Hi and welcome. I am Kim Hogue the owner of Heavenly Heart Creations in Bellingham, Mass. My paintings and designs have a refined primitive style. I have found the LOEW CRONELL fabric brushes to give that perfect roundness and softness to help achieve the texture within my designs. Now, let me show you how.
This fabric brushes come in a wide variety of sizes. However, I have found that my favorites are a two, a four and a six and an eight. They were originally designed for the fabric painter. However, as a painter, I thought outside the box and said, this would be perfect for dry brushing, for scumbling and for actually a soft based coat. It is really important that you carry no water in this brush doing this particular method. You want to squirt out acrylic paint onto your pallet. You want to take a brush of size that is going to fit within the area that you are going to work with. You want to dip your brush into the paint, the acrylic paint and then you want to softly work it out in a circular motion on your pallet. All you are trying to do is work that paint into the hairs. Now push it back and forth and then if you find, you still have some paint just buff it across the paper towel. Or I might just take up a little bit more.
And then I am going to softly apply pressure and as you notice, you do not get any outside ridges and I am just going to softly and quickly fill in my letters till I have the whole entire letter fully loaded. You will notice the difference as I am working on this in comparison to what you see here on the candy cane. It is much more okay here. It just gives you a better use of paint and then just quickly fill that in like such.
Now, what I am going to do is same process, load your brush, buff it out, once again no water. You have to keep these brushes absolutely dry. Starting at the top, apply pressure and then as you work towards that next tilt, lift up on the pressure. See how soft gives you that nice icy look to your snow. Always work your brush parallel to the surface as you are working, please do not come up, because this is what will happen, you are going to get those nice little ping pong balls as you start working. It is like those cheeks you want to put on a doll like you see here.
You notice, it is nice, soft, if I was to come in, you will get this, a ping pong ball to the look. Now, if you notice, I have also taken this and I have dry brushed my shading, created my queues with a tint of color to get that aged antique look to our dress. You can come in and apply pressure with the red paint, create the rind of the watermelon. The green area and here I have also dry brushed to create my highlights on her dress, buffing back and forth, buffing back and forth.
Anytime you find that you might have a lot of water paint, always remember you can always scrape it across you paper towel and then just come back in totally on you surface. But remember, parallel to you surface at all times, if you come up you are going to get a ping pong ball effect. You can add detail and then you could always come back in and redefine your highlights.
After you have completed your entire painting, it is really important, you need to get this paint out of the brushes. A lot of times people will say, to me they are in class time, me -- I rinse my brush, I say absolutely not. But then that comes into the fact that you should have several brushes on hand as you are painting because the price point of these brushes are not costly so it is better to have a few in hand. Always one drying of this side, pick one up, you can go to your surface. This way, you will know you will always achieve a soft and wonderful look.
After you have end up painting, rinse your brush out in the paper towel. You can clean it with the best brush cleaner that you have and then you will be ready and set to go free.
