Modified Hardware Brush

by Dennis Clark

Quite often one is at a loss as how to expressively indicate grass in a landscape painting or even how to indicate fur when painting wildlife. On large paintings this type of brush works very well indeed. Just make sure that the paint is not too thick or too thin. The consistency must just be such that it flows evenly off the hairs. It is up to you to experiment with the use of this type of brush. It works well for me and also for my students. By the way, it was one of my inovative students that "invented" this. The Photographs are of his brush!

When painting smaller pictures or for finer detail use this same technique for trimming down one of your own brushes. Use a cheap brush to try it out at first.

The above illustration shows how the hardware brush is trimmed down to just the one layer on the one side. The two wooden inserts are there in the original brush to open up a reservoir for the paint. This is what allows you to paint quite an area with just one dip into the paint tin. I guess that few of you realized that the inside of the brush looks like this!

A flat side view of the trimmed brush to show the  natural spread of the bristles which allow the applied paint strokes to look like grass or fur.

Different makes of brushes will give different results. You may want to keep several types and sizes in your art box.

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