Painting Different Types of Grass
When painting, I mainly use four types of grass. The first type of grass is thick and tall grass. To create this type of grass, first I take thick paint and smear it on the canvas. Then I take a bristle brush, pat and pull the paint up with vertical strokes making sure the stroke feathers out at the top. I use different shades of green, brown, orange, yellow, and purple to give interest to the thick tall grass.
The second type of grass is thin blades of grass. I use the long script brush to make this type of grass. I mix water with my acrylic paint until the mixture becomes thin and ink like. Next I take my script brush and roll it in the watery mixture keeping a pointed end on the brush. Then using a circular motion, I lightly paint individual strands on the canvas.
The third type of grass is long distance grass. When one sees grass in the distance details are not visible and hues of grass are all that can be seen. For this type of grass, I usually take a bristle brush and make long horizontal strokes while varying the grass colors. I make sure that my lightest color is in the distance and darken the colors as they get near the foreground.
The fourth type of grass that I use are grass clumps. This type of grass is made using my bristle brush. First I use a vertical upward stroke making sure to feather it at the top. I use a darker color for the first layer then add a lighter layer. For the final touches on these clumps, I take my script brush and using the technique for the thin blades of grass, I add individual grass blades to the clumps. I make sure these strands are a little bit taller than the clumps to show foreground details.