Artist's Back to Basics

Jill Kirstein was born in Katoomba, New South Wales – high in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. After the war, her family moved to Bulawayo in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). It was at the Bulawayo Dominican Convent where a lifetime love of art first began to

• Canvas on a stretcher.• Palette.• Brushes.• My trusty fingers.• Winsor and Newton Oils, including: Background – Burnt Sienna, Cerulean Blue, Cobalt Blue, Yellow Ochre, White; Flowers – Windsor Red, Indian Yellow, Alizaria Crimson, Permanent Rose, W

Brushes • 2’’ flat• ¾” flat wash• ½” flat round taklon filbert• 2” fan• No 6 flat• 1/8 filbert• ½” stippler Hydroacylic paints • Cerulean Blue• Titanium White• Dioxazine Purple• Ultramarine Blue• Magenta• Phthalo Green• Yellow Oxide• Lemon Yellow• St

As soon as I saw this beautiful animal I just had to paint it! Frolicking in the yard so happy and carefree it was what I wanted to feel like! Oil was the only choice to make for this painting, as I wanted to capture all of the emotion and atmosphere

• Stretched canvas 20 x 24”• Atelier Gesso• Fine sand paper• Palette knife• Fan brush no. 4• Art Basics 2200 Taklon 000• Art Basics Stiff Synthetic Filbert 95-KF No. 12• Art Basics Bristle Flat 101-F No. 6• Art Basics Bristle Bright 102-B No. 7• Art

Natalie Barlow was born in Geelong, Victoria. After finishing school, she studied Commercial Art at the Melbourne College of Decoration, and in 1987 attained a TAFE certificate in Promotional Display and Advertising. Since then she has worked as a gr

As a teenager I loved painting and did a lot of it. I was encouraged by others and earned money from it. Selling artwork supported my teenage fashion habit and this was naturally a great motivator. I even won art prizes and had my work displayed in P

I can remember as a child of around eight years of age marvelling at the Albert Namatjira reproduction paintings that hung in the office at my public school, and wondering how he did it. The colours, the distance and landscape formations, and above a

I use a range of filberts and flats from #2 to #14. My new favourite is a number 14 Neef filbert. My round brushes are from 0 to #12. I am very careful to keep my oil brushes very separate from my acrylic brushes. I haven’t painted a beach painting f

It always starts and ends in the brain this art stuff. Here’s the bit of the really deep end that involves the grey mushy stuff. It’s all exactly what goes on in my head all the time, every day at the drawing board. You’re lucky I’m even sharing such

Steeped in history, the Federation Gothic building housing Maitland Regional Art Gallery (MRAG) in the lower Hunter Valley of NSW is an awe-inspiring example of early 1900s architecture. Officially opened in 1910, it was constructed to house the Mait

The ideas in this article take it all as far as I know to go when it comes to the most difficult aspects of drawing freehand with proportional precision. All lines only need to be as good as they need to be at any stage of a drawing, and this certain