Painting figures with a bamboo brush

Learning watercolor painting is like walking along a footpath in the countryside. You can either focus on the many miles you have to walk. Or you can enjoy the scenery.

Video lesson

Preamble

I find painting figures a lot of fun and they are often an essential element in my landscape paintings.

However, figures are fiddly things to paint and I struggle to do so with a normal round brush. And then in Japan, I came across bamboo brushes which I think are normally used for calligraphy. 

Bamboo brushes have an amazingly sharp point which gives me superb control over my brushstrokes. So they are ideal for painting fiddly things such as figures.

In this video, I show you how to draw figures and then paint them using a bamboo brush. And we even paint a simple background for our figures.

In this video, though, we are just practising. So please don’t use good quality watercolor paper. I used a very cheap watercolor paper called Vifart. Feel free to use any cheap watercolor paper you fancy.

Contents

Brief introduction: 

I talk about the subject of figures, my reference drawing and the materials you will need.

Drawing figures 

I show 3 ways to draw figures, these are: line, gesture and scribble.

Painting the figures 

I show you my method for painting figures. This involves first blocking in the figures, adding shadows and then coloring them.

Painting a background

With a flat brush, I show you how to paint a simple background.

Skin and highlights 

Finally we add some faces and hands. And then we add some highlights to our figures with a liner brush and white paint.

Conclusion

Advice on practice regularly on cheap watercolor paper, experiment and enjoy. If you follow this formula, then the masterpieces will come a few years later.

Reference drawing

When drawing and painting figures, I strong advise against using just your imagination – unless your are a seasoned artist. Instead, I recommend finding reference materials. The lazy way to do this is just go on the internet and find an image. The more exciting way, is to go outside and take photos of people. This is what I did for the reference image here. Just make sure that you photograph people discreetly.

This is a downloadable image that you can print out. Please put it where you can easily see it when you are drawing and painting the figures. I stick mine on a cork board that is on the wall in front of my painting desk.

Downloadable reference drawing

Materials

If you don’t have the materials listed here and can’t get the materials soon, then please just use the nearest equivalent you have of the materials listed here.

Brushes

Bamboo brush 6mm diameter (⅕ inch)

Liner brush

Flat brush 13mm diameter (½ inch)

Paints

Phthalo blue (red shade)

Cerulean blue

Pyrrole red

Permanent Alizarin Crimson

Burnt Sienna

Yellow Ochre

White (I used Chinese white, but any will do)

Paper

Vifart A4 size loose sheets

Final message

I hope you have a lot of fun and improve your watercolor skills through this lesson. 

Happy watercolor adventures from Gareth Naylor.