Lisa Milroy Brush Mark Workshops

The ‘Brush Mark Workshop’ is designed for you to experiment with your technique of handling a brush, to open up your awareness of touch, pressure, rhythm and flow with paint, your bodily experience of paint, and your approach to drawing with paint. For the workshop, you will need to find a large clear floor space that can be drenched with water without causing a problem.

Please click on the vimeo link below for the ‘Thinking About…Lisa Milroy’ in her studio at home with Gabriel Hartley. In collaboration with Dulwich College and Southwark Schools Learning Partnership (SSLP). https://vimeo.com/424018196

Materials:

Bucket of water rags for mopping up floor space that can be drenched with water without causing a problem assortment of brushes: big to small, DIY paint brushes, artists brushes; sponges & rags

Method: You’re going to use water like paint and the floor like a canvas or a sheet of paper to explore brush mark applications, ‘painting’ on the floor with the water to explore and test your sense of touch in relation to the potential of your paintbrushes, sponges and rags. Mop up and dry the floor periodically throughout the workshop to see better the affect of your brush mark applications and please take care not to slip!

Start by dipping your tiniest brush in the bucket of water and use it to make a fast-straight line across the floor. Do it again, and again. Then move onto all your brushes and make the same fast straight line. Try the exercise using a rag and a sponge.

Make a series of slow lines, the slowest possible, using the range of all your brushes, rags and sponges

Wobbly lines using the range of all your brushes, rags and sponges

Sharp zigzag lines using the range of all your brushes, rags and sponges Squares, keeping the corners sharp, using the range of all your brushes, rags and sponges

Circular lines where you really curl your wrist round and round, using the range of all your brushes, rags and sponges

Circular lines where you keep your wrist and arm completely straight, using the range of all your brushes, rags and sponges

Tap the floor as softly as you can with your tiniest brush, slowly, even slower, then speed up, faster and faster, now slow down. Next, tap the floor as hard as you can (without wrecking the brush!) fast/slow/fast. Move onto your other brushes, rags and sponges following the same pattern. What does each application sound like? Brushes and brush marks each make their own particular noise!

Do all of the above with your hand you don’t normally use for writing – ie, left-handed people, please use your right hand; right-handed people, please use your left hand.

Try doing some of these exercises from a standing position or lying down on your stomach. Do them with your eyes closed. Do them listening to your favourite song and then to a piece of music you are not familiar with. What do these exercises tell you about your habitual approach to doing things?

What do you notice about the feel and the look of the brush mark with each different water/paint application? What do you notice about your own sense of touch and energy as you handle the brush, rag or sponge?

Lisa Milroy Brush Mark Workshop

Shoes, 1990 Oil on canvas 203 x 260cm