25 Apr A Beginner’s Guide to Brushwork, Lesson #23

We are excited for our brushwork lesson #23! This homeschool handicraft project is from the book, Brushwork Elementary Brush-Forms by Marion Hudson, and is called Design of Mountain Ash. It features five prominent branches, with designs of feathery, compound leaves and bright orange-red berries, each a hallmark of the mountain ash tree. If you’ve been following along with us in our Brushwork Series, you’re going to find this lovely design to be easy and incredibly rewarding.

Our Grid Paper

With most of our brushwork lessons, we have adapted the grid paper design in the book to our own grid paper. For this lesson, I drew out a simplified design, which is intended to show structural basics, but to still allow for design creativity. The horizontal lines represent the branches, while the circles represent the clusters of berries.

Materials Needed

• The book, Brushwork, Elementary Brush-Forms by Marion Hudson (also available online HERE)
• 1″ absorbent grid paper
• Watercolor paints (green and brown)
• Watercolor Paintbrush, we used a Princeton Velvetouch , round size 6 or 8
• A glass of water (not used for drinking)
• A small plate for mixing paint and water
• A napkin to dry the brush

Happy Handicrafts Video: A Beginner’s Guide to Brushwork, Lesson #23

The Process

For this lesson, similar to lesson #22, we used three paint colors – brown, green and red. I decided to start with the brown paint so that I could use the branches as a basic outline for the painting. I thought it would be a simple way to show how far apart each section had to be in order to paint the branches. As you paint the branches, don’t try to make them straight. You’ll want to add some curve to give the illusion of a swaying, living branch.

The next step is to paint the leaves. By now this brush form will be second nature to you!

The berries are the third step, as you change from green to red paint.

We finished our design of mountain ash by painting in the small stems and branches and connecting the leaves to the stems.

Come Join Us!

If you’re just finding us, you can get started with our first brushwork lesson and advance according to your skill. We store all of our videos on YouTube at Happy Handicrafts. You don’t have to start with brushwork – we have paper sloyd, needle-felting, crochet, and more. Go explore and choose which playlist will be the best for you and your family! We’ll see you there!