Basic Paint Application

Small Landscape from memory

First oil painting in about 5 years!  Only used three brushes on this one to concentrate on the marks the brushes can make – a large flat, large round and filbert brushes – and tried to keep it simple with the colours as well – only using two greens, ultramarine, red and white. 

I painted two apples (on A4 oil paper) to concentrate on brush marks – the first using only the large and small flat brushes:

I found the flat brushes worked very well for the subject of this oil sketch.  As the apple was highly coloured, with lots of surface marking, the flat brushes made the process of depicting them much easier – apart from the basic shape, I mainly used the tips and sides of the brushes to get the striations and light blotches on the apples.  I learned that the flat of the brush was excellent for describing the highlights on the fruit as these naturally form lines on the fruit.

I decided to create another sketch – this time using on the round brushes and filbert – and two shades of green, plus black and white.  I practised using dabs of colour before blending loosely to show all the tones of the apples, using a dry brush to wipe out the colour for the reflected shadow and added daubs of pure white for the highlights.