![my little paintbrush my little paintbrush](https://d.furaffinity.net/art/yumifoxtail/1595825818/1595825803.yumifoxtail_yumipony_mlp_ponylife.png)
Of course you don't want them brush down, because we know they get a terrible case of "bed-head"! But you don't really want them brush up, either, because the water seeps into the ferrule of the brush and eventually causes the glue to loosen and the brush to fall apart. I'll bet you, at this point, now return the brushes to a container, with their brushes pointing up. Now here's where I did something really different. With this system you are left with a bucket of almost clean brushes, rather than a sinkful of dirty ones, and that final wash will just take a few minutes at the end of your day. If you use the method I've described, I doubt you'll have time to have kids give the brushes the final wash at the end of class. Two kids took that bucket to the sink and gave the brushes a final wash (they usually were very clean at this point anyhow). Note that depending on the project, sometimes paints were placed at every table, but the central table was often used when students were making a lot of individual choices and I didn't want a dish of every color at every table.Īt the end of the class, students gave their brushes a final wipe/wash/wipe and they were collected in a bucket that had a couple of inches of soapy water.
My little paintbrush how to#
Letting the students mix this way gave them a broad range of lively color choices, rather than colors straight from the bottle, and they had to figure out how to get what they needed, based, of course, on past learning. Students would take their palettes to the paint table, use the pop stick to scoop some color, and then use their brush to mix. A staff member donated hundreds of them to me! A selection of paint colors (red, yellow, blue, turquoise, magenta, and white) were placed in solo cups, on a large tray on my circular center table.
My little paintbrush tv#
This really helps to prevent color contamination when painting with a new color, and helps to keep those yellow and whites pure and clean!įor this particular project, the students also each had one of those black dishes from diet TV dinners to use as a mixing palette. Then the brush was wiped again, to remove excess water before dipping in another color. It prevents the stirring that knocks water bowls over or causes splashing, and gets the paint off really well. In other words, after using one color, the brush is wiped on the ugly sponge (or newspaper, or paper towel, depending on the circumstance) to remove excess paint, then washed with an up and down motion in the water bowl, touching the bottom. From kindergarten up, the students were taught to " wipe, wash, wipe". The ugly sponges have one purpose - removing extra paint from a brush. These were shaped differently from the sponges we cleaned the tables with, so there's no confusion. Also between the kids were what we fondly called our " ugly sponges".
![my little paintbrush my little paintbrush](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/jNvwjXaGYUc/hqdefault.jpg)
I don't want the brushes to fall into the water. For my Royal Big Kid paintbrushes (which I love, but have short handles), I favor water bowls that have a wide bottom so they don't easily tip, and that are not too tall. The students set themselves up with water bowls between them, or sometimes had their own. You'll notice the edges of the papers are unpainted. If you look at the 4th grade paintings to the left (painted on 18"x24" white paper) from a still life setup, while studying Matisse), I think you will agree the colors are clear, not muddy. Eek!! Hopefully my suggestions will help prevent that situation. I have seen a lot of blog posts where teachers are left with a sinkful of dirty, loaded paintbrushes at the end of the day. So the original question on Facebook had to do with painting procedures and water at the table. And lest you say "I think I've seen these images before", let me tell you that they all have appeared in prior blog posts over the almost three years I've had this blog.
My little paintbrush trial#
Over the years I have learned from others, and from trial and error, but in the end, I march to my own drummer and have trusted my instincts to figure out what works best, at least for me. But like with a lot of other things, you will find that my procedures are often different from what is typical. After spending 36 years teaching art, I feel well-qualified to address this topic, and hopefully offer you some helpful tips.
![my little paintbrush my little paintbrush](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/613T9rRpwQL._SL1200_.jpg)
I'll start with some of my procedures for practical paintbrush use and care. So now is the time! I've actually addressed the topic of cleanup before, but some of you may not have ever seen the older posts, and I'll give more detail here anyhow. A conversation last night in a Facebook Art Teachers group has sparked this post, which I have intended to write for, like, at least a year.