharp edge and create those shapes, these very sharp frequencies. Working on even pressure on the brush. It just takes time. It's a very valuable technique to rehearse so that you can execute it when you want in your work. So I'll switch paper and we'll come back and work on our fifth technique. 6. Exercise #5: Wet to Dry Bar: So now taking a flat brush for our fifth technique, we're going to start by creating a bar of a line. And then we just wanted to taper off in fade out towards the end. Now the beginning of our stroke would be nice and thick and the color and the pigment will be filled in. And as that water and pigment is absorbed from the brush onto the paper, it will dry and we'll start to see brushstrokes on the right-hand side. So I'm going to dip my brush loaded up. Again. I don't want it to be dripping pigment. I'll start on the left-hand side of the page here by just gently pressing the edge of my brush down. Then I'll increase the pressure and drag this right across with the goal of just pulling off the brush. And as you can see, it starts out nice and colored and thick. And it ends up with more of a brushstroke. And again, I want to do this four times. I load my brush, make sure that I don't have too much pigment on it. Set my brush down, increase the pressure. Gently pull it across my page and you can start to see brushstrokes form. I'll do the same thing. Each time I do this, I'm trying to get a feel for how much pigment this brush is holding. And based on the pigment that it's holding, the results that I can expect. With less pigment, I can expect more brushstrokes to show. I'll come back in and on my fourth one, I'll hold up a lot of pigment, not going to clean it off. I'm just going to keep that brush. They're fresh my brush down and pull it across. This is my way to play to see what affects I can get. Next chapter, we'll come back and work on a similar effect. 7. Exercise #6: Flick: So now we have a long bar drawn out with our brush and the pigment. And as it fades off, you get to see brushstrokes. We're gonna do a similar technique, but it's gonna be much shorter. So I'm going to pick up my pigment on my brush. Starting with the same procedure where I pressed the edge of the brush into the paper. And I'm just going to flick it across. And I'm only shooting for approximately an inch to two inches. I get an interesting edge. And that's what I want to see, is what I can do and what this process brings me. Again, it's just a straight down press technique and pull across. Just like that. I get a nice edge on one side and then it fades on the other. 8. Exercises #7 - #10: Flicking, Stamping, Controlled Press: For my next technique, I'm going to take my brush loaded up with pigment and just press it down. And for this technique, I'm going to press down So my brush handle is horizontal, not vertical. So I'm going to press down and up, down and up. And I'm looking to stamp the image and see what results. I'll do this the length of the piece. Now for the next technique, I'm going to switch it around and do it vertical. I want to make a nice dab and press down. And I can come in here, pick up more pigment and press down. Here I get the shape of the brush and the impression. For the next technique I want to come in here, pick up my pigment and my goal is to make not a perfect square, but a perfectly even rectangle. So I'm going to practice this technique. I'm going to press down to start with, drag it, release it, and come up. And you can see the difference that makes compared to just stamping the brush. Again. I'll load the brush up again. I'll do a whole row of these. Now this edge didn't come out the way I wanted. So I have to come back in, try it again and find out what I have to do differently. And I have to drag the edge and then pull up. And again, this takes practice. I'm trying to control the edge of that brush to make the shape that I want. Press down, continue to press up and come across. Press down, drag the brush, and continue to let it taper until I have that edge. Now I could go in there, turning my brush around and sharpen the edge. But for this practice, I'm looking to do this all with just a brush stroke. I'm going to load up my brush again. And I'll just try and do the same thing vertically. You might find it's easier to do it vertically than it is horizontally. So again, I'm trying to be careful and mindful of where my pigment is being drawn. And as you can see, I'm getting some very good results just by pressing that those bristles, pulling it and then controlling where those bristles leave the paper. 9. Exercise #11: Thin Line: So now we're gonna work on some techniques that are very particular for a flat brush. I'm going to wet my brush so that I have a nice shape. Remove some of that water and then I'll pick up the pigment. And yet again, I want there to be a nice sharp edge and I want to be able to control this pigment so I don't want so much that it's dripping out if I just do a light shake of the brush. So I have my sharp edge and I'm gonna come down and very gently just going to set my brush on the paper and slowly drag it across. And my goal is to have a nice straight line, very thin. It's okay if I had a little hiccup here are stutter and that's why we're doing practice. So I make that sharp edge, set my brush down and just drag a thin line across the paper. And I'll do this as many times as I need a minimum of four. I can see the more pressure I add, the thicker that lines gets. So for my last one, I'm going to work on creating a very thin line. Takes barely touching it to the paper. And I have my line. 10. Exercise #12: Thin Thick Line: For my next technique, I want to incorporate this thin line with a thick line. So once again, I'll load my brush. And I'm just going to start very gradually. I want a thin line dragging it across the paper. And I'm going to twist down to thicken the brush and then make that thin line again. So we'll try that again. Thin line. Twist that brush back to the thin line. And again, thin line, twist the brush and then twist it back. And you can see the different ways and the different shapes that I get just by twisting that brush. Thin line, twist to thicken it and make it thin. Again. 11. Exercise #13: Ribbons: For our next exercise, we want to load the brush, again, creating that sharp edge. And now we're going to create a ribbon. We go from thin line to thick line to back to thin line just by dragging it and pulling it across the page. And I have a thin line and a thick line, and then it turns thin and thick. Again, this just takes practice. Start with a thin line. Drag it, get it thick again. Like a world ribbon. Do this two more times. Thin, thick, making a V. And I'll do one more time. Feel free to practice this as much as you want to get a feel for your brush. 12. Exercise #14: Full Page of Exercises: So now we're gonna do techniques and we'll just gonna do a row of them. And we'll do them all at once here. Instead of breaking them down into chapters, I'm going to start by wetting my brush. I haven't wet with water and then with pigment. And again, I'm going to control it so that I have a nice sharp edge. We're going to take advantage of this edge. We're going to just create little straight lines as thin as we can make them. And I'm going to space them fairly good distance apart. I'll go back in, rework that one. So now I want to pick up more pigment because I don't want my brush to dry. And then we're going to add two bars close together to each of the existing ones. And this is just a good way to practice your spacing and your position of your strokes. And in this case it's really just a simple stamp. And now I want to come in here and just fill in that area with these parallel bars. And I can do that on all of these. Again. I'm just trying to keep the lines as thin as possible and not have them intersect with the existing ones. You can do as many of these as you'd like. You're trying to control the brush so you get the right angle, as well as just the right amount of pigment on your paper. You're not trying to saturate or connect any of those images. It's a nice sharp edge. For the next one. Again, we're going to load up our brush. And I want to create plus signs. I go vertical and then horizontal. And again, I'm just working on practicing this technique. Vertical and then horizontal. All the way across. For the next technique, I'm going to load my brush and work on a comma. Then it's not really a comma, but it's taking advantage of the shape of this brush, where I'm going to set my brush down and then twist it to the bottom. So it's essentially a half circle. And I just want to continue this in one distinct motions all the way around. And I can practice not dipping my brush and dipping my brush. And my goal is to have that brush not skip like it did here, and not go past like it did here. So I just got to take my time and create that shape that I like. A can, of course, always go back in and fine tune them. And that's okay, that's what we do while we're painting. But my goal is to work on the exercise of actually pressing down that shape, controlling that brush, and then stopping. Now I want to work on a little flick. I'm going to take my brush, set it down and flick up. And I want to control it, making a whole row of them, whole column of them, the same length. In this case, because I'm dragging it fairly quickly. I'm getting an interesting brushstroke, but I'm really just working on the length of that flick. For the next row, I want to sharpen my brush. And we're just going to create a straight angle. Again. We're working on the size, repeating the size all the way along this column. Now for the next row, we're just do a slight variation of that. And this row is just very good practice for this. We'll sharpen our edge. And now I want that angle. And I want to continue that angle. So it's almost a slight diamond. Again, I bring it across. I'll do this the entire column. Again, approximately the same size for each of them. I can also try it with a slightly different method. Where I'm starting at the top of my brush vertical and pulling it across diagonally. Again, I want them all approximately the same size. I like that sharp edge. And I have a different variation on that diamond. And I'll just continue this entire column this way. And for my last technique, I want to create a fine line and then a thick line, and then vary it, a fine line and a thick line. This helps you to get into the form and the practice of creating a pattern. So you're not just doing a single stroke. You're changing you the way you hold your brush and the way your brush touches the paper. Those are all our versions of using a flat brush to practice some brush exercises. 13. Class Wrap Up: So today in class, we went over a number of exercises using just this flat brush to create different strokes. We did multiples, so repetition in order to get a feel for the particular brush that we're using, regardless of size and how much pigment and water that we need to make our stroke smooth or to have texture in it. Now, by angling the brush differently in a single stroke, we can create these long lines or these wavy lines. And depending on how many times we go over that initial image, just as we did during the exercises, we can have different level of vibrancy. So that's something important to note and something very beneficial to practice when we're using these exercises. By changing the tilt of the brush, the angle and the motion. We get these what I call frequencies that can be very thick. And as you can see, the amount of pigment on the brush affected the way that color dried. And that's just as important to observe that in your final result as it is to actually practice it. Practice making that same frequency but only sharper. And by doing that, we changed and rehearsed the amount of liquid and pigment in the brush to obtain those super sharp lines versus those smoother blends. And it's very interesting and a great exercise to get brush control a little bit more fine tuned with what we want. We did a swipe from wet to dry, whereas the brush pushed the water off, the paper, absorbed it and we were left with whatever remnants were on the brush, whatever remnants of pigment was leftover. And depending on the drag, the pressure, the amount of pigments we started with, we got very different textures. Now, all these textures are very valuable for watercolor artists, particularly when you're working wet, wet brush on dry paper, and that's when you get your most pigment. So it's quite interesting to see we worked with a single color and a single layer today, this was the very beginnings of brushstroke exercises. So from here, instead of doing long single strokes, we did little flicks. And again, we've got a very vivid image and very light flick here that resulted in more texture and more shape. And then we practice just using the actual brush shape. And this will vary depending on the size of the brush, depending on how we hold it, we get a different result. As you can see, the area that I had the most texture and the most pressure gave the most vibrancy than we worked on just creating a little bar and then really try to control it. So that when we lifted our brush, we got a more controlled shape. By having that more controlled shape, we can repeat it to have an abundance of them. So that's a very effective technique in watercolor as well, and particularly in abstract art. Now, really focusing on the qualities of a flat brush. We played around with the angle and the pressure of holding that brush to get a very thin line to twisting it and then back to get that thicker wave going on, but without lifting the brush off the paper. And then by doing that quicker, we got this beautiful ribbon. Then lastly, we had a page of exercises where we played with different techniques from this particular brush. Not only did we make small, thin parallel lines, but then we went back in and tried to place them without touching them. So that was a really interesting exercise, a little different than spacing it quite so widely. And we got a lot of strokes, a lot of images here. Then we made pluses just by alternating the brush angle. And again, you can get different angles. You don't have to have these perpendicular ones. Here. We did a half circle or a comma. And again, we never lifted the brush off the paper. We kept it down and you have different results. More common alike and more half circle like. Then lastly, we just looked at some different shapes. The flick, looking for lots of texture, the rectangle. And then just do a slight tilt to the brush with how we placed it on the paper. We could either get that rectangle or that diamond. And here we achieved the diamond, but going vertically. The last one is we combine them just to make a pattern. And this was just done to rehearse the motion of changing our brush position each time. I hope you found this class helpful, and I hope you found a lot of exercises to help you fine tune your flat brush abilities. There are many ways you can go about creating a page of exercises as we've done in class today. You can feel each exercise on its own page in a watercolor journal. Or you can just pick and choose the exercises that you find most valuable. If you've enjoyed this class, please consider giving it a review. Be sure to subscribe for future updates, and please be sure to follow me on YouTube if you're interested in more art activities. Thank you for joining me today.