5 Brush Techniques Every Beginner Should Know

When you’re just starting out with painting, your brush is your most powerful tool. But how you use it can make all the difference in bringing your vision to life. Mastering a few essential brush techniques will help you gain confidence, create more intentional brushstrokes, and add depth and texture to your work.

If you’ve ever wanted to learn how to bring florals to life with expressive brushstrokes, you’re in the right place! The techniques I’m sharing today are key to creating the floral painting featured in this post. Want to learn my exact step-by-step process? Join the waitlist for Studio B Art Club and be the first to know when doors open!

Whether you're painting florals, landscapes, or abstracts, these five brush techniques will set you up for success and give you a strong foundation to build upon.

1. Flat Wash

A flat wash is one of the most fundamental techniques, perfect for creating smooth, even layers of color.

How to Do It:

• Load your brush with a good amount of paint and water.
• Start at the top of your canvas or paper and drag your brush across in a steady motion.
• Reload your brush as needed and continue working your way down, overlapping each stroke slightly.

Why It’s Important: This technique is great for backgrounds, skies, or any area where you need a uniform wash of color.

2. Dry Brush

The dry brush technique creates texture and a more expressive, painterly effect.

How to Do It:

• Use a brush with stiff bristles.
• Dip just the tip into paint (without adding water).
• Drag or flick the brush across the surface for a scratchy, textured effect.

Why It’s Important: This technique is perfect for adding highlights, texture, and movement in your paintings—think wispy clouds, rough tree bark, or expressive florals.

3. Blending

Blending helps create soft transitions between colors, whether in a gradient or when merging two hues together.

How to Do It:

• Work with two or more colors while they’re still wet.
• Use a damp brush to soften the edges where the colors meet.
• Feather out the strokes for a seamless transition.

Why It’s Important: This technique is key for creating depth, realistic shading, and smooth color transitions, especially in skies, skin tones, or soft floral petals.

4. Stippling

Stippling involves creating texture or shading using small dots of paint.

How to Do It:

• Use the tip of your brush or a round brush to dab tiny dots onto your surface.
• Adjust the density of the dots to control the intensity—closer dots create a darker effect, while spaced-out dots create a lighter effect.

Why It’s Important: Stippling is great for adding visual interest and dimension to paintings, from foliage and flower centers to shadows and textures in abstract work.

5. Scumbling

Scumbling is a loose, layered brush technique that creates soft, broken layers of color.

How to Do It:

• Use a dry or slightly damp brush.
• Apply paint in a circular or back-and-forth motion, allowing some of the underpainting to show through.
• Layer multiple colors for depth and complexity.

Why It’s Important: Scumbling adds richness and depth to your work, helping create light, atmospheric effects, or aged, textured surfaces.

Ready to Take Your Brushwork to the Next Level?

These five brush techniques will help you feel more in control of your brushwork and add variety to your paintings. The key to mastering them? Practice! Set aside time to experiment and incorporate these techniques into your work. Before you know it, they’ll become second nature, and you’ll start to develop your own unique style.

Want to learn exactly how I used these techniques to create the floral painting featured in this post? My full step-by-step tutorial is inside Studio B Art Club—and the doors are opening soon! Join the waitlist today and be the first to gain access.