The Art Of Brusho, Carrie McKenzie – Book Review

Let’s do a book review before kicking back and enjoying Saturday evening. I read this one yesterday. It’s a 103 page paperback, quite short by today’s standard’s but let’s reserve judgement for now.

On the other hand, let’s address the other big elephant in the room right at the start. I don’t use brusho, I’ve never used brusho and I don’t plan on using brusho, so why have I been reading this book? Well, brusho is a bit like crystalline watercolour and I’m hoping that what works for one also works for the other. The difference between the two is that brusho is dye based rather than watercolour based. And I understand that brusho may have lightfastness issues, which I why I’m sticking with the crystalline watercolour and viewing this book through crystalline watercolour lenses. There’s another brusho book out there by Joanne Boon Thomas but I went for Carrie’s book as I prefer her subject matter: more landscapes and fewer flowers and cute animals.

Contents-wise, we have eight similarly sized chapters on:

• Introduction to the medium and a bit on composition and colour theory
• Different ways of applying the paint
• Wax resist, masking fluid, sprinkling on salt
• Line and wash, mixed media with acrylic inks and granulation medium
• Negative painting
• Use of bleach
• A chapter on abstracts, which is really all about alternative supports
• Some final demos

It’s a great structure, seeming to me to cover everything to the right depth without heading off on weird tangents anywhere. There are about 20 demonstrations in the book and a lot of photos of other works. While worded for people to copy, the demos won’t satisfy the knitting pattern brigade because, as Carrie points out, this is a medium that doesn’t do as it’s told, so however many times you try to paint the same subject, you’ll never get the same result. I was happy with the demos though: they were great illustrations of what can be done with this medium.

In terms of content density, I was happy. It reminded me a bit of Liz Chaderton’s books in that Carrie has gone into this with the intention to tell us everything and doesn’t see the point in diluting the meat of the messges with curry sauce. You need to read everything in this book; skim read a paragraph and you’ll miss something.

And then there’s the important but (at least to me). Does this book help me with my crystalline watercolour? And the answer to this is an unequivocal yes. There’s nothing in here that’s not of use to me, although I understand that bleach may not work as well for crystalline watercolour as it does with brusho. And there’s plenty in here that will also help me with normal watercolours. Or with normal watercolours used with crystalline watercolours. I’ve also been persuaded to add some more crystalline watercolours to my birthday wishlist: most of my colours are neutral feeling combinations of three primaries but having now seen Carrie’s artwork, I’m thinking I need some monotone colours too.

This was definitely a book worth buying so gets at least three palettes. But I’m going to stick at three and not give any more, for two reasons: (i) even with the densely packed content, 103 pages does feel a bit short, and (ii) while covering all the important bases to the depth that a beginner would need, I can’t help wondering whether it would have hurt to go deeper in places or to look at different techniques. I’ve been doing things in my crystalline watercolour portraits, for example, that aren’t covered in this book. I’m thinking in particular of how I sprinkle on crystals, spray them, then quickly dab off all the water. So three palettes it is, and I must remind you that’s a good rating.

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You can find this book and more reviews of it at Amazon UK here.  As an Amazon Associate, I earn commission from qualifying purchases but this costs absolutely nothing extra to you.