Dry Brush Painting Technique Explained

Dry brush is a technique that is often used in painting and miniature decoration. It is easy to learn and can produce wonderful artwork in the hands of professionals and hobbyists alike. The present article introduces this technique and points out some of its characteristic features as well as the best ways to employ them.

Description

As the name of the technique suggests, a relatively dry brush is loaded with paint and is then used to apply this paint on paper or primed canvas. The strokes that the dry brush produces are characteristically scratchy and lack the smoothness of washes and blended paint. They can be wild or restrained, emphatic or subdued, depending on the painter’s artistic intentions.

Types of Paint Used and Their Application

There are two basic types of paint that can be used with dry brushes: water-based paints and oil-based paints. When water-based media, for example, acrylic paints, inks, watercolor or tempera paints, are used, the brush has to be dry of all water before the paint can be loaded on them (the paint itself should be thick or with high viscosity). The brush then should be applied to a dry support. There are some water paints, however, that must be loaded first and only then should the brush be wiped dry. 

When a dry brush is used with oil-based media, it must be dried not of water, but of the oil and solvent contained in the paint. Since oil paint takes a longer time to dry than water paint, brushing over or blending strokes have to be avoided so that the distinctive appearance of the dry brush technique may be preserved.

Other Instruments Used in Dry brush Painting

The brushes most often preferred for dry brush painting are the bristle and synthetic ones, which are particularly suitable for laying the paint on the canvas or model. As for the canvas paper, a relatively inexpensive but good option is the Italian watercolor paper Fabriano, which can be used both for portraits and landscapes.

If you want your painting to be exquisite, before you begin with the actual dry brushing, you should delineate your subject matter using a pencil and a rubber eraser. Virtually any ordinary HB pencil will do, but when choosing the eraser, make sure it is a very soft one, so that you do not harm the canvas surface when rubbing.

History

This technique began its existence in Soviet Russia in the middle of the last century when local painters began to experiment with new artistic media and techniques. For example, they would make a pencil drawing on a white cotton sheet and then start rubbing dry paint into it. Later they would move onto using proper canvases as well as natural brushes for a finer effect.

Unsurprisingly the first beneficiaries of this new technique were the current leaders of the Communist Party, who - the paragons of modesty that they were - commissioned meters-high portraits and hung them on public places.

Later, especially after the tear-down of the Iron Curtain, the dry brush technique was introduced in the West and is often used today not only in traditional painting, but also in the artistic decoration of various everyday objects.