2 minute read
Priming Your Brush
— JoSePh gYURcSaK
PRIMING YOUR BRUSH
You’ll see instructions to “prime your brush” many times throughout this book. This means getting your brush bristles ready to accept water and paint.
If your brush is new, it may come in a clear cylinder protector for transporting the brush. Feel free to recycle this or save it to use for protecting your brushes on the go. The clear cylinder keeps your brush point intact and protects the sensitive bristles from bending.
Once you’re ready to paint, bring your brush to your water jar, and press the brush side down against the bottom of the jar, first on one side and then the other. Repeating this motion in the jar allows the bristles to relax and soak in water. Swirl your brush in a figure-eight motion a couple of times. This motion fills the bristles with water, making them ready to accept paint.
The secret of watercolor is that you actually don’t use much paint—you use mostly water! Getting familiar with your brush and how to prime it is the beginning of a healthy relationship with watercolor as a medium.
Prime your brush whenever you sit down to begin a painting—it is the first step—and then as often as needed while you paint. This motion of the bristles in the water against the bottom of your jar clears away the excess pigment from the bristles so that when you bring your brush back to your palette, you can pick up a new color without any remnants of the previous pigment. [A]
One of the reasons people love to look at watercolor pieces, or enjoy watching the painting process, is that this medium seems to move with a life of its own. This is all thanks to water! When combined with water, the paint swirls and moves, independent of its creator’s brush. The only way to achieve this free-flowing dance is by giving the paint enough water with which to move. Streaking and hard lines only appear when there isn’t enough water used on a brush or in a palette in the beginning.
A
BRISTLES FLATTENED cOMPLETELY TO THE FERRULE
THE BOTTOM OF WATER JAR
