Artist's Back to Basics

Brush Strokes

We’ll limit our brushes to two! This will encourage us to investigate the capabilities of these brushes, hopefully in a deeper way than you have before.

Let’s start. Dish out a healthy slab of each of the following (in this order from left to right):

• Burnt Umber

• Dioxazine Purple

• Ultramarine Blue

• Pthalo Blue

• Cadmium Yellow Medium

• Alizaren or Cadmium Red

• White (LOTS)

I recommend starting with a smaller canvas. Build up to a larger canvas as you develop confidence.

Draw a roughly horizontal line across the middle of your canvas. Remember, this is not a painting, this is an exercise.

You choose whether you want the orientation landscape or portrait.

Brush Exercise One

Pick up a large dollop of white using your size 12 brush, and place it on your (large!) palette. Now collect a tiny amount of Ultramarine Blue (use the corner and pick up

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