To Dry Brush or not to Dry Brush

     In traditional watercolor painting the term “dry brush” refers to when the brush skips over the top of a bumpy cold pressed paper depositing paint on the hills of the paper and not in the valleys. In order to do this the brush is not sopping wet with paint or it would run down into those valleys and the effect would not be achieved (think Andrew Wyeth’s paintings).

     With botanical painting a smooth hot pressed paper is used because botanical artists are crazy for all the minute detail found in our subjects and it would be more difficult to paint if our brush was fighting the texture of a bumpy paper. For example it would be difficult to get a tiny straight line to look straight if it is going up and down through those hills and valleys.

     In my botanical painting I first layer washes of paint then later I smooth with what I call “dry brush” though it is not and does not look like traditional dry brush. I’ve always called it dry brush because the brush is drier than how I had it for the wash phase. Makes sense to me! A few years back I was asked to contribute to a Walter Foster book on watercolor. When I submitted my writing on my technique I was told “well that’s not really dry brush”. So we ended up calling it layering and then explained the dry brush technique.

     When dry brushing I am really drawing with the paint using mostly the tip of the brush. Your paint mixture should not be too watery (or you won’t make enough of a difference to see it), and not too dark(or you will see very distinct lines). I use this technique to get even tone and add detail. Because I can later even out the tone using dry brush my washes do not have to be perfect, just lighter in value than what I want in the finished painting. I show this smoothing out of tone in a small very uneven area in my Layering/Dry Brush video. Any mottled area of paint, no matter how uneven, can be smoothed using this technique.

…Happy Painting!