Pinnacle Rock - A stunning Seascape Demo

We were delighted to have Peter Smales demonstrate to a full house on Saturday 21st September. Peter is a member of the prestigious ‘Twenty Melbourne Painters’ and ‘The Victorian Artists Society.’ He characteristically works in an impressionist style from a plein air start. Because the light changes so quickly, he takes a photo on site and finishes in the studio with the photo as a reference. He points out that, “Making a painting isn’t just copying, it needs a design with balance of light and dark to create harmony, and needs to draw the eye around in a circular fashion.” Today’s subject came from Mornington Peninsula on a clifftop walk around inaccessible wild beaches leading to Cape Schank. It showed a wide bay with a distant headland, and in the foreground a rocky cliff and free-standing pinnacle rock with transparent waves running in over sand and rocks around its base.

Peter came prepared with a large board, prepped with a pale warm pink tone and the rocky cliffs already outlined. He used a large palette made from MDF and shaped to sit on his arm with two holes: one for a hand hold and one for working brushes; and two small jars attached for medium. His palette was prepped with the oils in a rainbow of six primary colours with a warm and cool for each of yellow, blue, and red with white in the centre. When asked why no black he explained that he mixes darks for instance with windsor blue and cadmium red.

He started today’s painting with a broad flat brush and thin, turps-based pigments to see how the relationships work, and started from the back plane to the front, working down the canvas to cover the board with the first layer. Being so thin, it dried quickly. Pointing out the range of tonal contrasts he explained that this is what creates a 3D effect. Broadly consider the range of light and dark with the foreground being strong tones, the middle-distance mid tones and the furthest objects being the lighter the tones. This tonal gradation is used to creates a sense of distance. Up front needs dark tones and strong contrasts. At this point of the painting he noted it was important not to take nature at face value and to change the composition to bring the eye back around.

With step two, the audience could see the painting start to come alive as Peter committed to overlays with more solid paint. Again, we could see the diminishing tones in the far headland, covered with transparent glazes and a variety of colours but with consistency of tone. The near rocks and cliffs took on drama with contrasts of light and dark in confident strokes of browns greens and reds showing the rocky cliff catching light on various surfaces. He warned against getting lost in too much detail, keeping the brush strokes consistent, cutting in around the shapes and adding that it is better to understate.

Now we could see rich colours emerge. Several blues in the sky and the sea with some pink being added, more blues and some emerald for the near water and various yellows and gorgeous mauves for the wet reflective sand. As he mixed these rich colours Peter explained that to create a range of greens, it depended which blue was chosen. For instance, the emerald was a mix of windsor blue and lemon yellow, but a more purple green would be mixed from the purple style end of the blue spectrum. To encourage the eye to travel around the painting, small smudges were made in straight edges, such as the white wave edges, to encourage a visual path way. When questions were raised about how best to show the light, Peter elaborated on the need to avoid using lots of thick white. He also insisted on avoiding “mud” by keeping colours separate and only blending a little at the edges. He also explained that better effects are achieved by contrast, with the eye going to the areas of greatest contrast.

With time up he felt there was only some minor tweaking left. It’s no easy task to simultaneously chat, tell anecdotes and explain the process of tonal relationships to keep an audience engaged while gradually building a landscape in oils, and Peter managed all this till close at 4 pm when he threw an ornate frame over the work and the audience burst into spontaneous applause!

 Report by Jane Taylor

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