Basic Watercolour techniques using a Liner brush

 

Basic Watercolour techniques using a Liner brush

 

We know that there are multiple brush sizes and shapes to choose from in this ever-changing market of Art supplies. Many people are most familiar with Round and Flat shaped brushes but there are other kinds of brushes like the Dagger, Cat’s tongue, Rigger Liner, etc. A lot of artists are not very familiar with the shape and usability of these brushes in day to day painting practices. So this is going to be an introduction to Liner brush and how you can use this brush for different techniques.

Liner brush has longer hair length and a fine tip. It is also known as the Rigger brush or Script Liner brush. This brush is usually used to create thin uniform strokes for detailing or to paint various floral elements creating thin and thick strokes by applying different amounts of pressure. The colours should be of ink-like consistency so that they easily flow from the brush. Here, we are using the Winsor and Newton Cotman Watercolours as they are highly vibrant, lightfast and give vivid to transparent washes.

Rigger/ Liner brush can be used in the following techniques to use the length and point of the brush to its maximum capacity:

 

1. Hand lettering:

2. The characteristic long length of the brush and the pointed tip can be used to hand letter words harmoniously and expressively. Rigger brush can be used to create smooth flourishes as it holds a lot of water and the tip allows the strokes to be thin.

Different Leaf patterns:

Using a thin line to start with and the slightest amount of pressure by just touching the point of the brush on the paper, you can create the leaf pattern demonstrated below. You can always experiment by applying more pressure and creating a pattern of your own.

Here we start by dragging the thin line with the least amount of pressure and continue the same line with more pressure towards the paper and then taking the brush a little away with again least amount of pressure to this leaf pattern and repeat the same on the other side. You can fill the empty area with the same colour to complete the pattern.

Detailing:

As Rigger brushes have a very pointed tip we can use this to create intricate details to take our painting to the next level. Details like smaller branches of the trees, foreground and the grass can be painted very organically using this brush.

Sketching & Outlining:

We can create quick sketches and outlines for a painting or an illustration with a Rigger brush as it tends to hold a lot of water and paint than a normal round brush and a very pointed tip with which we can create smooth continuous strokes.

Pictures from Google pinterest