The act of applying brush strokes to a flat surface is the basic activity of making a painting. Different sizes and shapes of brushes affect the type of stroke they make. Flexible brushes produce fluid strokes. Stiff brushes make thicker, more uniform marks. Strokes vary according to arm and hand movement and how much pressure the artist applies to the brush.
Calligraphy
Calligraphy is the ancient Chinese and Japanese tradition of using brush strokes to artistically render Chinese characters in ink or paint. Calligraphers employ eight basic strokes. Dot strokes retain their pattern while assuming different forms. The dash is the horizontal stroke. The perpendicular downstroke, right upstroke and the left downstroke are wedge-like and tapered. The wave-like stroke is sword shaped. The hook and the bend-and-twist strokes can be v-shaped or with just a small hook or twist at the stroke's tip.
Impressionism
The 19th century French Impressionists were the first fine artists to let their brush strokes show in a finished painting. The strokes show how the picture was constructed and the brushstrokes became part of the composition. Previous artists blended their brush strokes away or painted with the glazing method, laying down thin washes of paint. Impressionists used individual brushstrokes to suggest the texture and curvature of painted objects. The strokes could be coma-shaped, zig-zags or short angled dashes applied in rhythmic patterns.
Neo-Impressionism
The Neo-Impressionism movement started in Paris and lasted from 1886 until 1906. Neo-Impressionist paintings were built up of broken, highly conspicuous brushstrokes. Often the brushstroke was the focal point of the painting. The strokes could be long and expressionistic like Vincent van Gogh's or short, orderly and well organized like those of Paul Gauguin and Paul Cezanne. Wide blocky strokes marked the work of Paul Signac. Pointillism employed a system of tiny dot-like strokes used by Georges Seurat and his followers.
Stroke Types
Dry-brush strokes are applied with a brush loaded with thick paint. The paint sticks to the higher points of the paper or canvas painting support and lets some of the underpainting show through. Scumbling is a dry brush technique where the picture is jabbed with the brush to produce irregular strokes of semi-dry paint scrubbed onto the canvas. Impasto is a technique utilizing thick, textured brushstrokes to achieve a sculptural surface effect. Impasto strokes often attract more attention than the subject matter of the painting.
