Soak your brush, just the hair leaving room at the bottom of the knot. Drip some water onto your soap with your brush to bloom it, several or a couple drops not much, put back your brush into the soak. Do whatever pre ritual you do. Ring your brush of the water, fling it a few times. You want your brush semi dry fairly dry. Start swirling up your pre bloomed soap, if it's starting to lather, your using too much water. You want moist yet somewhat thick. Don't be afraid to use a lot of product, subjective yes but you'll get a feel for what is a lot. Start working a good amount of layer to your whole beard. Swirl up more soap if you are unable to cover your beard. Now, add water to your brush. I advise dripping water by hand onto the top of the brush and swirling it onto your beard. Repeat with the dripping and applying until you create a creamy consistency that sticks to your beard and stays moist throughout your shave. The trick is to add water slowly and swirl. Adding too much water to soon is difficult to recover from, it can be done but is a pita. Dripping water can be cumbersome as well. You can run a slight stream of water and race your brush perpendicularly through it to catch just a bit of the stream. It's what I do, but I suggest doing the hand drip so as to get the hang of water to soap ratio. If your lather is dripping your using too much water. If your lather is drying up before you finish your pass, your not dripping and swirly enough water into your beard.
Hope this helps, good luck!
I'm a newbie as well (in the forum), and just read your post... I'd go with Astra blades (very sharp, but forgiving and smooth) and/or Derby extra (not as sharp as Astra IMO, but still very smooth)
