Here is the latest time lapse video I made on using a dry brushing technique to paint portraits.
Dry brushing is a technique that allows you to make paintings that look like drawings in less time. In this video I also used a black coloured pencil as I wanted to introduce some lines and fine details for the patterns in my drawing.
I am a Blick Art Materials affiliate and I receive a small compensation for sales. That does not effect in any way the cost of the purchaser’s order but it helps me keeping the content of this blog free.
The only recycled bristol on the market, these pads are designed to appeal to students, with superior construction and heavier weight covers. 96 lb (260 gsm) weight.
For dry brushing you need a few stiff brushes to paint details and one or two soft round brushes for shading. What works well for me is to spread a small quantity of oil paint on a piece of cardboard, then rub my brush on this paint, and dry if a bit on a paper towel before painting on the paper. I find it surprising but you can quite easily erase the paint on the paper with a kneaded or regular eraser, this is very convenient when adding highlights to your portrait.
I am a Blick Art Materials affiliate and I receive a small compensation for sales. That does not effect in any way the cost of the purchaser’s order but it helps me keeping the content of this blog free.
Economical, genuine oil colors clean up with soap and water. Use with 5 non-hazardous mediums allows all the traditional oil painting techniques and styles. Tubes and sets.
Dry brushing painting, a portrait painting video tutorial: Portrait of Charlotte
Originally from France, I have been living in North Vancouver, Canada for the past 20 years.
My work has been collected and exhibited extensively in Canada and internationally. I am also part of the Art Rentals and sales program of the Vancouver Art Gallery.
Many of my paintings have been published in Art books and magazines (Artist Magazine, Watercolor Artist Magazine, Acrylic Magazine, International Artist Magazine). I wrote 2 art instruction books with North Light/F+W Books.
I have been writing for the last 5 years for my blog: paintingdemos.com, that has a mailing list of about 10 000 subscribers and about 20 000 visitors per month.
I am an active member in the community, as a co-founder of the North Shore Art crawl, a co-founder of a weekly life drawing group, a board member of the North Vancouver Arts Council, and have been invited as a juror for public art, art grants and juried exhibitions. You can read more about my collaborations here.
Such wonderful and generous place to visit. Full of hands on lessons! Well Done!
And thank you for the encouraging comment you left on my blog re my papercut. I’m really grateful for your positive respond. It helps me to continue with my creative pursuit.
To answer you questions:
I use basic craft knife. It is of EXCEL brand (made in USA) and am using #11 blade. I’m not sure if you could find it in Canada, but the EXCEL brand is very similar to another brand of craft knife from the states (i.e. X-Acto).
The “precision” of the cut is really about having a detail fine drawing to start, cut slowly with heaps of patience. Change the blade as soon as it starts to drag on the paper. To give you an idea, I’ve used about 10 blades for the cut you commented on.
Hope the above help and feel free to email me with more questions. I’ll be happy to answer them as much as I can.
Thanks Jamie!
I was just re-visiting your blog today, love the bones/skull paper cuts too.
I might try this technique for a small postcard but I don’t think I would have the patience to make bigger pieces like you do.
Thanks for commenting 🙂
Sandrine
Katherine
Thank you SO much for posting this! I’ve been experimenting with dry brushing as well, using the technique on charcoal and graphite so far. Please share as much as you can about it, you do incredible things with your portraits! Do you think dry brushing is appropriate for live figure drawing too? I’ve been wondering about that. I just started going to a weekly figure drawing group.
Thanks Katherine !, I thought about using this technique for life drawing too but I don’t think I would have enough time to do so during the class as our longest poses are about 20 minutes. This portrait took me about 2 hours to paint. I might use my drawings from class as a base though, transfer them on Bristol paper and work on them with the dry brushing technique. Let me know if you give it a try .
Comments (9)
ahfong
Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge. I am 72 years and learning a lot from your demonstrations and love all your paintings
Sandrine Pelissier
Thanks ahfong, I really appreciate your comment 🙂
Max
thank you so much! i know now 🙂
Max
great video, but i can’t eraser on my draw..why? thx for attention
Sandrine Pelissier
Thanks Max :), with this technique you can only erase very light areas, it will not work if there is too much paint.
Hybrid J
Hi Sandrine,
Such wonderful and generous place to visit. Full of hands on lessons! Well Done!
And thank you for the encouraging comment you left on my blog re my papercut. I’m really grateful for your positive respond. It helps me to continue with my creative pursuit.
To answer you questions:
I use basic craft knife. It is of EXCEL brand (made in USA) and am using #11 blade. I’m not sure if you could find it in Canada, but the EXCEL brand is very similar to another brand of craft knife from the states (i.e. X-Acto).
The “precision” of the cut is really about having a detail fine drawing to start, cut slowly with heaps of patience. Change the blade as soon as it starts to drag on the paper. To give you an idea, I’ve used about 10 blades for the cut you commented on.
Hope the above help and feel free to email me with more questions. I’ll be happy to answer them as much as I can.
Cheers,
Hybrid J(amie) 🙂
Sandrine Pelissier
Thanks Jamie!
I was just re-visiting your blog today, love the bones/skull paper cuts too.
I might try this technique for a small postcard but I don’t think I would have the patience to make bigger pieces like you do.
Thanks for commenting 🙂
Sandrine
Katherine
Thank you SO much for posting this! I’ve been experimenting with dry brushing as well, using the technique on charcoal and graphite so far. Please share as much as you can about it, you do incredible things with your portraits! Do you think dry brushing is appropriate for live figure drawing too? I’ve been wondering about that. I just started going to a weekly figure drawing group.
Sandrine Pelissier
Thanks Katherine !, I thought about using this technique for life drawing too but I don’t think I would have enough time to do so during the class as our longest poses are about 20 minutes. This portrait took me about 2 hours to paint. I might use my drawings from class as a base though, transfer them on Bristol paper and work on them with the dry brushing technique. Let me know if you give it a try .