Playing with paint

You may remember a few months ago I won art supplies from Shona at The Artistic Life.  The art supplies are necessary for the projects in her book The Artistic Mother: A Practical Guide to Fitting Creativity into Your Life. 

In keeping with my vision of creating more this year, I cracked open Shona's book again and got busy making myself some background papers.  This is one of them:

Santa was very kind and left a collection of paint brushes in my stocking (how did he know?)  This was done with basic red, yellow and brown using a coarse bristle brush.  I like the feathery look the brush made.  I didn't gesso the paper before painting.  I have  no idea how important the gesso step is.  Guess I'll find out!  I've prepped some paper with gesso for the next round.  I picked up a few more paint colors to try out as well  :)