Allsorts by Rebecca Yoxall

Hey there!

 Thanks for stopping by on this fine, but maybe a bit wet, Friday.

I've gone all sweet today with a painting in the wonderful Brusho of some Liquorice Allsorts. I have to be honest they are not my favourite tasting sweets BUT I hope you agree that they make a fantastic subject to have a bit of fun with and of course show off the stunning Brusho colours.

So go buy yourself your favourite treats and have a go at your own 'Sweet Art' in Brusho. But don't eat them first!

I began by drawing out my design thinking about piling some of the sweets on top of each other and having the odd sweet scattered a bit further out of the main group to make a pleasing arrangement. 

I then applied some wax using one of the wax sticks produced by Colourcraft (these sticks are much smoother and allow for more accuracy of application than candle wax) The image below shows where the wax provides a resist to the Brusho colours of Yellow and Rose to create a basic highlight and shine on the edge of the sweet.

I began to build up the Yellow and Rose colour washes by mixing on a palette to control the consistency/richness of the colour and mixing both the Rose and Yellow Brusho together for an orange shade which also gives me some darker tones on the yellow sweets. Only a small amount of Brusho is required for this making it so economical as a medium for painting with.

I made sure to leave the space for the black liquorice and also painted in the blue sweets with Ost Blue Brusho. Again the Ost Blue Brusho was sprinkled onto a palette and mixed with water to achieving a light tone.

I continued to build these bright colours to capture a 3 dimensional feel by using both darker and lighter mixes. this is most obvious in the sweet at the bottom where the top is yellow indicating light is hitting this area and an orange mix (rose and yellow) painted around the side representing a shadow. 

Once all of the bright colours were dry it was time to paint in the liquorice. For this I used the black Brusho again mixed up on my palette. 

This really makes the bright colours POP.

My final layer addressed the background as I felt the sweets were floating on the page although I quite like the look of a crisp white background. This meant I didn't want to add too much and overpower the Allsorts with a heavy or complex background. I used the Ost Blue Brusho mixed with a tiny amount of Black Brusho to paint a quite diluted mix on the left side of the sweets and for a bit of extra interest I flicked my paint brush making some splatters/spatters of colour.

I hope you like it! 

I'd love to see if you have a go at a 'sweet art' piece. 

So what are you waiting for? The sweet shop is calling!

Bec