Get ready for some swashbuckling mark-making by getting yourself a sword. A sword brush that is...

• Intro to Brush Shapes

^{Image © 2012 Marion Boddy-Evans. Licensed to About.com, Inc.}

"We know that learning to draw, like learning to read, is not dependent on something called 'talent', and that, given proper instruction, every person is able to learn the skill. Furthermore ... people can transfer the basic perceptual components... to general thinking."

Betty Edwards, in Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain

Betty Edwards' Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is a classic and recently came out in its fourth edition. For an art book to be in print for more than 30 years is an achievement in itself, nevermind its influence in terms of right/left brain thinking and creativity. Though I don't imagine the battle against the "it takes talent" reasoning will ever be won, never let it stop you from moving from thinking you'd like to paint into giving it a go.

^{Photo © Marion Boddy-Evans. Licensed to About.com, Inc.}

A mother and a daughter walk into an art museum... it sounds rather like the lead-in for a joke, doesn't it? But it's an article by on the subject of modern art passing people by. How you have to work hard to "get" so much art on display in galleries, and thus is it really doing its job as art? Read My Mother Versus Modern Art by Elizabeth Charlotte Grant (a writer married to an artist).

I remember having a painting in the Metropolitan Museum explained to me, that its "big deal" was that it wasn't on a square or rectangular canvas, but "squashed". Revolutionary in its time, part of minimalism, that I got, but I couldn't help but wonder whether the point could've been made equally successfully on a canvas that wasn't so huge. The kind of thought to get you labeled as an art heretic if you're not careful.

The painting was Blue Panel by Ellsworth Kelly. I notice there's no description on the Met's website about it, but I'm trying not to read anything into that...

Art Jokes:
• You Must Be An Artist If...
• 10 Ways to Create Art Even If You've No Talent

While it's cheaper per milliliter (or fluid ounce) to buy paint in big tubes rather than small, I find I frequently squeeze out more than I need from a large tube. I think it's because I judge the quantity by the length of the 'sausage' that's squeezed out, forgetting the diameter is wider.

Maybe the solution is to have all the tubes big ones? The other answer is, of course, to pay more attention to what I'm doing, but often I'm "just quickly" grabbing another bit of paint and my focus is on the painting not the paint.

• Share Your Tips on How to Save Money on Art Materials
• Art Materials on a Budget

^{Image © 2012 Marion Boddy-Evans. Licensed to About.com, Inc.}