JO-ANNE SEBERRY Demonstration 16 July
2016
Pastel Seascape
Jo-anne is an eminent pastel artist who has won major prizes at the
large exhibitions. Today she started from a reference painting she had
done of St Pauls back beach at Sorrento. It had rugged cliffs and sea
flooding over rocks. She said that for safety and equipment reasons
she prefers to work from good photos which she takes herself rather
than sit out at the spot.
She starts with a little tonal sketch to work out her plan of attack. The composition may combine a number of photos. Her ground was a large sheet of mid-tone pastel paper in a fawn colour. There were layers of paper underneath to avoid unwanted marks coming through from the board. Her pastels were a mixture of hard and soft of various brands. First of all she sketched the composition in charcoal. Then she started on the sky. She works from the top so that as the pastel dust falls it doesn’t drop on to other work she has done.
There were fluffy clouds on a pale blue sky, then the dark
cliffs. The application is deliberately light as she doesn’t believe in
rubbing in or going heavy in the early stages. This keeps a freshness
which she related to the Degas pastels on exhibition in Melbourne at
the moment. You can still see the paper coming through. Don’t blow
on it because of the health risk of inhaling the dust. To remove dust
she just gives it a knock or uses a soft watercolour brush.
She completed all areas with tones in this light way then stood back and revised. Maybe you are not sure of the placement of an item, such as a rock, so you can do it on a piece of paper, cut it out and try it in different places to see.
A mirror is very useful at this stage to get a
different view of the accuracy and general effect of the work. The
next stage was to strengthen the detail in the cliffs, the rocks and
the water. She discussed how to do reflections on and in water. Her
reflections were much lighter and less detailed than the object
reflected. It is all a matter of layers and tones, she said. Looking at
a Degas picture of a dancer you can see what she is talking about.
Time was up and she could have done more but, although unfinished, it
was a beautiful fresh picture. Thank you Jo-anne.
Report by Colin Browne