There's magic in a watercolor brush.
Magic that leads to patterns and pictures and fun
when you find out the many ways you can use a brush.
Here to help you is your TV art teacher, James A.
Schwalbach, extension specialist in art and
design of the University College of Agriculture, Mr.
Schwalbach. Hello boys and girls.
There's magic in a brush.
It's a marvelous piece of drawing equipment.
You know that the Japanese and the Chinese use a brush
not only for their drawings but for their writing as
well just as we use a pen.
Wean was constant of course, no that the Norwegians use a
brush a great deal to decorate plates.
Now in Mexico the Mexican pottery artists use a
brush to decorate their pottery plates and bowls that they make.
Today we're going to try out a brush and see how much
magic we can find in it.
Let's start out by checking our supplies.
That's really very simple.
First of all and most important of course we need our brush.
Now most of you will have a brush
something like this.
If it's good and clean it'll come up to
a single point when you wet it in water or dip it in your ink.
If you have more than one point on your brush you just haven't
kept your brush clean enough but let's not worry about that.
Some of you may have a slightly different type of brush.
It's a brush that is wide and broad at the end.
That's alright too.
It'll make a little different kind of a line.
As you stroke it one way it'll make a very broad line.
As you stroke it another way it'll
make a thin line.
So you can use that type of brush as well.
Now for our painting and our drawing and our experiments
with the brush I just assume not have you use
your watercolors today.
I'd like to work just in one color so that we can use to just
use working with the brush.
And for that we're going to use something we used last week.
Just ordinary ink.
The ink out of the ink well of your
desk will work very well.
Or if you have a bottle of ink use that as well.
I wouldn't use the ink although it's possible it's
a little bit expensive.
Just ordinary cheap drawing ink.
Finally because we may be a little bit messy we're
going to need just the rag.
Ordinary old rag to wipe off the brush between colors
and keep our hands clean.
And last of all an old jar full of water.
We're going to need that to clean
off our brush in between.
Now I'd like to have you be very sure that you have all those
materials on your desk.
In addition of course to possibly
two sheets of drawing paper.
Let's check just a minute now.
Two sheets of drawing paper.
Your watercolor brush.
Your ink ordinary writing ink.
A paint rag.
And a jar of water.
You have all that set and ready to go.
Fine now I'd like to just say a few things about the care
of a brush.
You know when we dip a brush in ink and
make a stroke with it on the page we get it 30 of course.
And we want to clean it out in between those strokes.
In cleaning that do it in this
manner. Just dip it down into the water but not down so it
comes to the bottom of the jar.
And this jar is very easy and just swish it around in the
water but don't get it down to the bottom.
If you get it near the edge it will ruin the hairs.
Another thing never allow your brush to set down at
the bottom of the jar on its end.
If you do that you can see the tip bending right
down at the bottom it's going to be a little bit bent.
After you get the brush all swished out and cleaned then
when you set it down take your egg wipe it out well so all the
brush all the water is removed.
And set it down just in an open space so it doesn't show so it
doesn't bend against anything.
You're setting it in a box don't have the tip up against
the box.
Don't set it in such a way so that the end of the
brush will bend against the jar.
Because here's what happens there you can see it bending
and then as the brush dries if we bring it up it
will dry in this manner.
And if you have a brush in your watercolor box that looks
like this will bud all the good for it spinning around
corners and that's even a little difficult with it.
So let's keep it straight.
Watch out how you set it down.
Now in using the brush itself we use it again using just
the tip of it just touching the brush to the page.
Once in a while I find a boy or girl and instead of just
using this tip will come down and they'll just scrub
away like this on the brush.
Well now what happens again is that you may be getting lots
of paint on the page at the time but you're just ruining
all the hairs of that brush.
So let's keep it nice and easily held in our end
and just running the tip gradually touching it and
it'll work much better and take care of the brush.
Now so much for our materials and how to take care of it.
What can we do with these brushes?
Well there's just many many things to do and we're just
going to try a few of them.
Now I want you to go right along with me now.
So when all of you pick up that watercolor
brush, get that watercolor brush in your hand already.
Dip it down in your ink so it's fully charged with
ink. Get it loaded with ink.
Wipe it off against the side of your ink well or pan so you
have a point.
Now let's come up here and hold the brush
in your hand in this fashion.
So it's straight up and down so that you can rest the hand
on the page as I'm doing here and then just touch the
tip of the brush to the page.
You see the very very fine line I'm making here.
Will you try that?
Just touch the tip of the brush to the
page, holding it the right.
Now if your brush isn't clean you're getting more than
one line and there isn't terribly much we can do
about that.
Just touch it in.
Now take it and let's just zigzag it back and forth.
You'll find when you do this you're going to get a slightly
thicker line in some parts and a thinner in the other.
Just zigzag back and forth.
That's one kind of line that we can do.
Will you do that on your page?
Just zigzag back and forth with your brush.
Fine. Just dip it in the ink again to be sure it's
fully charged down here with it.
Come over here and we're going to take a single stroke
and first draw that thin line that we did before.
Just a very very thin line.
We do that.
Now take it and press the brush about
halfway down in the page and you'll get a heavy
line with the same brush.
You see that?
Two lines with the same brush.
Let's dip it back in the ink.
Now try this.
Press lightly, come down hard and come up lightly again.
When you try that you see how that stroke varies from
a very thin line here coming up gradually to a thicker
line back to a thin line.
By pressing lightly, pressing hard, pressing lightly.
Are you doing that?
Try that out on your sheet of paper I hope so.
Alright, now let's try just something again,
a little bit different.
You can use your brush as a sort of a cross hat.
Just taking a killing foot color and pressing
hard and light as you wish and just do this and then come this
and then do this and come that.
Cross them right over and up and do this and come that on top
of it, right on top.
Very very quickly.
Don't work too slowly on this at all.
Just a sort of a cross hat sort of thing.
And you'll get again a little bit different texture.
It'll be thick and thin in some parts as you just
happen to press on the brush.
So try that on your paper.
Just cross hatch very quickly down.
You think go very quickly, just keep dipping your brush in
the ink well in between.
Now coming down we haven't done
any curved lines and just take this and just swirl this around.
Again, varying the pressure, winding all the way
around the page in a very wiggly sort of a fashion.
Pressing hard, coming up and pressing light.
And you'll get a curly, cool, cute sort of thing.
Try that on your paper.
Just a swirl.
Don't cover all of your paper just a little experiment.
Alright, get some more ink on the brush.
Coming over your wavy lines.
Now we can have the waves very sharp
and point it in this manner if we wish going up and down.
Up and down, one right underneath another.
Up and down, coming up, point it.
Or if the day is a little bit calmer, then just a
slow, easy roll of the brush.
Again, another different thing that you can do with
your brush.
Are you trying this along with me?
Quick strokes coming up to a point.
Slow, easy moving strokes just rolling along the page.
Something different again.
Get some more ink on that brush.
This time we're going to be sure we have a point or several
points. Hold it and just barely touch this to the page.
Just a little dot down on the brush.
Coming down, just making a little bit of dot on the page.
Just touching them.
Just as fine as you can make them.
Now let's see another little different way of using your
brush. Just having a little bit of dot done.
Let's try that.
Just touch the brush.
Now if you have more than one point to
your brush, you're going to have more than one dot at a time.
Maybe that would be a good idea, but let's try it this way.
Let's turn the page.
If your page is full, just turn it over
and take that second sheet of paper as you wish.
Maybe you'll have room on this first place.
We did regular dots before dots almost the same size.
Let's try it a little bit differently.
Instead of dotting, just stroking very short.
Coming in and just making a quick stroke.
Just very quick ones in here.
You'll get dots that very in length.
They may go in different directions.
They may go all in the same direction.
Just very, very quick little strokes with the brush.
On that's another thing we can do.
Just instead of the dot, very brief little line.
Are we trying that?
It's very brief little strokes on the page.
Now this is a little bit different.
Now you watch this quite closely because you
may never have done this before, at least not knowing.
Take your brush, fill it with ink, and over here on the
side of your paper, just wipe the ink off the brush until
you get most of the ink out.
You want to get almost all of the ink out of the brush.
I'm just wiping that brush off on the sheet of paper.
Let's just do that.
Get it all.
Now it's pretty dry.
And that's what this is called.
This is called a dry brush type of technique.
Because we work with the brush, it's been filled with ink
and then wiped off so it's almost dry.
Now come over here with this dry brush and just
lightly brush it on the page.
And you see what happens?
We don't get a solid color.
We get a sort of a stroke, a sort of a shaded effect.
And we may want to use this for
shading on the sides of tree trunk so the sides of flowers
are stemmed.
Just a sort of an uneven color on the page.
You've had that happen to you on your drawing when you didn't
want it to happen.
And actually you can make a use of it.
Now the next thing we want to try, you boys and girls that
have old and brushes that have more than one point are going
to work very well at this.
Those who have nice clean brushes are going to have
to make your brush have a more than one point.
Dip your brush into the ink again.
It lots of ink on it.
Then come up here.
My brush comes to one very nice point
here as you probably can see.
It's a very nice sharp point.
But I've used that before and I don't want to do it this way.
So take your finger, you'll get your fingers a little bit dirty
doing it.
And just actually separate that the hairs of that
brush. Separate it carefully.
So I have in here now several points.
I could have two, I could have three or four
as we wish.
Then taking this brush which we call a
split hair brush because the hairs have been split.
And coming down and you see you get four or five lines at
a time and you get a little different type of texture.
You could cross them if you wish and
you can get a pattern that way.
Making what we call a split hair stroke.
You might try that with your brush now.
Just using several different points.
Separating them if you have only one point.
And drawing sideways or up and
down or any fashion way you wish to get several lines
with one stroke of the brush.
Now there's just two more ways that we want to use the brush.
I want to suggest to you.
One is something that you've used a lot and you're familiar
with. And for this we need a very full color charge brush.
Charge it full with ink.
Come down and we very frequently
use the brush to cover large areas very quickly in
a nice smooth solid color.
Now your color will be solid if the color in the brush
comes out evenly and solidly.
You have a little more color at one time.
It will come out uneven.
And that doesn't make too much difference.
Now that's one way of using the brush getting solid
colors. For clean lines we do just the lines with the
brush on a dry sheet of paper.
But it may be that at some time we might want to make a line
with our brush that is sort of soft and sort of the few that
we can't see too clearly.
And we can do that very easily.
And to do that if you pick up another brush or clean out
your same brush if you wish you can do that.
I said let's do that.
Just clean out your brush in water so you have
no ink, clean it, wipe it out.
So you have just nothing but water in the brush.
Then take that brush, there's nothing
but water unless just wet a portion of the page.
Just put some water on there.
We just have a wet section of the page.
In fact you can take a whole sheet of paper and put it
in a bathtub or something like that so the whole sheet is wet.
Then wipe off this brush again so we get the extra water
out because you don't want any that water in our ink.
Wipe it off.
Have you done that?
Have you wet the sheet of paper with your brush?
Wipe off the brush that had water on so you have a
clean dry brush and there's a section of your paper wet.
Let's do that right now because we're going to need that wet
for this next experiment here.
We're all ready for that and take the clean dry brush, put
it in your ink and let's not get too much ink on this time.
Just a little bit at the tip and come in here and tip it
down. You see what happens?
It almost explodes.
That color just runs out on that wet
sheet and you get a sort of a diffuse or a soft effect.
And it may be that at some time we would like that type of
effect. Try to put a little dot in here and there and just see
how the color just shoots out.
And there's sometimes we want to work on a dry piece of paper
getting designs that way and other places where we want to
work on a wet sheet of paper.
Now using our brush we can create all sorts of patterns.
You saw when I started the program I was working a
little floral design here.
My brush drawing a little round stroke with some other strokes
that came out for creating leaves very very quickly here.
Now that's one way you can use it drawing some sort of
a pattern that you might see the thrill.
You could use it just to create patterns, just
designs that don't really look like anything that just
patterns and that's all.
But before we begin experimenting with these brushes
and playing with them and having fun, I want to show you
what some adult artists, some other artists like yourself
in some cases and some that are living in other countries,
have done with the brush and used the brush to create
pictures and to create patterns.
I had the opportunity a number of years ago to visit Wales,
England. And I came back with me with this piece of pottery.
The piece of pottery made in a Welsh pottery work.
And I hope you can see this.
Now how the Welsh artist has taken a brush and encircles
around this has drawn circles concentric one with within
the other right around the outside of this jar to
create part of the design.
And then while this design was still wet on this sheet
of or on this piece of pottery it wouldn't be paper.
While it was still wet they took
a dry brush and just went right across those wet lines
bringing them very quickly out.
And that gave a sort of a radiating effect.
These lines came right through the other
wet lines and dragged them out.
And at the edge they put three little dots to create actually
a very lovely pattern that doesn't look like anything at
the sort of a design on a plate.
Down in Mexico the Mexican artists have done exactly the
same thing with their pottery, creating in many cases floral
patterns. And I have two little bowls to show you here.
These bowls were created by a Mexican potter and not being
abstract designs here you have floral designs leaves and little
branches where the brush itself was used to suggest the design.
You can see actually those things really don't
exist but they look a little bit like flowers.
Now artists can not only use the brush to create patterns
on plates and bowls but we do that right here in Wisconsin.
And here I have a design which is a very very simple
one I like very much made by our Norwegian artists.
On a blow on a wooden plate.
You can see here how just the simple brush stroke was drawn
across here with a little blob at the end.
And then in between those were just simple
strokes of the brush that very same stroke I showed you.
It thin here starting to thick and coming back to thin
again thin to thick to thin where the brush was pressed
lightly pressed harder pressed lightly creating a sort of
a simple abstract design for a plate that's very simple
to do and very easy to do.
The Norwegians use this also for drawing decorative Easter eggs
for flowers on bowls as well.
Here we have what I'd really like to show you because it's a
very beautiful little Easter egg right here in the center where
the artist has painted a solid color over the egg underneath.
Then with the brush has created just a little design pattern,
cross hatches and some parts swirling the brush in other.
You may be able to see some of these sort of floral
patterns. These were not drawn to resemble certain flowers
but actually were just designs created by the brush itself.
Let's go on a little further.
Many of you have seen plates and cabinets decorated in
this manner.
Now we can rosemolling again.
This doesn't actually exist but a simple
sweep of the brush coming up here in a big bold way
with other lines and patterns added to it over the top.
The Japanese and the Chinese use a brush as I said not only for
drawing but writing as well and I have here a Japanese print or
Japanese drawing of a tree and some leaves where the artist
here has just taken a thin line barely touching the brush to
the page, making the branches and then with quick bold strokes
putting the leaves down very fast and very freely to create
a very very simple arrangement.
Animals, prints and pictures are done the same way.
And here's a very moving picture of a horse
where the artist again.
You can see here just a simple stroke of
the brush bringing up here for the various parts of the horse.
Here are brush used partly wet partly dry and spots to
make the main appear very simple brush strokes for
the branches and a few over the top for the leaves to
create a simple brush drawing.
Now not only do artists do this, grown up artists but boys and
girls do as well and that's what we hope you're going to do.
A number of years ago on the radio program let's draw we
had a lesson very similar to this and here we have one of
the drawings that was sent in for this particular program.
You can see this young girl artist listening to let's
draw through this horse again creating just brush strokes to
create the horse using leaves actually looking a little bit
like Norwegian material up here.
To create just the pattern with the brush.
All right now really we can have a good deal of fun
doing this.
We've talked about what other artists do with it.
We've done lots of experimenting as we can see here.
And you can look at your pages as well and
see all the various experiments we've done just actually several
pages of them with our brush.
What I want you to do now I think we're ready to use our
brush and to experiment with it and try it out.
And I'd like to have you do one of two
things you can do either one.
You look at this sheet of well let's call them scribbles if
you wish they're just all sorts of designs all over the place.
Maybe you can see something in that.
Maybe your ways maybe you want to put a boat on
top of that.
Maybe you can see a face or a landscape or
something in these scribbles.
Maybe you want to just add something to that.
To create patterns and objects out of this
particular page.
If you can find use your imagination there.
It may be that you look at your scribbles and all
you see are just scribbles on the page that you want
you want to draw a picture.
That's perfectly all right too.
Then you just take that sheet of paper as I've done here and
start out pick up your brush and pick it in and start drawing.
So one of those two ways you try either way.
So let's get out those big sheets of paper,
those brushes, that ink and use your imagination and let's
see if we can find some magic in the tip of your brush.
So let's draw.
This has been another experimental program in
a teaching of creative art through television.
Your TV art teacher has been James A.
Schwalbach, extension specialist in art
and design of the University College of Agriculture.
We would like to see samples of the drawings as a result of
these programs.
Send your work to WHATV Madison Six, Wisconsin.
And send us your comments and suggestions as well.
Next Friday there will be no television
art program because of the State Teachers Convention.
We'll be back on November 12 at 10 o'clock with a program all
about watercolors and pigs.
The materials you'll need are listed in the Teacher's Guide.
This is the Wisconsin School of the Air.
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