DRY BRUSH LANDSCAPE EXERCISE

This little project is all about dry brush work practice.

For this quick study in dry brushwork and glazing, have ready some blue, red, violet, and brown (the dark blackish colour can be made with dark blue and burnt umber.)

The goal is to complete the little study without any wet-in-wet blending, each area dries in between and may have some tonal glazes added, wet over dry.

1. Use half an A4 page, and outline a rectangular frame of reference.

2. With a not-too-wet load of cobalt blue or ultramarine, use the brush (1/2", 1.5cm synthetic flat) almost horizontally to brush in a sky, leaving out the areas where you want to imply clouds (stratus). 

3. In a few minutes when that has dried mostly, add in some light violet hills and dilute the thin wash down a little more, leaving out some light areas (implying the salt plains). Let that dry off.

4.  Now with a 1 cm flat, paint in the brown earth areas, and with the dirt track, use overlapping curved strokes that imply tyre grooves. 

5. Mix a little red-orange into the brown and glaze over the dried foreground areas to warm up slightly. (this part is not dry brush)

6. With a blackish mixture and a liner brush, add some dead tree shapes, making them finer and lighter as they recede into the distance.

7. Glaze more layers wherever you feel that they are needed to strengthen tones (a glaze is intended to transparently add to an area, not to cover or obscure what is underneath)