S's learning base

today I got my new set of brushes and a glass slab a half inch thick. I will never again clean my brushes in the middle of a session with my mineral spirits holder. I will clean the brush dirty. This will keep the knowledge of thickness of the oil content knowable.  

I have stopped using hardboard and I am using up the current canvases I have saved up. I am avoiding the last inch of each edge plus the actual edges...which I hated painting anyway.

`But the real reason I left space is to accom,idate for the smaller canvases that have wood stretcher bars in the back. This way there is no bleed through. Unfortunately, there are a couple canvasses that I poorly stretched that had middle wood bracer bars and they do show through, even with the larger/thicker size. I will use them first since I am not very good yet anyway, and it is very doubtful I will paint anything memorable anyway. I will use them for learning.

My ne canvases will be 7/8 inch thick with no bracer bars in the middle and 24 by 24 inches.... the largest size I can get without them. I will avoid painting at the edges where the wood is behind the canvas.

I tossed out all my gesso and hard molding paste. It has become too hard to build my own hardboard canvases. Instead, for now on, I will buy thin stretched canvas that have no bracer bars for the time being. I have approximately ten years to learn brushstrokes anyway.

I have gotten close to mastering color-that I have studied for nearly 20 years- mostly with lines, which have different rules than wider brushstrokes (See Starry Night by Van Gogh, for an example), but I have only used brushes for about a year.