How to Think Beyond Objects: The Creative Approach of Sarah Sedwick

When Sarah Sedwick, Ep.47, is painting a tea cup, orange or plate, those are the last things on her mind.

She doesn’t want to think about the objects themselves. Instead, she is thinking about something much more important.

She doesn’t want to paint objects. She wants to paint SHAPES. So instead of teacup, orange or plate, she divides her objects up another way: she asks herself if she’s painting a section being hit by light or a section in shadow.

That shadow vs light distinction not only allows her to create shapes in her mind, but it also helps her when she’s mixing color in her palette.

When she’s mixing paint for a specific area, she’ll ask herself, “Am I working in the shadow side?” If the answer is yes, she knows she can’t pick up any paint from mixtures she’s made for the light side shapes.

And this is a rule she sticks to. Because sometimes one of those light side mixtures will just look right… but Sedwick knows from experience, once she puts it into a shadow side, it’ll look really wrong.

Holding to this light side vs dark side strategy allows her to think in terms of value patterns as opposed to individual objects, which then opens opportunities for her to create lost edges between similar values.

Put it to Practice:

Learning to think in shapes is exactly that… a learned skill.

The reason why Sedwick’s light side vs shadow side works great as a strategy is because it does some of the abstraction work for you.

The form shadow on your apple probably isn’t EXACTLY the same dark value as the cast shadow on your table. But if you’re thinking in light side vs shadow side, you are giving yourself permission to mass them together anyway. They are both shadows.

You might feel some pushback from your brain telling you that the cast shadow and the form shadow aren’t a single shape. That they are separate… but that’s because your brain is trying to pull you back into object thinking.

But it’s all about practice.

Practice you can do outside of your painting space. The next time you’re waiting outside in line for pick up or for soccer practice to get out. Play around with trying to divide up the space around you into Hit by Light or Shadow Side of the objects. See if you can see mass those into values and see the value pattern over the objects themselves.