Bamboo brush and ink landscape!

The final piece:

Hello Steemit! I'm currently on vacation so I haven't had much opportunity to post my art, but I thought today I'd share one of my favorite painting techniques!

When doing landscapes, you can easily freehand them or use a reference for more exact paintings. For this painting I decided to use my backyard view as my model and sit outside and enjoy the fresh air while painting!

When using ink and bamboo brushes, you need to have your paper flat on a table or else the ink will just drip down the page. I used this set of brushes and indian ink bought from Blick Art in Portland, Oregon. Bamboo brushes are great because they retain ink in the brush! One thing to remember is to hold the brush perpendicular to the paper, instead of at an angle like a normal pencil. This way the ink falls from the bristles onto the paper.

For landscapes, it is best to start with the background first and work your way forward. Also, I tend to have the farthest part of the painting be lighter, while the foreground is darker and more detailed.

To do this, I used 3 containers to pour my ink in. Each container had the same amount of ink, but I added a tablespoon of water to the 2nd container and 2 tablespoons of water to the 3rd. This way I had 3 shades of ink to work with! I started with the lightest shade and mainly used that color for the far background. The darkest color, the straight ink, was used for the foreground to get all the details in the trees.

I let the shades dry between each layer so the paper didn't soak through and went in at the end with more straight black ink to add any more details.
Unfortunately I don't have many pictures of the process but if anyone would like a tutorial video let me know!

Thank you for reading! ~

~emily-rose

also here is a link to my previous post; how I built a paintbrush sculpture!
https://steemit.com/art/@emily-rose/my-sculpture-of-a-painting-made-from-paintbrushes