Today Buck will continue his work on his painting “Sunset Power.”

Key Points:

• The canvas is wet.
• He is using the Alexander 1″ Brush to create a porous appearance in the sky so there is room for the birds to fly through. The 1″Brush is a stiff, boar-bristle brush.
• Atmosphere circles the earth in an aspherical manner. The way Buck creates dimension from a flat canvas is to keep this in mind. He paints the darkest part of the sky on the top of the canvas and then paints lighter tones as he reaches towards the horizon.
• Notice he softens the corners.
• Deep Orange can be created using Cadmium Yellow and Permanent Red.
• Something that is easy to miss is that Buck wipes his brush on a paper towel before he touches the canvas. Many times he will load the brush and then go to the paper towel in his hand and squeeze the brush. This does two things, it removes some of the paint so he doesn’t add too much to the canvas AND it gives him the opportunity to feel the form of the brush before he paints.
• Buck loves the Fan Brush! Often he is using just the corner of the bristles to maintain control. When he wants to apply more paint or achieve a certain look, he will use the full brush.
• Originally the Alexander Hake Brush was called “Buck’s Bunny Brush.” Often we still refer to it as the Bunny Brush. (No, it is not made from Bunnies!
• The other two brushes Buck uses are The Alexander Mop Brush and The Alexander Round Brush.

One of the things we love about Buck is his desire to share his knowledge with others. In today’s video he talks about his teacher, Claude Buck”s teacher. When Claude was learning his teacher would write down what he was to do and then put the paper in his pocket so the secrets stayed with him. Considering we only retain a small portion of what we hear, that had to be frustrating. Claude Buck, fortunately, didn’t continue the tradition of that teaching style. He was an open book and today we reap the benefit of Claude’s teaching style through Buck. It was easy for Buck to see the value in sharing knowledge. As Buck says, “when we share, we all grow!”

Happy Painting!

Laurie and Dawn

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