FolkArt ® One Stroke™ Brushes - Flat, 3/4" - 1176

Wet your brush and gently tap on a paper towel to remove excess water. Pick up paint by dipping one corner of the brush in one color.

Dip the opposite corner of the brush in another color. This will form triangles at each corner of the brush.

Stroke brush back and forth on a clean spot on your palette to blend the paint.

Flip brush over to the other side and push it away from you, blending on the same spot on the palette. Be sure to keep the colors in the same spot on the blending area of the palette.

Notice how a correctly loaded and blended brush should look. The paint fills the brush 3/4ths of the way up the brush, but does not get into the ferrule of the brush. When the brush is loaded correctly, your strokes should feel as though the bristles glide.

If the brush is coarse or splits, you do not have enough paint on the brush. Reload the brush as needed, but do not blend on the palette after each reload or your paint will start to become muddy in your brush, with the colors blending together.

Place tracing paper over the pattern you wish to transfer. Neatly trace the main design lines with a pencil.

Position traced pattern on project, then slip a piece of transfer paper under tracing paper. Retrace the design. Hint: When retracing design lines, you can use a different color pencil or pen for your second tracing so that you can see if you have traced all the lines.

Remove tracing paper and transfer paper to reveal the transferred design.

Load a flat brush with Thicket and Sunflower. Make guidelines in a "v" to help keep the top of your leaf even.

Begin at one guideline with the flat side of the brush. Have the green side of brush to the outside. Touch down with brush.

Push and wiggle the stroke.

Begin turning brush as you get to tip.

Turn and slide as you pull brush up to chisel edge.

Make both sides of the leaf in this same way.

To make a turned edge on the leaf: Begin making a leaf in the same way, as you get to the middle of leaf, pull brush up to chisel.

Twist brush 180 degrees and flip to other side.

Make another shell-shaped petal on the left side of the rose bud.

Continue adding the shell-shaped petals below the bud until you have painted four petals.

Clean up the bottom of the bud by restroking over the bottom stroke.

Paint a comma stroke on each side of the bud, ending on the chisel.

Make a comma stroke just under the bud for the last petal of the rose.

Cool colors are all the colors on the Green and Blue side of the color wheel. Yellow, Yellow/Green, Green, Blue/Green, Blue, Blue/Purple, Purple are all cool colors. All colors on the color wheel can be both warm and cool except Orange.

Double or triple load your brush. Make one shell- shaped petal of the rose at a time. Start with the lighter colors to the outside.

Wiggle and pull the brush as you pivot the brush into a curve. You will have a slightly scalloped outer edge.

End the stroke on the chisel edge to complete the first petal.

Make some guideline dots in a circle to help you determine the positioning of the five outer petals. Overlap each petal onto the previous one.

Paint the five shell-shaped petals to complete the outer skirt of the rose.

Next, paint a rose bud in the center of these outer petals. Make the top part of the bud, overlapping it onto outer petal #1.

Next, paint the bottom stroke of the rose bud.

To begin painting the inner row of petals, touch the brush at the right of the rose bud. Make another shell-shaped petal here.