Studio Day : Natural Brushes
A lovely creative day which involved going for a walk in the sunshine, foraging for natural objects that caught my eye and returning to the studio to sit down with a coffee and turn to some slow and tactile making. Continue reading through this journal post to get a glimpse of a recent studio day.
Often in my work I use found objects, like plants and sticks, to incorporate interesting marks and textures to my work. These materials create beautifully organic, uneven and unpredictable marks that I just love when painting. There are some effects you can’t achieve with a brush and it forces a new way of exploring painting. I’d seen similar projects around for a while on Pinterest and Instagram that involved turning these found objects into brushes, so I thought i’d give it a try!
My day started by exploring close to home, I searched the garden and gathered most of my objects here (you really don’t have to go to too much effort to do this project). It was a beautiful sunny day and I walked from the house to the studio along the seafront picking up a few more bits along the way. I’d also asked my boyfriend to keep an eye out for objects on his walk the day before, he returned with sticks that were perfect for the brush handles. In the studio I have a bunch of dried flowers that are half used for display and half used for mark making. I picked a few of these to transform into brushes.
The whole process of creating these brushes was incredibly calming, with coffee in hand and listening to a Table Manners podcast I slowly worked my way through the brushes. It felt like a very mindful practice and a nice way to use my hands to create after a week of website updating. I made one brush out of string and one out of paper and the rest out of plants, flowers and sticks. The complete collection consisted of 12 brushes.
If you want to give this a go at home, all you’ll need is:
Small sticks, mine were around 1cm wide + 14-20cm long but just as long as they are easy to hold on to when painting and strong enough to hold the object you’re attaching
Leaves, plants, thinner sticks and any natural objects you think could create an interesting mark
String for securing the object intended for painting to the larger stick, wrap it around a few times and then tie a tight knot to secure in place
Paint for experimenting with your mark making
Head over to our Instagram to watch our behind the scenes reel of this project and don’t forget to tag us in your photos if you give this a go!
In the photos above you can see the variety of textures you can achieve from different objects. I also included some objects like string to create a mop like brush, and scrunched paper to get a more uneven stroke and some dried flowers I had in the studio that had a bit more rigidity to fresh flowers. I definitely had some favourites and some that didn’t work so well. One of the brushes was created by attaching multiple thin sticks around the main stick (handle), I loved the scratchy sparse brush stroke that the multiple thin sticks created. The bunched up dried flowers made a beautiful varied fluid stroke that at times was thick and full and then transitioned into more separated elements depending on how you moved the brush. The umbrella plant leaf (pictured further up) was probably one of my favourites to look at but created the least impressive brush, the leaves didn’t uniform together when dragged across the surface so it didn’t produce much of a stroke.
I’m looking forward to starting on some bigger complete pieces and introduce these natural brushes to create interesting marks and textures and collecting more objects to expand the natural brush collection.