Paintbrush

Paintbrush is a colloquial name for the americana — the bent-arm figure-four shoulder lock — drawn from the image of the opponent’s hand being swept across the mat like a brush.

Etymology. The metaphor is about the hand, not the arm. With the elbow bent to ninety degrees and the figure-four grip set, the attacker drags the opponent’s hand along the mat toward their hip, and that dragging motion across the surface is what the name describes. The label reaches modern no-gi through catch wrestling and older sambo vocabulary, where it sits alongside “key wristlock” as an informal name for the same lock.

Disambiguation. This site previously carried “paintbrush” as an alias for the straight arm shoulder lock, which contradicted dominant usage. It is the americana. The defensible names for a straight-arm shoulder load are straight shoulder lock or shoulder crank, and they belong on Straight Arm Shoulder Lock.

Mechanics. The americana externally rotates the shoulder with the elbow fixed, so the load lands on the anterior capsule and the subscapularis rather than on the elbow. The hand travelling toward the hip is what drives the rotation; sliding the opponent’s elbow toward their head instead removes the angle and the lock stops working.

Cross-reference. “Keylock” is the wrestling name and “ude garami” the judo one. Full mechanical coverage on Americana.