Mind Your Brush Size

How many times, you have felt that you are not going as fast as you would wish, on a particular artwork? Some of the times, it would be because you are not using proper techniques. And many more times, it will be something simple as not using the proper tools. One of the points to note is how big your brush size is.

Fine art is about adding details. God is in details. But we must make a note that we do not get carried away and use a superfine brush from the very begining. To add details, you do need a very small sized brush. But do not use the same brush and paint the full artwork with it. This especially is an issue when you are working on large canvas sizes. In digital medium, you would be required to do so to get the proper DPI if it is intended for print.

Use Proper Brush Sizes

Depending on what part or area of the artwork you are painting, use the proper size of brush. Use as big a brush as you can with which you can execute the most of the details. Switch to the lower sized brushes and paint those area, only when you feel you need to add more detail to it.

If digital medium, most software ususally have the paint bucket. Do consider using it for most of the background and may be even blocking out large areas of the subject. I though, try to avoid the paint bucket (or flood fill as it is called) when I want to give a gradient. Using shading techniques (albeit with proper use of brush sizes) gives better control. And of course, usually in the traditional media, we do not have the liberty of using tools like flood fill, and you would have to opt for larger brushes when you need to paint on large canvases.

Most graphics editors provide the option to increase or decrease the brush sizes. Find out and learn how you do it for your software. In Photoshop, (I think) you can change the brush size by use of [ and ] keys. GIMP does not provide that option, but you can create larger brushes quite easily.

Choice of proper brush sizes goes a long way in keeping you motivated because you can do your artwork a lot faster and still maintain the control over details.

What is your approach for painting large artworks?