Jeff Sewell's Demonstration

I was in the midst of my painting when everyone started to show up.  It was tough stopping because I was at the part of the painting when everything is a whirlwind till completion.  Jeff said my painting was "electric".

Jeff came to the paint out with his canvas already toned with burnt sienna.  He usually tones the bottom of the canvas with burnt sienna to help establish the foreground and the value scale for the painting.

He comes with the burnt sienna already mixed because he said it is a difficult color to mix.  He uses it with ultra marine blue to create his black color.  Jeff puts down a lot of color on his pallet because he does not want to go back into his bag once he starts painting. He is not too particular about the colors in his pallet and he will mix them up a little bit from time to time.  His philosophy is that these colors are just a starting point to be used to speed things up.

Jeff uses thin washes of paint thinned down by turpentine.  In particular he keeps his shadowed areas thin.  He uses the shadow areas to calm down the overall painting. He uses the highlighted areas of the painting to excite.  Jeff went on to say that you shouldn't try to have the light and shadowed areas as areas of interest.  He went on to say that he uses the light areas as the area of interest not the shadowed areas.

Jeff starts by putting in the darkest colors in the painting.  He then establishes the sky which is always the lightest part of the painting. Jeff said he is trying to get a feeling of compression when he is painting the sky.  He is trying to establish a greater feeling of depth within the painting.  Jeff uses the sky and the dark areas of the painting to make all of the value decisions in the painting.  He compares everything to the sky and the dark areas of the painting to determine where the value falls on the continuum.  When painting the sky Jeff starts with the darkest colors and works to the lightest colors.  After that he works to build harmony in the sky.  His approach is similar to mine.  He said he has been putting vertical marks in the sky to increase the vocabulary of brush strokes.  I have been doing this for about 20 years.  I stole it from Monet.  If you observe a lot of his paintings you will notice the vertical variegation of colors.  Jeff considers the sky an area of purity; a part of the painting where you don't want a lot of colors that don't belong.

Jeff used the shape of bluff in the background to balance the shape of the bay.  He worked to establish the right values between the three bluffs to make the painting read correctly for areal perspective.  He really wanted to push back the bluffs to create the feeling of distance.  He also focused on using everything to create a path to the area of interest.   Jeff used the brush stokes in the foreground, the receding values of the bluffs, and the shape of the bay to achieve that result.  Jeff wanted to make the bluff at the very back of the bay his area of interest.

Jeff takes an impressionistic approach to painting.  When building harmonies within the painting he is focusing on the quality of the relative values within the painting.  He tries a little bit of color out on the canvas before committing to it.  Jeff believes that if you achieve the proper tonal qualities within the painting the colors are not as important to achieving a good result.  He really did a good job at establishing the feeling of distance through the use of proper values.

Jeff does not use an umbrella but does not like the sun directly on his pallet because of the glare that comes off of it.  He finds that his paintings become much darker because the glare makes him choose darker colors (he is trying to avoid picking too light a color).  Jeff spoke about using complimentary colors to gray out a painting.  Jeff also spoke about trying to leave the lightest colors for last.  During the demonstration Jeff only used one brush.  He said he prefers to paint that way.  One of the repeated themes to his painting discussion was his attempt to create interest within the painting by varying his brush work within the painting.  Jeff said he leaves the edge work for the end of the painting.  In the foreground he left a lot of the bushes and ground unfinished.  It was like he put down little areas of paint that he left unconnected until the end.  By doing that he was able to establish many similar areas in color while keeping their identities distinct.  It kept the color cleaner.

Nice.