Demo: Stewart Beckett - Boats and Water
Stewart Becket gave us a fascinating demonstration of landscape painting, filled with helpful advice on ways of developing a painting from a reference.. He used oils but his advice was useful for all media.
He used a photograph he had taken whilst waiting for his participation in Landscape Artist of the Year.. He explained that he had used charcoal to sketch in an outline, fixed with fixative. He did not colour his ground, feeling that for this painting, it was more important to use the white background. It was more important to sort out darks and lights, warms and cools at the beginning, using loose brushstrokes. He filled in the distance using a purple grey.
He had a useful skill of being able to paint with both hands - he recommended using the non-dominant hand at times as it gave a fresher feel to the work. He also painted on canvas cut from a larger roll, glued to board. He felt this was more economical and gave maximum flexibility.
Steward shared many skills with us:
When working with oils, start with thin paint, mixed with spirit and added more oil in succeeding layers.
Greys and neutral colours were vital to push the bright colours forward.
When layering wet colours on wet, always wipe the brush between strokes to avoid picking up paint and muddying colour.
Hold the brush at the end to ensure loose strokes.
Think about safety when working with oils, particularly the cadmium colours, use gloves to smudge and clean hands thoroughly when finished.
Squinting helps estimate the depth of tones.
Colour assimilation was a helpful trick (eg use a thin line of bright red on the edge of a dark red shape to make the colours vibrate and stand out).
A dry bristle brush was useful for unifying several dark shapes by adding texture.
A palette knife was useful for sharp lines, load the paint up on one edge.
Finish by adding some highlights of white and bright colour.
Finally: painting was about getting the right shape with the right tone in the right place.
Stewart’s workshop is on 30th September. The focus would be on boats and water but members could bring any references that they wanted to use, along with any medium. Contact Jen and Sally if you would like book a place. To build on the skills shared in this demo, the next Plein Air would be in Christchurch Harbour on 3rd August.
