[Light music plays, screen reads 'Setting up'.]

Courtney Young

We're going to set up the space now for painting. We can use butcher's paper. Acrylic paint is like generally pretty easy to clean off if you clean it off quickly, but I would, you know, recommend that we use some butcher's paper or newspaper first.

We're going to rip off one of our sheets. I like using as big a surface as I can. I think it's really fun for students to go big, so if you've got big sheets then try and use it. And we'll use a bulldog clip to clip it to a board. You can use boards if you're using an easel, otherwise the students can just work flat on the table.

When we're setting up our paletteyou want to encourage the students to use as little paint as possible. I like to get my students to work with primary colours, and then we mix everything that we need out of those primary colours.

So, the colours that we're using are the three primaries, but we're using two different sets of those three primaries. Okay, so we're going to put down our primaries. Generally, I like to put just a small amount of both warm and cool next to each other. And, you know, your students, depending on what size surface they're working on, that much paint might be too much. You could go smaller than that. And then we've got the blues next to each other. And then white is obviously really important. I don't use black in my practise. I only use white and the primary colours. But, you know, if your students are really keen to use black, then that's totally fine. It just needs to be used in moderation, because it can make a painting feel really flat. Most dark colours are a shade of a different colour rather than a true black, and so removing it from your palette means that you can be more creative with the colours that you've got.

I like having a rag on hand to wipe brushes after they've been through the water. And then I use titanium white, because it's quite a strong white, but there are other whites like zinc white as well, that I know some people really like. When I'm working in the studio, I have all of my colours out, because it means I can be more creative, but if your students are working on a particular project, then they might not need all of those colours out at the same time. We're going to be working on a colour wheel so it makes sense that we've got all these colours out at the moment.

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[Light music plays, screen reads 'Packing up'.]

Courtney Young

Okay, now we're going to pack up. It's good to give your students 10 to 15 minutes, especially if this is their first time painting with you.

If they've got a fair bit of paint left on the palette, we can use cling wrap to try and preserve that for next class. Use a palette knife to pop it into a container with a lid. Cling wrap, that's really easy. Cover it. And it will be sticky and gooey, but you might be able to salvage some paint, particularly this white and yellow for next time. Acrylic dries really quickly, so you want to get your students in on this early on, and then that will be okay to use for next class.

With the paintings, it's important to keep them flat and hang them out to dry. We've just got a drying rack here so you could just slip that right in. You don't want any paintings touching each other because they will stick together, and you do want to try and keep the painting surface as flat as possible so that it dries flat.

In terms of cleaning our brushes, we've got some dirty brushes. Use your water jars to get the bulk of the paint off. And then you want your students to run the brushes under cold water to get out the paint until the water runs clear. This is because paint, acrylic paint, it dries really quickly. We don't want our bristles to be sticking together because of too much paint in there.

Once it's completely, completely clean and you run it under the tap, you can even dry it with a rag. And you want to make sure all the bristles are pointing up. If the bristles are, like, fraying, then you'll lose some of those nice pointy edges than if you dry it with a rag or a paper towel. But the most important thing is just making sure there's no paint left on that brush. Store the brushes standing up. If they're stored like this, the shape of the brush will be damaged, so you want it to be stored standing up in a jar or what have you. But if you're using a plastic palette or an old container, you want to wash that as quickly as possible. Soap and water is fine.

You want to wash down your surfaces as well. It can be difficult in art studios to see what you've done, but just get the students in the practise of washing down their tables so that it's, it doesn't leave any accidents for the next class.

Getting your students into the habit of washing up and cleaning up is really important. It makes for a more enjoyable experience for the next class to come in and see a clean space. Making sure that you're setting expectations around what needs to be done and making sure you leave enough time for that. It can be difficult to put time constraints around art projects, but in a classroom environment, you do need to.

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[Light music plays, screen reads 'Colour wheel'.]

Courtney Young

A good activity to start with kids who are new to painting is working on a basic colour wheel. Today I'm going to demonstrate a colour wheel using warm primaries.

You'll see here that we've got an example of a cool colour wheel and a warm colour wheel, and you can do this with your kids as well. What it demonstrates is that you'll get slightly different colours depending on what primaries you'll use. So, the warm yellow is obviously a lot different to the cool yellow. We know that yellow and blue makes green, but different yellows and blues make different greens, if you can see that.

When I'm working with paint, I like to wet the brush just slightly. If the paint has started to dry slightly, the wet brush makes it easier to handle. So, we're going to mark out the primaries in the warm tones. This isn't an exercise in,ou know, this isn't supposed to look beautiful. It's just an exercise to get the kids handling paint and understanding how colour works. So, I would wash the brush in water and then we'll go through and do the warm blue. In this case, I'm going to use cerulean blue. It doesn't really matter which blue, but cerulean is generally considered a warm blue. And then our warm red. I like to use a fair bit of water when I'm mixing colour, but it's worth noting that too much water and acrylic can make the colour seem a little bit more dull. Like, it can lessen the intensity of the colour if you use too much water. But I usually factor that in when I'm painting. Okay, that's our three primaries. And the idea is that these three primaries can make just about any colour that you need.

The colours that we haven't done so far are called secondary colours, and then you can also go into tertiary colours. But today we'll just focus on the secondary. Yellow and blue, when you mix that together, makes green. When you're encouraging students to mix colours, it's wise to ask them to start small. So don't throw in big wallops of each colour. Just start with one, slowly bring in the other. It doesn't need to be much and it already changes it. I've still got a bit of red on there. And there's our green. So that's these two colours combined.

When you're washing your brush, it can be useful to have a rag on hand to get rid of any big globs of paint. Next we're going to mix blue and red, which generally makes a purple or a violet. Warm blues and reds make more of an earthy purple, whereas if you were to use the cooler blues and reds, you would get a more vivid purple like you can see here. This is more of a vivid purple and this is a more earthy kind of purple. And then lastly, we've got the orange that comes out from using yellow and red. Red is generally really strong. You only need a little bit. And you might need more yellow. And that's a very basic colour wheel.

Something that you can get your students to think about as well is complementary colours. So, the blue, which is our primary colour, its complementary colour is orange, which means it's opposite on the colour wheel. It means that when those two are with each other, they're kind of visually competing for your attention. So, it can be really useful that if you've got, I don't know, like a really vivid blue sky, a little pop of orange will create some sort of tension in the painting that makes it really interesting. This might be a bit advanced for some students to think about. Maybe you could point to a painting where you see those complementary colour relationships at play. Yellow and purple are complementary, and red and green. So, you know, red flowers really stand out on a green bush because they're complementary to green. It just creates this point of tension.

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[Light music plays, screen reads 'Tonal exercise'.]

Courtney Young

We can talk about value with the students. You know, use any colour for the value exercise. I'll probably use blue and what it involves is just seeing what white does when it's added to a colour.

Just demonstrate here using blue. I've kind of got paint in all of these jars, but for this one I'm going to keep this one for washing blue brushes and this one for washing red brushes. So, we're going to grab some of this ultramarine, it's starting to dry off, but if we add a bit of water, it comes back to life. And we can put it in here.

What we're going to do is gradually add white, where it goes from dark to light. And this is just to demonstrate that you only need a little bit of white to make quite a significant change. So, we'll wet up some white paint over here and add a little bit to our ultramarine and we can start lightning it off here. A touch more.

And yeah, get your students to pick out whatever colour they'd like to use for this exercise. Doesn't matter, it's just about experimenting with the colours, seeing what happens when you add more and more white. And if the kids wanted to, they could blend these so it's more gradual, or you could keep it quite distinguished between the different shades.

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[End of transcript]

[Light music plays, screen reads 'Variation in colour'.]

Courtney Young

A lot of artists don't use black in their palettes. And so, you can show your students a different way of mixing black if you like. You know, this is leaning towards black, which is a warm blue with a warm red. This is moving towards black, like it's quite a dark colour. If we did more layers of that, that might look quite dark and read as a black. It's more about what our eyes read as black than making a true black. Using this as a black for your like night sky or a shadow will be far more interesting than using, you know, like straight black from a tube.

Once you add white to a jar, it starts getting quite muddy. And so, you don't want to use, you don't want to have any white, even if it's white in the water. You don't want any white on your brush. To make a black, you want to have a really clean, clean brush. And we're just going to use a little bit of the blue, the red, and maybe even a touch of yellow.

So, some blues and some reds. So, this is looking quite red. So, I can add more blue over here and see if that makes a difference. We're starting to look a little bit darker here. Add a touch of yellow. And maybe a touch more ultramarine, or a cool blue.

And we're starting to get closer to something that reads as black. So, it's not black, a super accurate black, but it will read, your eye will think of it as black, especially when it's contrasted with a lighter colour. And we can compare it to this line, for example. You know, it's almost quite an accurate black.

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[End of transcript]

[Light music plays, screen reads 'Colour mixing'.]

Courtney Young

So, we know that blue and yellow make green, but if we're painting a landscape or even anything, sometimes only mixing two primaries to make a secondary colour, this secondary colour might be quite strong when you're trying to paint in a representational way. Particularly, you know, this green with the cool colours is quite vivid. And so very rarely in, you know, a landscaper, you're going to see a green that's that vivid. With any of these kind of really vivid colours, if they are reading too strong for the student, then I would suggest that you put in the other primary that's missing. So, you know, if this orange is too bright and you want it to look a little bit more earthy, all you would need to do is add a little bit of blue.

So, you're adding its complementary colour. Same with the green. The green is looking too vivid. If we add a little bit of its complementary, which is red, then we're going to get a softer-looking green that's similar to this. I've got my two primaries, which I know make a green. And if I'm looking out at the landscape, it's a grassy hill, you know, maybe that's too bright a green. And so, what I can do is add a touch of red to start to make it a bit earthier. You know, maybe that was too much red for what I'm wanting, but that's still a green. But it's a, you know, a warmer, softer, more realistic green that you might see out in the landscape. But it depends on the project.

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[Light music plays, screen reads 'Brush techniques'.]

Courtney Young

So, we're going to talk about different brush techniques and different painting techniques. There's no right or wrong way when it comes to painting, but you can, you know, steer your students in the right direction by giving them some prompts. I like to encourage students to hold the brush further back rather than, you know, gripping it.

We've got a whole combination of different brushes here and they're all in varying states of disrepair. Getting the students to look at the different shapes. Some are quite square, some are more rounded, different sizes. I've got a palette knife in here as well. These are all useful and they all kind of make different types of marks, but then also obviously different size marks.

So, an exercise that you could do with the kids is picking a colour. You could do several types of colours, whatever. They could make an abstract painting if they wanted to. And then just seeing what happens when you use a different brush. How can you manipulate your hand to create a different mark on the surface. I like to use water, but there's also a technique called dry brushing where you have a literally just dry brush. You know, you can kind of get this sort of sketchy look with a dry brush where it's like kind of broken. You can go darker in some places and then it's quite rough.

So that's, you know, something for kids to know that that's what happens when you don't have water. When you do have a wet brush, you know, you can get a smoother line. So, it just depends on, you know, what you're after. We can use a different size, but it's very much a similar shape. So, this is, you know, still a square brush, different shape. We'll wet the brush 'cause I like the smoother line. And you can see how that compares. When students are, you know, painting in a space or blocking out a shape, it's helpful to point out to, you know, bring the brush in at an angle to get a nice clean line. This line is nice and clean whereas if you're just coming in at the paper, then you kind of get a more broken edge. So clean edges, you need to kind of come in, what's that perpendicular to the surface. And you can kind of paint up to the edge to get a nice clean line.

These sort of round brushes can be really helpful for line work because they can load up a fair bit of paint and because they're kind of a round shape. I still like to wet the brush, load it up with paint. And you can kind of get a more solid line. Palette knives will get you a similar broken line depending on how much paint you have. So, you can kind of like load up the palette and sort of like you're, I don't know, cementing or plastering, like lay it down and you can experiment with laying it down at different angles. So, you can kind of lay it down, scratch into it. There's a technique called, I think it's called sgraffito, which is where you can, you know, scribble into it with a palette knife or with a pencil. You can draw into the mark. You can use a sponge, you can use anything really.

You could get the kids to cut up cardboard and cut tooth marks into the cardboard and smear the paint on. You could use an old brush or an old mop or, you know, there's no limit to what you can use. Sponging can be fun for blending and getting a different softer mark. When you're using a square brush, you know, depending on the state of the brush, this one's a bit rough, but you can, you know, move your hand to create a different mark with that brush.

So, you can start off, you can start off wide, but then go narrow depending on how you manipulate the brush. There's a technique called stippling or you know, I probably prefer the term dabbing. And that's where instead of focusing on line, which a lot of these I've demonstrated as lines, stippling or dabbing where you're kind of just dabbing it on like that. And this is a really, you can kind of go at different angles to get, you know, that's a smaller mark or you can come forward and get a real bold mark. And this can be really good for layering paint, introducing different colours. It also kind of gives the impression of movement because there's lots of texture and movement happening.

And on the topic of texture, you know, you can, students, you don't want theem to use too much paint, but you could encourage students to use more paint to create more texture. If there's big globs of paint, then it will dry and it will, you know, set.

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[End of transcript]

[Light music plays, screen reads 'Composition techniques'.]

Courtney Young

Now we're going to talk about composition and kind of setting up to work on a project.

I've just got a little landscape photo here of a national park near me. And, you know, working from photos is not always ideal, but sometimes that's all you've got to work with in a studio. If you can get your kids to go outside and draw outside, that would be awesome. But working from photos is fine. One technique that I like to get students playing around with is making a viewfinder.

So just cutting out two L shapes of card so that you can put them together to make a rectangle or a square to whatever surface you are going to be painting on. And what this does is it helps students visualise what the image might look like in this rectangular format. And it helps cut out all the distraction and the busyness outside of it because sometimes you'll go out into the landscape if you're going to be painting on plein air and you're just overwhelmed by everything that's around you and it's hard to just pick something to paint.

And so, this can be helpful even if you're working from life, from a still life in the studio, you could use this viewfinder to really like work out what composition, what your subject matter will be. Move your viewfinder around until you find something that's really interesting. You know, maybe something like this could be abstracted and made to be quite interesting. Maybe you want to keep it pretty much similar to the original shot but just cropped so it's just a really useful tool.

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[Light music plays, screen reads 'Planning to paint'.]

Courtney Young

I think drawing is a really important part of painting. You know, it helps you plan for what you're going to eventually paint. It helps you work out what's most important to put down onto the surface. Because like I said, there's a lot of detail when you're painting from life and you're trying to recreate something that's representational.

So, drawing can be a really helpful tool, and it is something that kids feel quite comfortable with. They might be more familiar with drawing. So, using a pencil or charcoal and getting the students to bring out their process diaries or what have you, and then drawing what they're intending to paint.

This is an example from my process diary. I just do little thumbnail sketches. So, I will quite literally draw the frame or the size of the piece of paper or canvas that I'm working on, and then really lightly sketch out what I'm intending to draw. This is a really good exercise for thinking about composition. So, I'm focusing on what's in the viewfinder. When we're thinking about composition, an easy starting point for students is the rule of thirds. So, if you imagine that you've got, this is your canvas or your piece of paper. If you imagine that this was cut up into three sections, length ways and vertically. You want your most interesting parts of the composition to be kind of sitting at one of these intersections here.

So, what I've done here is I've got this beautiful tree sitting on this third, which to my eye is, you know, it's kind of interesting. If that was right in the middle, it might be a bit too jarring and it might split the image in two. So that's why, generally speaking, putting the most interesting element in this third, which in this case is the tree. And then we've got this rock kind of coming out onto that third, some more trees here, coming in here and some trees here. It doesn't look like much and it shouldn't look like much. It's just a way of getting your ideas down on paper before you approach the painting surface. You know, when you put a painting surface in front of students, it might be quite intimidating and they might be scared to make a mistake. But painting is all about making mistakes. But at the same time, we still like to do some preliminary drawing to kind of get in our heads what we're trying to achieve and to start thinking about composition, shape and also value.

So, using charcoal, it can be really good to start mapping out, in your initial drawing, where the darker shadows are. And then you can start to make a judgement call as to whether it's feeling balanced. You know, have you got too much dark and not enough light?

You don't want it to be 50/50, but you do want it to be leaning more one way or the other. You know, maybe I'm going to start leaning more into the darker areas. I've got the blue mountains behind and some rock face here. Another exercise at this point is to try and not only think about value with a sketch like this, but to also think about the most basic shapes. And you could do this drawing or painting. I like to do it drawing in my sketchbook, but painting this exercise out can also be really interesting and you can have some cool results because you're really abstracting the image. And basically, it's looking at your subject matter and breaking it down into rectangles and triangles. And what that does is just to help you work out what's most important.

So, you don't get fixated on like a tiny leaf or a detail that's not important to the way that your eye views the work. So, when we're painting, we're just wanting to create an impression. We're not like trying to create an exact replica. This isn't photography, this is painting. And we want to create an impression of what it is that we're painting. So, if I was to break this into its most basic shapes, it could be, you know, it could be as simple as that. Which looks, it doesn't look that interesting, but maybe if you played with that in painting and start working out, you know, what are your darker areas, then maybe you'll get something more interesting emerge when you start bringing in shadow and colour and whatnot. So yeah, this is like an exercise in abstracting something that you're viewing in real life.

So, that's just a really basic introduction to composition. There are many different ways to approach it. I would definitely encourage using pencil and paper to kind of get those ideas down before they start working on a larger painting or, you know, a major work. This planning process is really important to warm us up, get us thinking, and to kind of troubleshoot some of these issues. Like, is it feeling like there's a balanced composition, enough light and shadow.

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[Light music plays, screen reads 'Phases of a painting project'.]

Courtney Young

Okay, we're going to work on a painting now from start to finish. I like to start my paintings with an underpainting. And this can be a really fun way for students to get into painting because when you're looking at a white surface, it can be quite intimidating. It can feel like, you know, they're hesitant to make the first mark on the surface. So, putting down a wash of colour beforehand can make it feel less intimidating. But it also can loosen up the students, get them ready for painting. And also that colour that you choose will start to influence the rest of the painting.

I like to work with warmer colours when I'm working on a landscape because landscapes are typically, at least this one, there's lots of blues and greens in this landscape that I'm going to be working off. So, I'm thinking a pink would be really good. Pink is green's complimentary colour, so that might make the green that I put in last really interesting. But in saying that, when I'm painting landscapes, I don't like to use too much green either. I think too much green in a landscape can make it feel really saturated. So, challenging your students to paint a landscape without green is a fun activity.

To start, I use just a wet brush. And then, I have a bit of paint here left over. I'm going to make a nice pink colour. It doesn't really matter because you're going to be painting over most of it, but it is good to pick a colour that you know is interesting to you. It really doesn't matter how it goes on as long as you've covered the whole surface.

I use a really diluted paint, but you could use thicker paint if you like. And then that might change the texture of the surface. So, this is a canvas sheet. It's primed, so I don't really need to worry about, you know, sealing the surface in. So, I can use a really wet colour. Sometimes I encourage students to use their less dominant hand. This can be like a fun way to get them to loosen up and to activate a different part of their brain as well by using a different side of their body. So, I am currently using my left hand. And yeah, it just makes a mark that is unfamiliar too, which some artists like to see. They like to kind of remove themselves from the painting by using a different hand or even, you know, adding a stick and making, extending the brush. There's different ways that you can kind of remove yourself from the painting in a way.

It's good to remind students that with acrylic painting in particular, you can keep painting over and over something. Like, there's no such thing as a mistake. So, you know, if this feels too dark, I can wipe it back a little bit while it's still wet. And then, that also removes the brush mark if you don't want that brush mark. And it can kind of create a more cohesive background. But sometimes I like having the brush marks anyway. If you're using bulldog clips, you might want to remove them as well. To paint under them.

You can wait for this to dry or you can start painting into it straight away. Usually I like to let it dry, but it really doesn't matter because all you're doing is sketching in your composition. So, you could use charcoal or even a pencil or chalk. I just paint with a kind of a smaller brush. And this next stage of the painting is where I'm starting to think about where things are positioned.

Think about my drawings and how I've mapped out where shadows are and the balance of light and dark. I often have the photograph or the reference image right next to me. But sometimes this can be really distracting and sometimes you might have a drawing that's just as good. Having a photograph right next to you, it can be tricky to not fixate on details that don't matter. So just, you know, if your students are overwhelmed with where to start, get them to draw the image first, remove it, remove the photograph, and then the student can just work off the drawing to simplify things.

So, I've got this nice kind of earthy colour. And this is going to act as the basis of the shadows that are in my work, that are in my painting. Starting from darkest to light can be really handy with paint. As soon as you add white to your palette, your paint, your colours can get quite muddy. So, working without white for as long as possible can be really helpful to create a more vivid painting and one that doesn't get too muddled up or too muted. So, I'm going to just map out the main shapes and lines. I really like the bend in this tree, so I'm going to exaggerate that. It can be helpful to remind students that if the thing that they're looking at doesn't match their painting, they can just change it, they can exaggerate it, they can put another tree somewhere else, they could make a tree a different colour, whatever. Like, the student can do what they want when it comes to where things are positioned.

The painting comes first. I'll start mapping out some of the darker areas as well. At this stage, it's really sketchy. It doesn't really matter what it looks like as long as you are getting an idea of where things are going to be positioned. And how light and dark things are. With the horizon line, you know, sometimes when we take photos of the landscape, it really flattens the image. And so, encourage your students to really lift up the horizon if it makes for a better image. You know, make the mountain seem bigger than they are in the photo. Because often when you're in the landscape and you're in front of the mountains, they do seem big. And then when you take a photo of it, it feels less majestic. So, I think that might be enough. It's kind of like, a very vague loose map so that I can let this dry and then come in with colour in the next stage of the painting. So, now we're moving on to the kind of blocking out stage. We've let this canvas dry. And so, I still like to continue with the theme of starting with my darker colours first.

So, I'm going to mix up my palette, but I'm going to include all of my colours on my palette. Some artists prefer to have a even smaller palette than this. So, some artists might just pick three primaries. And so, you can encourage your students to just pick three. Warm or cool, or even a combination. It doesn't really matter. But if you do pick three warm primaries, then you're going to have, like, a warmer toned painting, which can be quite interesting, or a cooler toned painting. But I'm just going to have all of them down so I can be really responsive to the painting. So, I've got my three primaries here. I'm not introducing white just yet. I'm going to try and hold off as long as possible. But I'm going to start bringing in colour into my painting. As you can see, I've only got kind of two different colours going on. I've got the darker purpley blue, brown colour, and then the pink wash of the background.

So, we're going to start bringing in colour, but you know, this is a fun stage. It's also a really ugly stage. It's not going to look like much until the final stage when we start bringing in detail. So yeah, you know, encourage your students to push through this uncomfortable stage of the painting process. And encourage your students to take risks and not get caught up in mistakes. You know, there's lots of happy little accidents that can happen through mistakes as well. Something to consider when you're applying colour, if we're doing a representational landscape, warmer colours come forward, warmer colours appear closer to you. Whereas cooler colours recede.

So, we've got a mountain range in the background here, and you might be able to see that from a photograph. It looks quite blue. It's further away. Things that are further away appear to be quite cool. Cool in colour. So, that's just something that I'm going to start thinking about now is that how can I bring in some warmer colours here and in the, like, the foliage that's in front. And how can I make things in the background feel cool and still further away? I'm going to mix up maybe, I don't know, some browns. I'm trying not to use too much green early on. I have a thing against green that, you know, too much green looks superficial. There's so many more colours in the landscape that we can look to rather than just green. Keep a loose hand and just start, you know, bringing in colour in. I like to just bring it in in a sketchy kind of way, or dabbing it in. This is quite a diluted paint, so I might mix it up, mix up some more.

I just, I'm not thinking too much. I'm just mixing until I find something that I like. Like, there's no formula for a particular colour. It's just, I paint by feel, I guess. Holding a really loose brush when you're doing kind of like branches. You can use the trees to sort of frame the composition. I like to repeat a colour around the painting as well. Like, I don't want to just isolate one colour in one spot. I like to repeat it where it makes sense throughout. And that kind of creates a more cohesive image. And I'm thinking, I'm still really focusing on value here. You know, what balance I have of light and dark. You know, with eucalyptus in particular, they can be quite red. Looking for like the reds and purples of a eucalyptus tree. And you can blend colours together as well. So, once it's on the canvas and it's still wet, you can start mixing colours in together. You can also mix on the canvas. So, you might want to like, put blue and red on your brush and mix it on the canvas, which can be interesting effect.

You can wash your brush every time or you can keep, you know, my palettes get really messy and I just mix as I go. I don't often wash the brush unless it gets, unless I'm making a really significant change in colour. Okay, I'm going to start bringing in the lighter colours now. Generally, you'll see more contrast in the foreground. And there'll be less contrast in the background. And so, what I mean by contrast is that there's more of a difference between the darker areas and the lighter areas. So, I'm going to make sure that this tree really stands out from, it's like a rock face. I'm going to make sure it's quite dark compared to this rock face. Whereas in the background, the differences are going to be less significant. They might blend into each other a bit more. They'd be a bit more muted, less intense. Don't forget to mix up your brushes as well. I often forget to use different brushes. It can be really interesting to have different brushes in a painting the same way you have different colours and different textures.

You can use bigger brushes in the foreground and more texture in the foreground. And then again, less differences, less texture in the background. I like to have little bits of the background kind of peeping through. So, the background, there's a bit of green in the background, but I'm going to make sure that I always add a little bit of red to my green so that it's not too green. It looks more natural. And we're going to keep the background fairly light and the foreground quite contrasted. I'm just, like, dabbing it in in sections. I don't want to have too big a block of colour anywhere in particular really. Something to think about with acrylic paint is that it can dry a bit darker.

So just, you know, if your students are complaining of the painting not looking like they thought it did, it could be because of just the way that the paint dries. Or it could be because they use too much water as well. For my bluer backgrounds, I'm making sure I'm using a little bit of all of the primaries so that it makes a more earthy, kind of more neutral blue. A good thing for students to learn is that, like, a colour might look great on the palette, but then once you put it on the canvas it might not be right because colour is relative to everything that it's up against. It might need adjusting once it's on the canvas.

When I'm painting in the sky, I like to use a square brush. Or when you're painting in a big area, a square brush can be really handy for getting a nice straight or clean edge. You know, with a sky, you don't want it to be too literal. You want it to be only very slightly, if it is a blue sky, you only want it to be very slightly blue. You want to bring in greys and any other colours that you can kind of think to bring in.

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