EXERCISE 1 Dry brushing

I decided that the tapered strip of ground in the foreground on which I placed a masted fishing boat should be like a raised gravel beach (see the sketch, page 35). This is far less complicated and much easier to paint than the detail in the photograph. This technique needs you to hold the brush down at a low angle, almost horizontal to the paper. By scraping the side of the brush gently across the surface of the paper, the paint should only catch the raised parts of the texture. It is important to have a limited amount of paint in the brush so that it doesn’t flow out and flood the paper. This needs practice so I recommend you have several tries at this. It is advisable to use the same type of paper as you will use for your painting.

Step 1

In this exercise, I drew the rough shape of the beach first and painted it. Then I tried again without drawing it. First, I added water to the burnt sienna then picked up a limited amount of it with a No. 8 Round brush. I scraped the brush across to create a broken texture. I raised the angle of the brush and used the tip to create the sharper tapered parts. Once you familiarise yourself with this, try scrubbing the brush from side to side.

Step 2

Once the burnt sienna was dry, I overlaid it with the plum mix. You can repeat this overlaying several times, but it is important to dry between each application.

Step 3

Keep trying this until you feel familiar with the technique and achieve results similar to my examples here.

Step 4

On my second effort, I added a few small stones and pebbles to help sell the effect.