Related Resources • Essential Painting Know-How • Painting with Acrylics • Oil Painting • Watercolour Painting

You can painstakingly draw lines or small blocks one by one. Or you can split the hairs of a flat brush and get instant parallel lines or rectangles that represent the panes in a window, small rows of windows on a skyscraper, roof tiles, bricks, fence poles, or hair. It's a time-saving technique that's definitely worth a try.

You'll need the following:

A thin, flat brush or a fan brush.

A piece of plastic to separate the bristles on the flat brush.

Step One:
Wet the brush thoroughly. This will help the hairs stay together when you separate them. Now dip the brush in the paint. If you want your lines to be equal, ensure you've loaded colour evenly across the width of the whole brush.

Step Two:
Using a piece of plastic, gently separate the hairs on the brush into even clumps. Start in the middle and work outwards. Don't worry too much about getting exactly the same number of bristles in each clump, the differences will make it look like you painted them individually. Don't use anything sharp, such as a craft knife, to split the brush or you'll cut the bristles.

Step Three:
Put brush to paper. For parallel lines, move the brush in a gentle sweep across the paper. For small parallel blocks, dab just the end of the brush onto the paper. This technique does require a little patience and practise, but it'll take less time to get this technique to work for you than it will to paint 500 windows on a skyscraper one by one.

Tips:

If the hairs on your brush don't want to stay separated, try a thinner brush.

A fan brush works well because it is very thin and the hairs are already spread out. You can load paint on only part of it.

Don't throw away your old credit card, it's ideal for this! A thin brush handle also works.