With regard to his method of working, Birket Foster's early training for drawing on wood-blocks considerably influenced his water-colour work, which was very dissimilar to the "wash" methods of the early school of water-colour painters. He, indeed, worked with his brush as dry as it well could be, and probably no artist in using the medium of water-colours ever used so little water. Of course, all painting may be said to be drawing with a brush, but Birket Foster's was practically drawing to a peculiar degree, not washing with a brush. He used a very fine brush with very little paint in it, and owing to his habit of frequently putting it between his lips to make the point of it as fine as possible, it used to be said that the paint came out of the artist's head. Birket Foster worked very rapidly in his own way of obtaining the effects he desired, and his remarkable gift for composition enabled him to people his scenes with wonderful facility and felicity. He never engaged a professional model; his children were all sketched from the rustic boys and girls, whom he found in the course of his wanderings. In 1860 Birket Foster was unanimously elected an associate of the Old Water-Colour Society, and became a full member two years afterwards. He greatly appreciated the honour conferred upon him, and thoroughly gave his best interests to the Society. He was a most prolific worker, and beside the large number of water-colour paintings exhibited at the Old Society, to which he contributed more than four hundred and fifty, many of his drawings were bought by the picture-dealers straight from his studio, and in some cases he received direct commissions for paintings from collectors. Birket Foster, like many other water-colour artists, turned his attention to painting in oils, and for the nine years, 1869 to 1877, he regularly contributed oil paintings, thirteen in all, to the Exhibitions at the Royal Academy, but after that period he abandoned this medium, as he found that his little water-colour gems were far more appreciated by the public. In 1876 Foster was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Berlin.