Brushwipe Paintings

"Brushwipe Paintings"

Brushwipe Paintings are one of the first styles of painting I started working with on my painting journey…

The only painting style that came before that was the Stripe, and before that I was trying to create a similar style of painting to my “Coloured-in-Doodles”, which I felt I was having limited success with :/

A crucial thing I learned at that time was that the pieces would come out much better and more naturally if they followed the flow of the medium being using - i.e. letting the medium itself have a strong impact on how the piece should turn out…

I called this the Brushwipe Painting Style because it came about from the patterns and textures that were created on the paper I would use to wipe my brushes clean on (I only like to clean my brushes once I’ve got as much of the paint out of them as I can so as not to waste any paint :D )

I would then take the paper with the brush wipes on it and add some more details to balance the colour scheme and composition, and then put my signature on it when I felt it was ready…
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The first brushwipe painting I created was back in 2011 and I called it “Blue Box” (above)...

…and to me it represents stepping outside of the box of expectation and to allow the creativity to flow in a natural and spontaneous way!

Since that first piece back in 2011 I’ve created about 40 or so paintings in a similar style, with some of my favourite ones shown below:
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​Larger Sizes for 2025..

​So far most of these paintings have all been reasonably small - most have been about A4-sized, but this year (2025) I’m going to see if I can create the same effect in a variety of much larger sizes, so hopefully that will be a success!
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More Brushwipe Paintings On The Way...

There will almost certainly be some new Brushwipe Paintings featured in my next collection, which will be coming soon - if you’d like to receive an email when the collection is ready then click below to subscribe to the Newsletter:

Michael Carlton Newsletter

Hope you enjoyed this post!

Speak soon,

Michael
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