Watercolour Painting - Using Brushes

The Flat Brush (Hake)

Lets start with the workhorse brush, the large 1 1/2 inch hake.

It is large, holds lots of water and that needs to be controlled.

1. Start by dipping the brush in the water. Then rest the brush on the rags keeping the tip of the materials clear of the cloth.This way the excess water is taken from the body of the brush and the tips stay wet. Never dry the tips unless you are packing up for the day. Repeat every time you rinse your brush so you control the amount of water in your paint mix. This little routine is important and well worth practicing a few times before starting to paint. With a little practice it will become an automatic habit.
2. Using the corner of the brush tip take up some paint and in the centre of the palette, keep the brush flat, and move from left to right. This blends the paint with the water held in the brush. It also takes up the blended paint on the brush ready to apply to the paper.
3. To mix colours together, the method is as in step 2, just repeat the process with a second, or even third, colour and blend with the first. Turning the brush over and repeating the side to side movement gives an even loading of mixed paint.

Mixing colours and getting the right tone takes time and practice. Watercolourists spend more time mixing their colours than they do actually painting.Test mixes and tones on a spare piece of paper adding water, or paint as needed to get the tone or colour you want.

The smaller flat brush (hake) is used in the same way as the larger one.

A final point on hakes - NEVER bend the bristles down on the palette, it is a sure fire way of damaging the brush.

Using a Rigger

1. The no3 rigger is a very small fine brush. it can be held and used like a pen, dipping into water and then paint and mixing on the palette. This is done with the same sideways movement used with a hake. When using a rigger the paint mix should have a similar consistency as ink
2. As it is so small it will come as no great surprise that the rigger does not hold a lot of water so it may take several dips into the water jar. Use plenty of water as it is all to easy to clog the bristles with lumps of paint. A useful check to see if your paint is mixed, if there are solid lumps of paint on the hairs of your rigger then you need to be using more water.