ANYONE starting out on the journey of artistic endeavour is faced with the dilemma of what to include in the art kit.

   I decided to chat with Snowy Mountain guru of painting and matters artistic; Janece Latham and began with the question:  “which brush”?

   Janece is a seriously talented artist and as expected produced a plethora of bristled painting implements to demonstrate the importance of using just the right brush to get just the right result.

Janece Latham in her studio with a
selection of her brushes

   Have you ever noticed how the top people in any field are invariably the most generous when it comes to passing on information and help?

   “Shall I show you my pet brush?” she said with a smile on her face.

   “Every artist has a pet brush and this is mine”.

   Costing only 10 cents at a market and resembling a shaggy well-loved regular small craft brush, just like the sort of thing found in everybody’s garden shed and dragged out from time to time to touch up the chipped skirting boards, I was shocked.

   “This I use for scumbling. I scratch around and come up with some special textures that nothing else can produce,” she said.

Samples of Janece's work, inspired by
The Snowy Mountains

   Just as I was thinking artistic pursuits are not that expensive after all she held up her ‘Sable Mop’.

   A gloriously dense and springy tapered circular bundle of fine bristles used for mopping up and working wet on wet can be purchased for a mere $400!

   The ‘Sable Mop’ holds a huge amount of water and you guessed it is used for water- colour work.

  
      The special springy qualities of Sable fur means the fine tapered point holds it’s shape and can also be used for detailed work.

Samples of Janece's work, inspired by
The Snowy Mountains

   The Fan Brush is good for delicately blending (or feathering as it’s sometimes called) adjacent colours.

   The large flat brush is best suited to washes for sky effects. Add more water or white as you work your way down towards the bottom of the picture to get realistic sky effects.

   Smaller Flat and Filbert brushes are good for general painting.

   A variation on the Flat is the Bright.

   It’s made with synthetic fibres and interestingly the re-known Australian water colourist Robert Wade uses these almost exclusively.

   The fine Rigger brush is for finishing touches although one of Janece’s techniques is to dip small twigs into paint and mark out some final tree branch effects.

Samples of Janece's work, inspired by
The Snowy Mountains

   “An artist should have as wide a variety of brushes and painting aids as possible and that means basically anything goes”, she said.

   “Sticks, fingers, palate knives, bits of rag, tooth brush (good for spattering snow) and even credit cards”.

   I reckon a credit card would come in handy if a Sable brush was needed!

   Janece Latham can be contacted on  (02) 6456 1353 

See examples of Janece’s paintings and past ART ZONES on www.pauldion.com