BEACH SCENES WORKSHOP WITH PETER STUDLEY WRAP UP

Painting people on a beach can certainly be a challenge.  Peter began by showing us his small tonal preliminary sketch, which he does, using oils, in a small sketch book.  He then determines the composition, which would work best as a painting, rather than strictly copying a photograph.  He also explained the colours we see when we are looking at waves.  Peter only uses a limited palette of colours and tries to keep the colours a pure as possible.  He does this by either trying to use the colour straight from the tube or only mixing two colours together.  

In his first demonstration and referring to the photographs that he had given to all attendees, he started by covering his board with a thin coat of Indian Yellow, thinned with Gamsol, which he then wiped back so it would dry very quickly.  Then using a small brush,thin Ultramarine Blue and a ruler he drew lines to show a straight horizon and where the tops of the waves would be.  Some lines were on slight angles, as not all waves are parallel with the horizon.  With slightly thicker Indian Yellow he plotted where the main figures would be, as well as smaller figures in the background.  It was then our turn to do the same thing.  While our paint was drying, we had a short morning tea break to enjoy the delicious morsels,supplied, once again, by Catherine Feder and Narelle Harvey.

Peter then gave us another demonstration of the next stage of the painting, where he begins to paint the people in the front, who are the subject of the painting.  This technique was a surprise to most of us, as we expected that he would start by painting the waves in the background.  The darkest shadows on the main subject, came first, the colours of which were based on the colours of their clothing.  So, each person had a different coloured shadow. The skin came next and similar to the shadows, each person had slightly different coloured skin tone.  He then added some colour to the people in the background, some shadow marks in the sand and colours to the waves.  It was then our turn to get our paintings up to this stage.

After lunch Peter mixed up the colours he needed to complete painting the waves, the sand and the final details on the people who are the main subject of the painting and demonstrated how to do this.  It was then up to us.  Time was not on our side and most of us didn’t finish our paintings completely. But we all achieved a pleasing result, all the same, and learnt a lot in the process.

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