Seaton Art Society focuses on seascapes

Richard Turner’s demonsration is entitled ‘Watercolour and Pastel Seascape’.

A record 70-plus members of Seaton and District Art Society attended this month’s demonstration by Richard Turner at The Gateway.

He began his talk, “Watercolour and Pastel Seascape”, by explaining he would focus on “general elements and principles of design”, then move on to “basics and the techniques employed to the pastel medium”.

He cautioned that any work he produced in the demonstration should be seen as a by-product, but then gave a richly informative two-hour lecture, simultaneously creating three lovely “by product” seascapes.

His work is underpinned by the attention he gives to developing a composition with his preliminary sketch, first working out tonal relationships and shapes, constantly editing, omitting, moving, adding, combining and re-sizing elements - ‘Seeking visual comfort for the viewer’ and vitally, ‘Always aiming to recapture how I felt when I first saw the view’.

He explained: “There’s nothing wrong with using photographs as a starting point.”