Comment by latexr
4 days ago
> Do you care where each bristle lands? No of course not.
Of course you do, that’s why there are so many different types and sizes of paintbrushes, so you can exert exactly as much fine control as you want/need. Learning the craft is to learn to pick and use your tools to get the desired result. Being unable to microscopically predict where each bristle lands is not the same as not wanting to. Some times you’ll pick a more haphazard brush because the small amount of randomness is a feature (e.g. when emulating nature) and other times you’ll use a fine grained tool, maybe even a toothpick instead of a brush because you need it to be precise.
Choosing a different brush size (and pressing down harder or softer) means varying the range of locations that each bristle can land within, but no one cares about where each bristle lands as long as it's within the range that the artist chooses. The fact that you have to use a different tool than a brush in order to get perfect lines proves my point.