Creating a Nature Paint Brush

Using Nature Paint Brushes is a great way to add some variety to your paintings. It’s also a great activity to get you creating outside!

Materials:
-Sticks (1 per paint brush)
-Rubber Bands or string (1 per paint brush)
-Items from nature
-Paint
-Paper – larger is better!

For the sticks: make sure they aren’t rotten or they might break while you are using them. You want them to be about 7″ long.

For your nature items: First, take a walk around your yard and see what you might be able to use. Once you have identified a few items, start collecting! You can use pine needles, chickweed, cedar leaves, fern leaves, & curly dock leaves but you can also use flowers, oak leaves, dog fennel or anything else. Make sure to only pick things you can identify!

Bundles of dried grasses, green leafy plants, and herbs are neatly arranged in a row on a wooden surface, with five horizontal sticks placed above them. The background consists of light wooden planks.

Once you’ve gathered your materials, it’s time to start making your paint brushes. I held my nature items around my stick and then used a rubber band to keep them in place. If you have just one or two leaves to add, you may want to put your rubber band on first and then tuck the leaves into it.
A rustic broom made of bundled twigs tied together with string, lying on a wooden deck with diagonal planks.

A hand holding a small bundle of dry pine needles attached to a short, thin tree branch, above a wooden deck background.

​Here are examples of completed brushes.

Five handmade small brooms with wooden handles and different green plants or herbs, arranged on a gray wooden deck. Each broom has a unique shape and type of foliage.
After you’ve completed your brush now you get to paint! Get out that big sheet of paper and some paint. Start out just by seeing what kind of marks each brush makes. They will all be a bit different!
A hand holds a small bundle of sticks, using it as a brush to paint green grass-like strokes on a blank page in a spiral-bound sketchbook.

After you’ve had a chance to play around with your nature paint brushes, see what creations you can imagine and create.
Have fun!