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I couldn't agree with you more. Wasn't there a book once where the author said that everything he knows now, he once learned in kindergarten?
Like you, and the question you posed, that author is talking about "basics".
I have to admit, that despite going through umpteen art classes in order to get my degree, most of the discipline, and a good portion of my painting technique, I garnered from my 8th grade teacher. I can still hear her now everytime I sit down with a brush. It was her philosophy that if a poet doesn't know English, how can he write with meaning and passion? So she told us to leave our figurative, trite, impressionistic, or stylized drawings at the door and if we were going to be serious artists, we had to learn to draw exactly what we SEE and not what we "think or feel" an object should look like. We, as novices, had to learn the true structure, color, line, texture and substance of a subject and most importantly how it reacts within its environment. She promised, that with time and experience, we could later take take what we learned and use that knowledge to stretch what we SEE in order to device our own techniques.
The art that 8th grade class produced at the end of one year won awards throughout the state.
Now, I don't presume that all artists need that kind of background, but it certainly made a very strong and long-lasting impression on me.
Basics. You gotta love 'em.
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