How long did it take you to master the tear drop?

Totally curious Why you ask? I SUCK a tear drops. I've probably make 2 good ones in 9 months... Don't worry I know practice makes perfect, I'll keep trying, eventually...

Just curious, how long did it take you all to get a hang of tear drops?

Painting for almost two years, but still don't get the feeling I 'master' them...
Must be the brushes I use....

I don't know about a special brush, i bought so many brushes and still trying to figure out which one helps me more and have not yet found it.
Marcela, the master on tears drops, says use them all! and keep practicing your tear drops at least 10 minutes a day every day.
I have been painting at home for about two years and still don't feel i can do it when i want to. They just seems to come out when least expected. Could not call that master!
i must admit i did not follow the ten minutes suggestion all the time.
if i compare the tear drops from two years ago to now though there has been a huge improvement.
Hope this little helps a bit.

Hmm, I've been painting for a couple of years and I don't know if I've "mastered" teardrops since I do occasionally have bad days where everything I paint looks like a blobby thing to me. But there definitely WAS a point somewhere when my teardrops stopped making me cringe and got consistently good. It just kind of happened! Hang in there and keep up the practice, sometimes these things just need to "click".

Katurah, you were up too late last night...go to bed and get your rest.

(You know I'm right - my son is almost 17!)

Mine still can look a bit wonky at times, but it's usually the paint consistancy. If it's watery, my tear drops look great, but sometimes, the paint can be too thick and my tail will look blah!

Watery is best to practice with and make sure you have a good brush with a good point

Technique is also a possibility like thin to thick and thick to thin Figure out which is best for you. I usually like thick to thin, but can do both if I need to.

I've be face painting for 4 yrs, but constantly, the last 3 yrs.

It took me about a year. Perfect teardrops are about 80% technique and 10% paint consistency and 10% brush. Get yourself a piece of mat board or attach an sheet of craft paper (brown paper bag works great) to a board and practice your line control over and over again. When you get tired/bored with that...do it again. Initially you want to watch what your hand is doing during the different phases of tear drop making so you can figure out what, if anything, needs to be changes.

I sat in front of the tv with a glass of water and my kraft paper and made hundreds of tear drops a few times per week. You'll know you've achieved master when you can make a teardrop from any size round and filber brush.
As for the type of brush, a really pointy unltra round brush is better suited for a tail-last tear drop, while a rounder standard round is excellent for either types of teadrops.

Nothing but practice will get you the result you want. Practice until it's second nature and you'll be good to go! Good luck!

Miss Ronnie wrote:Katurah, you were up too late last night...go to bed and get your rest.

(You know I'm right - my son is almost 17!)

Haha Miss Ronnie, it was my darn paper I had to write, I was up til 1am then I was so happy I finished it I couldn't sleep for an hour lol, but it was totally past my usual bedtime


Thank you everyone glad to hear all these tips, and know that I'm not alone

Probs two straight months but then I got super pointed rounds which made me feel like crying because they made the tear drops sooooo easy. But def two months til I could do them no prob with whatever type brush. Very frustrating stuff....

Hmm. Master......teardrop.....

Sorry, does not compute.

Seriously though, as those wayyyy more experienced than I have said - practice. Just keep doing it, over and over again. Sometimes I'm really happy with my teardrops (l!zzie keeps complimenting me on them!), but at other times they're a mess. Don't let yourself get downhearted, especially given the considerable amount of passion and talent you've shown. Just shake up your wrists, pick up your brushes, and doodle!

Kammy x

Can I ask what brushes you all use? I am going to order some tonight

The brushes I reach for most often are the Loew Cornell Gold Grips. They keep a nice sharp point and they've outlasted all my other brushes.

I learned how to do drops from Olivier Zegers back in 2003 at a workshop using a number 6 round kolinsky sable. Load, shape into a wedge, drag the sharp edge along starting at the narrow end and end by pressing to make the bulb end.

I now use other brushes and using different ways to make them now. And... I just do them, I don`t practise. Some are better than others, some a lot worse, but I`ve never spent time practising or studying in school, etc. I just do it.

But that is just me and how I work. If is doesn`t work the first time I try it I don`t do it again... a personality flaw if you will..

Shannon, I am a drag-and-presser and it's really hard for me to switch to press-and-dragging. In your experience, what's the benefit of the latter over the former? Is it better to stick with what I know now, or keep trying the other way?

Jenny - I do both, depending on whether it's more important where the bulb or tail end is! If it's really important that the tail end is neat and precisely-placed....that's where I start. If the bulb placement is more important....then that wins, and I start there.

Maybe I'm a mutant.

I stuck with the one method for a long time, then I started the press and flick style... both have their uses!! I will use both on one butterfly.

I find that practicing on paper, practice skin or myself doesn't help but I try to practice on different kids each time as I know that when I do an event kids tend to move and giggle on the chair. It sure is helping me lots improving on my tear drops then just on practice skins, paper or myself.

Katurah wrote:Can I ask what brushes you all use? I am going to order some tonight

Katurah, the best advice ever received (as it pertained to brushes) came from Mark Ried during a private class . We were painting side by side, I was SUPPOSED to be duplicating what he was painting, but my teardrops looked more like tearDUDS. I made a comment about not having his brush. He handed me his brush and snatched mine out of my hand. Then he commenced to painting those same perfect tear drops with my brush and I continued painting tearDUDS with HIS brush. It was then that he told me that it's not the tool so much as your mastery of what tools you have at your disposal.

There is no magical teardrop brush so I wouldn't reccomend buying new brushes in hopes of acquiring one. You should focus on learning the technique and feeling out your brush to execute that technique. I accumulated hundreds of brushes looking for the brush that could paint what I wanted to paint...once I realized that I have to master the brush to get it to paint what I want I stopped buying...but there's still the issue of the hundreds of brushes.
Today i can grab any of those rounds I tossed aside as not the "right" brush and execute a teardrop with them...4 years ago...not so much.

Try before you buy

Lady Jayde wrote:

Katurah wrote:Can I ask what brushes you all use? I am going to order some tonight

Katurah, the best advice ever received (as it pertained to brushes) came from Mark Ried during a private class . We were painting side by side, I was SUPPOSED to be duplicating what he was painting, but my teardrops looked more like tearDUDS. I made a comment about not having his brush. He handed me his brush and snatched mine out of my hand. Then he commenced to painting those same perfect tear drops with my brush and I continued painting tearDUDS with HIS brush. It was then that he told me that it's not the tool so much as your mastery of what tools you have at your disposal.

There is no magical teardrop brush so I wouldn't reccomend buying new brushes in hopes of acquiring one. You should focus on learning the technique and feeling out your brush to execute that technique. I accumulated hundreds of brushes looking for the brush that could paint what I wanted to paint...once I realized that I have to master the brush to get it to paint what I want I stopped buying...but there's still the issue of the hundreds of brushes.
Today i can grab any of those rounds I tossed aside as not the "right" brush and execute a teardrop with them...4 years ago...not so much.

Try before you buy

totally made me smile! Awesome advice!!

I've been practicing my year drops, some look awesome, some not. We are getting there

Hello, fellow mutant here! I do what Kammy does, depends on the design. I keep a foam core board in my living room and old paints near by to remind me to practice...which hasn't happened in awhile.

marcella murad says perfect practice makes perfect...she does a clas on 100 tear drops....she starts and when she makes a bad one she will start the count over...so if you do 25 good ones then 26 is bad you should start over again at 1...makes sense...practice them with all your brushes..you should be able to make tear drops with any size and shape brushl..use your arms, legs your husbands back if you have a husband...you will find that practice really does make perfect..but then again..we are not perfect and as long as the child likes it your ok, but remember to practice daily for maybe 10 min. you will see how fast your inprove.

i have a loew cornell 1812 # 4 and when i try the tear drops wit that brush it comes out like a line however when i use the #5 brush it looks more like a tear drop but i find it comes out bigger than i want it.

The bulb of the teardrop is controlled by pressure. The more you "touch down" the more pronounced the bulb. The brush doesn't make the teardrop by itself and that's where the practice comes in. practice your "take off and landings" hundreds of times and with varying degrees of "touch down" pressure until you get the feel for how much is needed for different sized teardrops. Once you get the brush control down you'll be able to make the same teardrops with a #4, #5 or a #6.

I couldn't figure out the press and flick to save my life so I stuck with drag and drop. Then I watched a Mark Reid (love his unstruction) class on Fabatv , and practiced the press and flick . It has helped so much. Along with his swirls, I had been doing it all wrong. If u do it wrong 100 x it's still wrong

Instruction