Damaged brushes make the best textures.

It is true, your oldest ugliest and most abused brushes make the best textures in a painting.  But those wonderful old brushes are on their last legs and then suddenly just done. So sometimes you just have to help a few less than desirable brushes along to that wonderful state. So by twisting, cutting, pruning and plucking...I will try to recreate that wonderful old random texture that will help me to form rocks, bark, and soil textures on my painting. This photo shows two brushes that I have helped along to a ragged state with my favourite sponge.

Today as an experiment I took a new foam roller and had a fun time plucking out some the foam to see if I could replicate a sandy beach texture...it did not really work, some of my ideas just don't pan out. The wild patterns of a natural sponge are much better.

 So still working with my old or newly damaged brushes, sometimes a crumpled rag to lift off some of the newly laid paint and most often my finger tips to smudge and blur the paint. (Just learning to protect fingers from too much paint with either a full glove or just a finger cut off a glove.) For me the answer to creating good natural texture is first to study it for form, color and pattern....and then find the tool that will best recreate it....most often for me it is the combination of one of my tortured brushes and natural sponge.