Mark-making can be loose and gestural or very controlled. It’s personal, but it’s also something you can learn.
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Dining Room in the Country, 1913, Pierre Bonnard, courtesy Minneapolis Institute of Art. Bonnard used small brush strokes, intense colors, and close values. |
Modern viewers are immediately captivated by bravura brushwork; it’s a sign of self-confidence and competence. It comes from lots of practice.
Wheatfield with Crows, 1890, Vincent van Gogh,
courtesy Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. The motion in the painting is created by
his brush strokes. |
First, let’s talk about how not to do it:
- Unless you’re doing close detail, don’t hold your brush like
a pencil. It’s a baton, and holding it to the back of the center-point (away from the ferrule) gives
you more lyrical motion. Your grip can still be controlled by your thumb, you
can hold it loosely, or even clutch it in your fist. The important thing is to
let your arm and shoulder drive the movement of the brush, rather than just
your wrist and hand. The farther back you hold the brush, the more scope of
movement. To loosen up, blast some music and pretend you’re the conductor and
that brush is your baton.
- Don’t dab. By this I mean a pouncing/stabbing motion with
the tip of your brush. It’s amateurish in oils, anemic in acrylics, and hell on
your brushes.
- Don’t use brush strokes that go in all one direction. Learn to apply paint in the round. This is a rule that can be broken, but make sure you’re doing so intentionally, not just because you don’t know how to paint in every direction.
There are many painters whose brushwork I admire, but there’s little point in trying to copy them in my own work. Brushwork is as personal as handwriting. It’s where the artist expresses—or suppresses—his feelings. There’s value in attempting to copy passages by great painters, and I suggest you do so with the samples I’ve attached to this blog. But don’t try to paint like Sargent or Van Gogh or Rembrandt; use what you learn to create your own mature style.
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Waterlilies, c. 1915, Claude Monet, courtesy Neue
Pinakothek, Munich. Monet makes no attempt to hide his drawing in this
painting. The brushstrokes are wet-over-dry. |
Use your brushwork to highlight the focal points in your
painting. Sharp, clean, contrasting marks draw the eye, where soft, flowing,
lyrical passages encourage us to move through. Let there be dry-brush texture
and unfinished passages in your painting.
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Lady Agnew of Lochnaw, 1892, John Singer Sargent,
courtesy Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh. Note that the transparent
sleeves are not produced by glazing, but with direct, long brushstrokes. |
Above all, don’t bury your line. Much of the power of Edgar Degas’ mature work comes from his powerful drawing; he was the most accurate draftsman of his age, and he let that stand prominently in his work.