Demo: Martin Brierley - Painting a Seascape

Martin Brierley

Martin, a retired art teacher, gave an excellent and informative demo where he showed us how he paints seascapes from how he prepares the boards to his choice of colours, composition and use of painting knives. We discovered beautiful blues: kings blue and manganese and delicious cobolt turquoise. He told of artists that have influenced him: Edward Seag, Ken Howard, Peter Wilman, Brian Ryder and his favourite Fred Cummimng.

Working from memory he started the painting by drawing a loose composition in paint then scumbled in paint layers to establish the main tones and areas, as he frequently said, ‘still working with chaos’ Surfaces were then either smoothed or activated with a painting knife. His normal practice is to leave a surface to dry then add detail like highlights and ripples in the water.

Despite the fact that he didn’t feel he had completed his painting we all enjoyed watching and learning from him and would have been very pleased if we had managed to paint like this in just 2 hours. His workshop on 31st October is nearly sold out and promises to be a rewarding day.