Sparkle Brush

So it was my birthday yesterday. I have three new art books and have ordered a fourth, along with some interesting new art gear, with some birthday money. And with new books to read, new CDs to play and new malts to try, I’m a bit too busy to the moment to be painting but I have done something today that I thought was worth a post.

I’ve made myself a sparkle brush. I took a cheap brush (I think it was a freebie that Jackson’s threw in with an order once) and spayed it out in a puddle of masking fluid, leaving it long enough to dry out and to end up as close as I could get to something permanently splayed. I removed the resulting gristle from the outside of the hairs and separated them into a few petals. The idea is that I can use this brush to apply masking fluid to a painting. If I roll the brush along the paper I should get intermittent dishes of masking fluid that could work well as highlighted ripples on a body of water. Should be an interesting experiment. And if it doesn’t work, I’ve only written off a brush worth a couple of quid at best.

The idea for this came from Rob Dudley in Painting Rivers From Source To Sea, one of my four new books and the one I’m currently reading. I’ll be writing reviews on on all these four new books once I’ve red them and taken notes.