First day of a five day course at the Norfolk Painting School today; I devote the first morning to the basics, that is to say how to mix de-saturared colour, the importance of thick and thin, temperature, opacity and the divisions of light and dark with a view to developing a feel for underlying abstraction. I'm always impressed by student's willingness to have a go at these basics, and always surprised at how much their work improves over the balance of the course for having done so. Having done this for a few years now I'm coming around to the idea that all painting is really 'basics'; a glance or two in the National Gallery will tell you that it's about a few simple processes done well; contrast, thick and thin, texture, opacity, abstraction; simple blocks in theory but very easy to over complicate in practice.