u/Think_Display4255

I'm trying to get back into painting, it kinda comes and goes a couple times a year with motivation and whatnot, so I'm watching tutorials and tips and stuff on Pinterest to help me improve with the next one and I keep seeing all these cool fan brush techniques *but I can never replicate them!*

Every time my fan brush experiences Moisture ™️, it just separates into awkward clumps that won't give me anything close to the stroke I'm trying to do, even with wiping away all extra paint on a paper towel or sponge. What the heck am I supposed to do, keep a mini comb to separate out the bristles after cleaning off excess paint? Are the fan brushes I've tried just not good enough? Do I need something more full??

I use acrylic, watercolor, and gouache, I have this problem with all three. I've basically given up on the brush entirely but I really feel like being able to use certain techniques with it would really help my landscapes

I have a large roll of copy paper and I've always wanted to do a big piece of leaf rubbings front the leaves in my area to hang in my workspace, something I can glance at for inspiration when creating a fictional plant. I finally have a big frame that's perfect, so now I can do the rubbings and stick the piece immediately into the frame so it won't get damaged and it's almost the perfect time of year to go gathering leaves.

I'm coming here because I've only really attempted leaf rubbings once since childhood, a few years ago. I tried with charcoal because I thought it would look sick, but nothing really showed up so I did colored pencils, which showed up better but was still underwhelming.

Googling only leads me to things talking about using crayons or maybe oil or soft pastels. I think one of my pencil kits came with a small amount of pastels, I'd have to check, so I could use that if it truly was my best option but I wanted to know if there were other options that would work. I don't want to use crayons because I would have to go out and buy them. I hate crayons, so they're not a medium I keep on hand because I refuse to use them. So even though I know they're cheap, buying them for this piece would be a waste because I wouldn't use them for anything else and they'd sit in a drawer for who knows how long before I got mad and threw them away.

The mediums I keep around are markers, colored pencils, sketch pencils and graphite sticks, charcoals, water color paints, gouache paints, and acrylic paints and I typically have a few jars of ink because I like to use dip pens sometimes. I don't have a lot of faith in the markers for this, but mentioned it just in case. Does anyone here have any experience of making leaf rubbings/art with any of these materials? What do you recommend? Are the pastels in one of my kits my best option or do I have an opportunity for something better at my disposal?

This started a couple months ago and it never occurred to me to put it in here until just now. I have a Cannon PIXMA that I got in 2022 or 2023 and for the most part it's a dream. However, back in April he started this "neat" little trick where if I'm not babysitting him during a job, he'll double what I asked for. It's not every time, and he never does it on a single page job, only jobs that are two pages or higher, usually 4+ but it does occasionally happen with 2-3.

I'm not particularly tech savvy and my fiance is, but doesn't know shit about printers so we've just kind of let it be since on smaller print jobs, I'm usually still sitting next to him using the computer and can keep an eye on if he tries to do more than I tell him. But on occasion I will leave the room to eat or do a different task and sometimes I come back and it's fine, and sometimes I come back and my print job has been doubled exactly. Always doubled. It's starting to get annoying because it wastes ink and only on certain print jobs will I still be able to use the extras eventually, most of the time though it's a waste of both paper and ink.

He's been hard reset numerous times since this started because he'll occasionally pitch a fit about the ink, even if it is name brand, and hard reset is the only way to make him stop that. But if the hard reset doesn't fix him doubling what I asked for, then I don't know what else to do.