Airbrush, spatter and pouring tools in Easel by Zaweba
Airbrush, toothbrush spatter, drip and flick, pipette, pour with silicone cells and a spray bottle: liquid tools in Easel by Zaweba and how to use them.
A brush touches the surface. A whole family of tools doesn't. Paint can be sprayed, spattered, dripped, flicked, dropped and poured, and each way leaves a mark a brush can't make. Easel by Zaweba collects these together: airbrush, toothbrush spatter, drip and flick, pipette, pour with silicone cells, and a spray bottle.
Airbrush
The airbrush sprays a fine mist of paint for smooth gradients and soft edges. In the real world it is used for skies, glows, shading on illustrations and the soft fades on car and model art. Build tone in light passes rather than one heavy one. Pair it with masking tape, masking fluid or stencils for hard edges where you want them.
Toothbrush spatter, drip and flick
Spatter is the old trick of running a thumb over a loaded toothbrush to throw a fine spray of dots. It is perfect for stars, sand, gravel, speckled eggs and adding texture to an otherwise flat area.
Drip and flick throw paint in bigger drops. Drip lets paint fall, flick throws it with energy. These are the marks behind much action painting, and Easel's Pollock drips preset is a good starting point.
Mask what you don't want hit. Spatter goes everywhere, which is part of its charm, but you probably don't want stars across a face.
Pipette and spray bottle
A pipette drops controlled amounts of liquid paint exactly where you want them. In watercolour, a drop of strong colour into a wet wash spreads and blooms, and a drop of clean water into a half dry wash pushes pigment outward into a bloom with a pale centre and dark rim.
The spray bottle mists water over the surface. Watercolour painters use one to keep paper damp, to soften edges and to make paint move. Mist a wash and watch it spread, or tilt the canvas so wet colour runs.
Pour with silicone cells
The pour tool, with silicone cells, makes the look of acrylic pour art: marbled colour with round cells opening up between layers. Pouring acrylic runs when the canvas is tilted, so pour your colours and then tilt to move them across the surface.
The canvas tilt dial sets angle and direction, and Ctrl+0 lays the canvas flat again when you are happy.
Getting good results with liquid tools
These tools all deal in wetness, and in Easel wet paint runs downhill on a tilted canvas in proportion to how wet and thin it is. So the angle of the canvas changes everything. Keep it flat for controlled spatter and pipette drops. Tilt it when you want things to run.
Plan the order. Liquid effects usually go on early, in the background, or late, as a final layer of texture. Mask anything you want to protect first.
Use Dry now when you have a result you love. It locks wet paint in place so tilt can no longer move it, and dried paint never moves or mixes again.
Where these go wrong
Too much, too often is the risk. A picture with spatter, drips and pours all over can lose its subject. Use these effects with intent, and if a pour goes wrong, undo includes tilt runs and drying, so you can step back and try again. That freedom to experiment is one of the nicest things about trying liquid techniques in Easel by Zaweba.
