Add Cotton Buds to your Painting Equipment

Using Cotton Buds

I was recently painting a landscape and the middle distance area was too bright. It needed to be subdued to help give the picture a sense of depth.

With acrylics it is easy to just add a wash of a grey or blue grey to achieve this. However I wanted to keep a few lighter areas as well.

You can remove paint with paper towel but paper towel was a bit big for the areas I wanted to lift out.

Get organised before you paint

So I made sure that I had a couple of cotton buds handy before I painted on the wash. Acrylic dry quickly so you do not have time to go and get the cotton buds once the wash is applied!

Using the cotton bud I could easily lift off the colour in quite small areas, and it was much more controllable too. In this particular painting the wash was over a wooded area so I lifted off the colour to highlight just a few of the trees.

Keep a few with your brushes

I think that you will find it a good idea to add a couple of cotton buds to your painting equipment.