What Is One Stroke Painting — One Stroke Painting

This technique will probably surprise you with its simplicity. You don’t have to be especially talented or have painting experience to try it, and you can quickly create incredibly elegant and decorative compositions. However, achieving impressive results takes practice and patience. If you want to improve your skills in this technique, persistence will certainly pay off.

The name “One Stroke Painting” means painting in a single stroke, and its most important characteristic is exactly what the name suggests: creating shapes with multiple colors in a single brushstroke. This way of painting has grown in popularity in recent years thanks to American artist Donna, who popularized the technique. Today, you can find One Stroke classes here, too.

It is believed to have originated in the 18th century as a way to decorate furniture and dishes. A skilled hand could paint an object very quickly this way, making the technique suitable for commercial use. To master it, you can take a class, as mentioned, where instructors will teach you the strokes and rules that help you achieve good results as easily and quickly as possible. But we believe you can also get good results on your own by practicing and experimenting with videos that demonstrate the basic strokes. In either case, you’ll need some supplies, including several suitable brushes, acrylic paints, and thicker paper or canvases. The basic supplies are affordable, and you may already have many of them at home.

Tools and Materials

Surface — To start, it’s definitely best to use thicker paper or cardboard (white or colored) until your hand gets used to the strokes. Later, you can move on to stretched canvas or primed canvas board, which will make your artwork look more polished and complete. You can also paint on wood, glass, ceramic, plastic, and even fabric, but these surfaces need suitable preparation and must be smooth. Save items like vases and glasses for later, because painting these strokes on rounded shapes takes a specially trained hand.

Paints

In this case, the easiest option is to work with acrylic paints. As you know, they’re suitable for use on almost any surface: paper, cardboard, canvas, and the other materials mentioned above. You usually don’t need water to thin the paint for this technique, and it isn’t recommended either. If you find that the paint you’re using is too thick and leaves a dry mark on the surface, you can use an acrylic paint thinner or a similar medium. You can also work with oil paints or paints made specifically for glass or ceramic. Opaque paints are recommended so the effect is visible, but that doesn’t mean you can’t experiment with transparent paints.

Brushes

You could say that paintbrushes are the most important part of your supplies here. The more you have, the more options you’ll have. Choose flat brushes from your collection with smooth, elastic bristles. They shouldn’t be too soft like watercolor brushes, but they mustn’t be stiff like hog-bristle brushes used for oil painting. Choose dense brushes that can hold enough paint, and make sure they’re in good condition, since frayed bristles aren’t suitable.

If you’re buying brushes specifically for this technique, choose ones like the ones we’ve described. Feel free to ask a sales associate for help or get advice from a painter, because the wrong brush will make your work unnecessarily difficult. Take care of your brushes and condition them so they stay elastic and keep their shape. These are the most important qualities of a good brush for One Stroke painting. You’ll also need a palette for mixing paints and “loading paint onto the brush,” a container of water for washing your brushes, and a napkin or cloth to gently wipe off excess water before picking up the next color.

Nature motifs are the most common subjects for this technique: flowers and leaves, with simplified, stylized forms. A painting can use only the One Stroke technique, or it can be used as an accent or combined with other decorating techniques. When you decide to test your creativity with One Stroke painting, first gather the materials you need. Once you’ve mastered loading the brush with paint, which is key to creating subtle shade transitions and shadows, and learned the basic strokes, all that’s left is to plan your compositions and try different combinations of paints and surfaces. In other words, play and have fun.