Easel Talk 12: Brush Technique
And Brushwork in Landscape Painting
Today we’re diving deep into brush technique and brushwork - one of the most fundamental yet misunderstood aspects of oil painting.
I got some great comments on my Substack about brushwork questions, and I thought rather than demonstrate this on the easel, we’d have a philosophical chat about it. I’ve worked with many students locally, side-by-side, and I think this conversational approach will serve us better right now.
My Early Days: Replicating Photos
When I first started painting, I had a few hog bristle brushes and some soft ones. I was basically taking little bits of paint, looking at my photo, and replicating it. Some of those paintings were nice and successful, but they weren’t really paintings so much as reproductions of photos in paint.
The Historical Context: Why Smooth Became Loose
Fast-forward to my museum visits - I’d study the beautiful landscape rooms with American paintings of the Hudson River School. The surface is almost undisturbed by brushwork. Everything’s very smooth. This was the aesthetic of the 1700s and 1800s - strong brushwork simply wasn’t popular.
You would see loose, expressive work in the studies that masters did, where they were just working things out. Sometimes that work seems incredibly modern now. Once we rolled into the photographic era, something changed for painting. Photography freed artists to be more expressive.
The Barbizon Revolution
This shift really starts with the Barbizon School in France – Millet, Corots. Corot wasn’t a thick impasto guy, but you could definitely see distinct brushstrokes. I’ve seen his work in real life at the Louvre, and you can see how he achieved his effects through a collection of separate brushstrokes all working together.
Fast-forward a bit more, and you have Sisley and Monet doing the same thing. When you look at their paintings close up, they don’t even really come together. When you pull back, all these loose brushstrokes give you a cohesive result.
The Plein Air Factor
Plein air painting became popular thanks to one invention: metal paint tubes. Before that, painters had to work with paint stored in bladders. Suddenly artists could go out into the landscape directly with their tubes and start making paintings.
If you’ve been out working plein air, you know things are changing rapidly. You’ve got to get in there, make your statement, and get out. This urgency naturally leads to looser, more expressive brushwork.
The Barbizon painters were the first to say, “Yeah, we like it like this. We’re gonna leave it.” The Impressionists definitely carried this through, bringing a lack of concern about surface quality into the modern painting milieu.
Why Loose Brushwork Matters
Here’s the counterintuitive truth: Gestural, loose brushwork lets your viewer fill in the details.
Your viewers have looked at a zillion bushes, trees, and rocks in their lives. They don’t need much to finish the scene. And really, when they’re able to do that, it’s a much more satisfying painting experience.
It’s also, I’ll admit, a bit more difficult to pull off than getting into what I call “rendering mode” - where you’re breaking everything down very precisely, just filling in little blocks of whatever.
The Massive Benefits of Loose Brushwork
Increased compositional flow - there’s more air and space in your painting
More expressive quality - gives viewers a greater sense of how you felt about the scene
The painting feels more alive - and this is definitely something to work towards
The Career Arc Pattern
Many top Tonalist’s followed a similar trajectory. Take Inness, for example. He started as a Hudson River guy with little tiny strokes, lots of them. Toward the end of his career, the sheep he painted in some landscapes were mere suggestions - he got a little carried away. But that approach is actually more satisfying.
How many times have I said it? Big shapes with the colors nicely modulated - that’s a painting. People will accept that as a painting. Bringing in a zillion extra strokes and details? That’s amateurish.
I’ll never forget - when I first came to the Quarry Arts Center, there was a guy (rest his soul, he’s passed away) who was brilliant in many ways. He could build boats, guitars, and he painted. He’d worked as a commercial illustrator too. But I saw a painting he’d done - a robed figure in a field of grass - and every single blade of grass had been painted. The robe was all detailed.
His friend tried to sell it to me. I said nope. It was overdone, overblown. Too much brushwork, too much tightness. It’s not a good effect, amateurish.
Learning from Corot
I do a lot of studies after Corot (there’s a playlist on the channel). His main innovation was how he handled tree shapes. Before him, landscape painters tree shapes were definitely etched against the sky. His trees had air in them.
The way he accomplished this was through careful brushwork - lots of subtle value modulations, each pulled off with intentional strokes. The end result was a shimmering quality, and that’s all brushwork. It’s not the canvas.
I have a shortcut for getting that Corot effect: I use fairly thin paint at the tree edges over the sky, and it gives an equivalent result. I do this pulling thing, but I don’t do hundreds of little strokes - that’s just not my cup of tea. I try to internalize what he was doing, synthesize it, and make it work for me as a modern painter.
My Approach to Brush Technique
Rule Number One: Bigger Brush
Ready? Use a slightly bigger brush than is comfortable for you.
This will make your paintings better right away. You might think, “I need more detail to make a better painting,” so you reach for little brushes and work for days and days. But here’s what’s funny - when you invest a lot of time and energy into something, you get invested in it. It gets hard to admit you might have wasted time.
Work with a bigger brush than is comfortable, and your work will look more like a painting rather than some kind of half-baked photo.
Vary Your Grip
I’ve had lots of students here, and every one of them held their brush like a pencil at first.
There’s a reason brushes have long handles. You get different effects by holding the brush different ways. If you have trouble remembering, set a kitchen timer every two minutes to remind you to change your grip. This is one of the great ways you can build your own style.
Five Ways to Modify Strokes After the Initial Mark
Here’s a big tip I got from Bob Rohm’s excellent book The Painterly Approach: When you make a stroke, really, there’s only one part of that stroke that’s usually going to be useful.
You might think professional painters just throw down perfect strokes every time. Sometimes, yes. But a lot of times, no. So keep in mind:
Come in and hit it again if needed
Lightly touch with your finger to soften
Use a knife at the end of a session to remove peaks
Paper towel technique - very lightly dab to modify
Wide brush pass - very carefully go over the top with a clean, wide brush
Whatever you need to do to modify those strokes to have everything looking congruent.
Edge Control: The Hard Edge Problem
Hard edges everywhere is distracting. Richard Schmidt taught me this years ago through his DVDs. You can’t have hard edges everywhere across your painting - that’s a terrible look.
You want areas with harder edges in your brushwork, and areas with less distinct edges where you smooth things out. But when you do, always make sure you don’t start smearing things together. That looks terrible, and oil paint loves to let you do it.
The Solution
Crisp edges only in the focal area - this is also where you might have your greatest contrast (darkest dark, lightest light, hardest edge)
Everywhere else, soft - slightly soften your edges, but don’t get crazy
Don’t start smearing - don’t start overblending
Even better: when you’re painting the focal area, paint with a little more edgy feeling. When painting elsewhere, use a more diffused feeling.
The Blending Trap
Don’t over-blend. Don’t smear. This gives oil paintings a bad name - it looks greasy. It’s easy to do because oil paint stays wet longer.
If I do over-blend (and sometimes I do), I’ll repaint that area to reintroduce character. You never want smearing. Don’t do it.
We all saw Bob Ross smear the heck out of that sky when we were kids. God bless Bob, but remember - Bob was teaching non-painters how to paint. I’m teaching painters how to paint.
Better Blending: Mix Intermediate Colors
Here’s a valuable tip: Say you’ve got tree edges over sky (the toughest thing to paint by a long ways). Don’t hesitate to mix an intermediate color. Take the time. You might feel like you need to rush, but mixing a transitional color will only take a moment, and then you’ll have a transitional space that will support the effect you’re going after.
The Paper Towel Technique
Once in a while, the paper towel is a great painting tool. Especially if I’m working fairly large in the underpainting stage. If there’s just a big expanse of foliage or whatever, I’ll get in there with the paper towel.
Here’s a tip for more fully painted areas: take your paper towel and kind of dab gently. It picks up paint and moves it around, which is kind of nice. But one thing I really like about it is that it breaks the painting out of “brush stroke, brush stroke, brush stroke” - it just breaks things up a little bit.
Be careful with it and experiment. It might be a perfect time to experiment when your painting is going pear-shaped. Maybe finish it with a paper towel - why not?
My Personal Evolution
I started with lots of little sable brushes making lots of little marks, really doing my best to duplicate the photo. Now I take inspiration from the photo and worry about making a nice painting.
I went from lots of small strokes and dabs to getting very loose. Then I got what I call a bit baroque and affected. If you look at my work from 2011-2012, I did these little wiggle things and was very precious about it. I look at those paintings now and... well, I sold plenty of that stuff, but I don’t like anything precious or that calls attention to itself.
I like my strokes to all work together as an organic expression of me interpreting the scene, as opposed to “oh, I do some little crazy wiggles here.”
That said, you’ve got to work through all these different things on your own. Maybe you like the crazy wiggles. Maybe you’ve got the crazy wiggle style. Maybe you’ll turn that into something awesome.
Now: Offhand and Intuitive
Now I prefer things to be more offhand. The strokes come off the brush loose and intuitive. Thoughts come up, they’re part of the painting, and then we’ve already moved on. That’s how you want to paint.
How do you get there? You’ve got to do a lot of paintings, my friend. Do one a day. Why not? You’ll have something to show for your time - better than scrolling, better than watching another episode of Underdog (if you’re old, you’ll know Underdog).
Lots of paintings means the brush becomes an extension of you and your conscious impetus to create. That’s where you want to end up, and it becomes more and more individualized. It’s awesome.
Sometimes I do bad paintings. I do. I’ve done some not that long ago. And I do some that are just okay. That’s all good. It’s all part of doing lots of paintings. You’ve definitely got to separate yourself from outcomes and fall in love with the process.
Finding Your Balance
Too much control? Too stiff. Not good.
Too loose? Too chaotic, incoherent. Not good.
In between? Practice with that. Try different size brushes, different size substrates. You’ll start finding a place where you’re successful and comfortable.
Definitely invest in doing master studies. When I do them, I don’t try to duplicate their strokes - I try to just get the feeling they had, painting my way. That works really well.
It’s Not About Rules
Balance is achieved through practice. That’s the only way. But definitely remember to change up the way you’re holding the brush. Experiment. Don’t be too invested in outcomes, especially early on.
Make your paintings. If they’re bad, throw them away. Keep the good ones. That’s good advice.
It’s about developing an intuitive sense of what the painting needs, where, and when. This builds and builds and becomes a sort of unconscious foundation that supports your work and your painting enterprise.
When to Let a Bold Stroke Stand
There are times, even if it’s a little off, I’ll go, “Yeah, I’m just going to leave it.” It’s making a statement. Is it a perfect statement? No. But it’s true to what I’m after right now, so I’m going to leave it.
When to Soften and Modulate
If I’ve decided one area of the painting is going to have some bold, strong brushwork, I definitely don’t want that across the entire surface. That’s not going to be productive.
Brushwork conveys the physical properties of a painting and creates an emotional response.
A Word About Paint Thickness
I’m not an impasto guy. Almost 10 years ago, I did a few successful paintings where I painted really thick. I managed to pull it off twice, but it was such a slog to work with paint that thick.
I tend to err on the side of thinner paint, but I’ll point out: you want to be careful with your paint not being too thin. Oil paint becomes increasingly translucent over time. If you paint very, very thinly, don’t be surprised if your painting reveals a lot more of that ground color than you thought as time marches on.
Closing Thoughts: Brushwork is Your Handwriting
I don’t know if they even teach kids cursive anymore, but I had to re-teach myself. I had a teacher in junior high who didn’t like my cursive handwriting and made me print all my papers. So I just printed until my 40s or 50s. Then I got a phone with a stylus and thought, “No, I’m gonna retrain myself to do cursive writing.”
Your handwriting is a definite expression of who you are, and brushwork is the handwriting of the painting world. No question about that.
The Journey
The journey usually starts with being a bit tighter, a bit nervous. You don’t really know how to do things. Work through it, but know where you’re headed: you want to get looser, you want to paint with more confidence, you want to let things go.
Letting things go means you’re going to get more air and expression in your work. And I’ve pointed this out many times: a loose and expressive amateurish painting is going to be way superior to an overly worked, overwrought amateurish painting.
At least we know how you were feeling about the scene. At least we got a sense of how things were going for you.
Your Assignment
Embrace the potential for expression. You’re already here - you love painting, you want to paint some more, and you should. It’s one of the greatest uses of time ever.
I know it’s not easy. It isn’t. I’m not the channel that makes it look easy (they say that’s the best way to grow on YouTube). I try to give you good tips, but yeah, it ain’t easy. But it’s rewarding. It’s a great use of time, and it’s an intellectual exercise that will stretch and expand you as a person.
Key Practices
Be willing to experiment - the number one thing you can do is change how you hold that brush
Trust the intuition - and what feeds intuition is experience
Do lots of paintings - that’s how you get to that place where you break through
If you have this attitude of “I need to do a very few perfect paintings,” it’s going to be much harder for you. Do lots and lots of imperfect paintings, and your brushwork will start coalescing more around who and what you are as a painter.
Whatever your aims, if you want to learn painting, you’re better off doing lots of little loose paintings than a few big tight ones.
Remember
The evolution of brushwork in history was smooth to expressive
Your evolution may follow a similar arc
Loose brushwork lets you trust the viewer to complete the picture - that’s powerful, that’s magic
Your brush doesn’t just apply paint - it expresses who you are
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Want More Easel Talks?
I had the idea to do this brush technique talk because of several comments requesting it. If there’s something you want me to address, I probably have a chapter in my new book about it, and I’ll turn that into a talk. We’ll make it happen.
Until we come back with another Easel Talk for your edification and enjoyment, do me a favor: take good care of yourself, stay out of trouble, and fight the power.
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thankyou
Awesome insight Mike, thank you.