Before taking another break from social media and as a follow-up to yesterday's topic, allow me to make the case again for painting with the absolutely simplest tool, the basic round brush.
This is the tool that allows for the utmost control, it is not unpredictable because of texture and other jitter elements, and, quite frankly, gives very good and painterly results that are, in my opinion, in no way inferior to those more intricate painterly texture brushes. And it gives them faster.
As I showed yesterday, and as I am showing a rough sketch today, as well, it takes me just a couple of minutes and not much effort to have the general shapes blocked in, and I don't have to use layers, I can just paint and overpaint, which takes one complexity off my mind, that of managing layers. Another chore that will not be missed is constantly selecting new brushes from endless lists. And also there are not many reasons to use Undo, since you can just overpaint anything. I have to say that it feels refreshing and liberating to return to the simplest means of creating once in a while.
No matter how rough you start, you can get to a stage of decency relatively fast. This whole sketch took me about 2 hours, then I dabbled into colors and effects for another hour, but that is the most fun and exploratory part for me and I tend to get lost in it, so I cannot say it counts for the painting process, per se. Effects and exploring other color schemes come at the end when the painting is done.
So I'll say it took around 2 hours. The Sargent studies I showed yesterday were certainly 4 hours +, and that's mainly because of the unpredictability of texture brushes and constant having to adjust, undo, repaint, and so on.
Are those better than this portrait? Well, it's debatable, depending on whom you ask. They're certainly very different.
Is this two-hour sketch perfect? Well, definitely no, and I can spend another one or two hours rounding every edge and transition, but that's not the point, and I like to see a level of roughness and imperfection. The goal is not to become a machine. The goal is a level of decency and making things rough but presentable.
And the simple rough brush does a wonderful job of that.
What do you think? Do you enjoy painting with simple tools or do you prefer the sophistication of texture?
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