Riff on John Francis Murphy 5x7

The Painting Process

I recently completed this painting about a week and a half ago. The composition vaguely resembles one of Murphy's scenes, but deviates enough that I'm calling it a "riff" rather than a direct study. It's inspired by a painting I previously made a study of during one of my Master Series.

For my medium, I use Archival Oils brand - Classic formula. It's a quick-drying oil that I add to my paint when I need more movement, particularly during the underpainting stage. One tip I’ll pass on: decanting the medium into very small jars helps prevent oxygen exposure, which can turn it into an unusable gooey sludge over time.

The board has been prepped with house paint tinted to a color called "Deep Earth" - a lovely, natural earth tone that serves as an excellent foundation. I'm doing the underpainting with burnt umber, which works beautifully against this background.

Riff on John Francis Murphy 5×7

Color Philosophy and Approach

Deep Earth makes a great support color because I can leave portions peeking through, creating natural vibration in the painting. For many years, I used burnt sienna as my ground color, which also works wonderfully but requires more care since it can sometimes appear too saturated when the painting ages.

I believe Tonalists get vibration through using a colored ground, while Impressionists achieve it by mixing primaries close to each other. Both are effective strategies, but Tonalism offers a more subdued, poetic approach - more still and philosophical. When I first started painting, I worked primarily in an Impressionist mode, but gradually shifted into Tonalism as it deffo resonates more for me.

I love injecting color into skies. Even when painting blue skies with fluffy clouds, I'll bring in extra colors - a little Rose Madder, Purple, or Burnt Sienna. If you really observe clouds throughout your day, you'll notice they contain little rainbows of color as sunlight passes through water vapor - they're never static.

While Impressionists excel at capturing light effects, I'm more interested in the overall emotional tone of a painting achieved primarily through careful manipulation of values and color. Though I often separate values from colors when teaching, in practice, you're applying both simultaneously - every color has both a value and a hue, and both need to be right.

Working Methods

Pre-mixing colors on your palette before beginning is incredibly helpful. It allows you to consider your approach without putting brush to canvas, and serves as a great motivator - I'll often do my pre-mixing before lunch, knowing those colors are sitting there waiting, encouraging me to return and finish the painting that day.

My process typically starts with either finding a board or selecting a reference, sometimes one before the other. I've been focusing on smaller works lately, partly because the economy has made larger, more expensive pieces harder to sell. Fortunately, I enjoy working small.

The advantage of smaller paintings is efficiency - this entire scene took only about 2-2.5 hours to complete. Working at a smaller scale means sacrificing some of the subtleties present in the reference, that's a big part of the process. I aim for a painterly effect using hog bristle brushes rather than tiny sable brushes that would allow more detail.

Learning from Masters

Riffing on masters like John Francis Murphy is excellent practice. While my painting differs significantly in tree masses and other elements, it maintains the basic composition and coloration of his work. I wish I'd started doing master studies and riffs earlier in my career.

If you're interested in exploring tonalism, check out my "100 Days of Tonalism" playlist. There's a wealth of information in my various playlists that you can let run in the background while you work on your own paintings.

Resources for Learning

For those interested in my approach to Tonalism, I've distilled 13 years of painting experience into an instructional book. While much of this information appears across my YouTube videos, the book provides a structured, accessible reference you can return to repeatedly. It's designed to help you develop your own Tonalist practice, available for $60 USD with international shipping included. Also check out my YouTube Members Area for hundreds of real-time full length videos.

Until next time, take good care of yourselves and stay out of trouble!

Cheers,

Mike

Arcadian Path 4x6

The painting I'm bringing you today is called "Arcadian Path" (4x6). I painted this yesterday and I'm pleased to share some ideas about what I did here in this post today.

Arcadian Path 4x6

I'm working on MDF that's been prepped with house paint. The color is called "Deep Earth" - it's my ideal ground color. After completing the drawing in the morning, I premixed a palette for the painting, went home for lunch and returned to finish the painting in the afternoon. This is a great way to work - having those premixed paints waiting for you creates momentum.

In the members area video, which is a real-time version of this painting session, there is a reference image at the beginning. This reference was initially based on a master's painting. What survived was an interesting tree shape and the backlit quality, and I'm pleased with how it translated here. You want to keep the backlit effect subtle - that's my approach anyway.

You want to get the sky in first: it's behind all the other shapes, so establishing depth in the painting is much easier with that in place. One of the real challenges with landscape painting is how your tree will interact with the sky. I've solved this through my underpainting approach that plans how the painting will proceed. So no real guessing where important elements will be.

After the sky, I work with the darkest areas in the landforms and paint successively until I reach the lightest tones that meet the sky. For the ridge of trees in the background, I made a conscious effort to create atmospheric perspective. Instead of using the same dark paint as the foreground, I mixed my dark paint with some "Mike's gray" (a mixture of Ivory black and titanium white), added a little yellow ochre and other elements to create a more muted tone.

This is important because you want to capture that feeling of air and distance. Reference photos often mislead by portraying background values darker than they should be. I purposefully made the background lighter with "smoky green" - colors with less saturation, less intensity, and less darkness.

The edges where trees interact with the sky are the toughest edges in your painting. There are many different strategies to handle this:

1. First off, avoid the "smearing thing" - that's the worst strategy ever!

2. Use what I call the "grabbing technique" where I use bits of the stray hairs at the end of the brush to grab up into the painted sky

3. Keep the edges of the sky coming up to the tree as you're painting a bit loose and ragged

4. Mix an intermediate color - combine your tree color with a bit of sky color for transition areas

This last technique is particularly helpful for distant ridges of hills in the background. If your edges aren't working, take the time to use this intermediate color tip - it will help "sell" the effect of atmospheric perspective.

One tip I want to share is to watch out for the "halo effect" around tree edges. As artists, we may tend to create a sort of uniform halo around the entire edge of a tree, which looks amateurish. My solution is to intentionally bring some of the darker colors up to certain areas of the tree edge, breaking up that uniform halo effect.

Hey, here's a crucial tip about the underpainting process: too many tree holes can be a real deal-breaker. Over do it and your tree will look like Swiss cheese. A great solution is to create the overall shape of the tree filled in solidly, then use a swab to carve out a few tree holes. This will yield great results!

One of the greatest artists who brought this intermediate technique to modern landscape painters was Camille Corot. His approach involved successive strokes of varied color from the main tree masses into the sky. I've seen his work in real life at the Louvre in Paris, and you can easily observe how he painted these intermediate strokes to create that feeling of air within trees.

Since Corot's innovation, we take this technique for granted. Even someone great like Constable, who was amazing at drawing and painting trees, wasn't as skilled at capturing that feeling of air as Corot was. That was Corot's main innovation, and all of us landscape painters owe him a debt of gratitude.

BTW, use your reference image as inspiration, not as something to slavishly copy. Don't try to be a human version of a camera that uses oil paint instead of film. The inspiration is critical to creating a successful painting, but you are the final arbiter of what is and isn't art in your process.

The most important thing is to express yourself with paint on your board - that will be 100% unique. No matter how clever or creative something inside the computer is, it's always going to be flatter. There's nothing like using your hand, a brush, real paint on a real board, and creating a real artifact in the real world. This becomes increasingly important as AI creates more digital art.

After reading this post and watching the video, I hope you feel inspired to turn off your computer and sit down to paint. You can't be a painter without making paintings. The sense of worth and value you'll feel afterward is totally worth overcoming any initial resistance. When we actually start working, it always feels amazing - it's one of the best feelings you can have! I'm absolutely addicted to making beautiful paintings and hope to never stop.

It's a compelling reason to develop yourself as a painter and create tangible, physical work that exists in the real world.

Until next time, take good care of yourself and stay out of trouble.

Cheers,

Mike.

Long Beach 8x14

I finished Long Beach a couple days ago. I'm really happy with it and excited to present it to you today. It was a bit of a challenge, but I rose up to it, and I'm going to talk you through some innovations and my approach in this post.

Long Beach 8x14

We're working on hardboard that's been prepped with about three coats of house paint mixed to a color called "Deep Earth" - a beautiful tone. I started the underpainting with burnt umber and you might notice I switched from a brush to a paper towel. This can be very helpful for getting masses in place, especially dark masses. I lean on this technique quite a lot when there's complexity that you could get lost in.

The bunch of trees on the bottom isn't really the subject, and honestly, it's not the kind of thing I typically like to put in my paintings. However, I had no choice here because of the view of the beach. These trees are acting as a framing device, which isn't my favorite approach, but I made it work.

One key strategy was keeping these elements loose, vague, and evocative rather than precisely delineated. If you start defining each tree exactly, the next thing you know, you've put too much focus on an area that you just want viewers to cruise right over to get to the subject.

In the reference image (which channel members can see in the full real-time video), underneath the trees was a road, a park, and other elements that would have killed the painting. I found it almost impossible to eliminate these distracting elements during my Photoshop reference preparation, so I made a mental note about my approach when I got to the actual painting.

My brief for this painting was to use a big brush. I've done this sort of scene before, and it typically took hours and hours because I’m painting a real place. Much of what I do usually is based on concoctions I've developed in Photoshop or riffs on reference images that don't have any real bearing to actual places - that's how I prefer to work.

However, this type of scene is what galleries out here really love. I've painted this specifically for a gallery in Russell, a nice little town not far from Whangarei. It gets many tourists, and Long Beach is the biggest, nicest beach in that area. I've painted it before (that's on my channel here), but I'm prouder of this version because I didn't get as lost in details.

Re the color and technique, as I worked on the darker elements, I used a blackish tone for the foreground, but as things recede, I brought in a bit of gray. The underpainting was completely dry at this point which really helped with the painting process. The brush I'm using is a filbert from Trekell that I really enjoy. It's relatively new which was helpful, but as brushes wear down, they take on different properties that can also be valuable. The new filbert has a side bit where I can cover things quickly, plus a little "toe" at the end which I'll use in place of a smaller brush.

I wanted to avoid getting out my number two brush out and painstakingly rendering various patches of landscape information. Instead, I aimed for a looser, more impressionistic approach. While I'm still very much adhering to tonal values, the brushwork itself is looser and more impressionistic than my usual approach to these scenes. This makes it more exciting for me - I want to interpret the scene and have it look like the place, but without getting into specifics that leave me cold.

About the color, I'm normally quite restrained with color, but here I wanted to really enhance the light green areas. Channel members will know I often discuss how yellow is really green unless you convince it to be something else with a bit of red pigment. These bright greens are made mostly with the introduction of lots of cadmium yellow.

I always do the waves last. In the reference image, I tried using AI fill in Photoshop to give me better wave patterns, but it never really worked. So I decided to just remember what I didn't like about the wave patterns in the reference and minimize those elements while actually painting, and emphasize what I did like. It turned out really well.

Going forward as artists in this age of AI imagery and manipulated references, your sense of what works and what doesn't - what you like and don't like - is everything. It's always been crucial when you're an artist; it informs every decision you make. This is what you bring to the table, and this is where you need to drive things. You're an individuated expression of universal consciousness. No one will ever have your point of view, so make sure you're expressing that in your work.

Until next time, take good care of yourself, your family, and all your loved ones. Stay out of trouble and fight the power.

Cheers,

Mike

Seaside Trees 4x6

The painting I'm bringing you today is called "Seaside Trees." It's a 4x6 I painted yesterday and I'm very happy to present it to you today. I hope you enjoy watching the process reading this blog post and get something from it!

Seaside Trees 4x6

The board is MDF. It has about two or three good solid coats of house paint tinted to "Deep Earth." which has reddish overtones but isn't overly red, so it's perfect as a ground color. It's also not too light or dark - that's important. If you're looking for a good ground color to paint on. You want something in a middle range.

I’ve done the underpainting with burnt umber, which is the perfect complement to the Deep Earth ground color. My brief on this painting was to try and go a bit brighter than usual. The other part of the brief was to keep everything fresh. The entire painting session in the members area is just over an hour. My approach was to use big brush strokes – make the painting a loose sort of study.

I used a #2 for the sky, but not a worn-in two. It had a bit of spread to it. Also, I'm not repainting much - just laying things down and then moving on. That's not always the way I work. Often I don't hesitate to go over a passage again to adjust it. A good example would be when I do darker masses of clouds in the sky. Once I get the rest of the lighter stuff in, I may decide they're too dark and need to adjust accordingly. I did some re-painting, but the brief was to keep things really loose and expressive

When I was learning oil painting, I had a tendency to overworking. Even now I can occasionally overwork a passage, but I've done enough bad paintings due to overworking that I'm pretty cognizant of it now. One remedy is counting the number of strokes used for a painting. I have suggested this idea to students who tend to "lick" – which when you keep stroking the canvas without adding new paint. If you're doing the "licking" thing, the best approach is to just pick the brush up off the board and think about the next thing you're going to do. Don't ruin the expressive strokes you laid down.

If you are an amateur painter starting out, you need to gain experience before you are doing awesome, expressive work. However, you are a human being having a unique experience of reality, and that will come through in your painting if you have the confidence to lay down your brush strokes and just leave them alone. To get that expressive quality across is really the key thing.

BTW we shipped a couple books out this week which is great! The book is only available as a physical book, not an ebook. It's $60 US with international shipping included! Also check out my YouTube Members area, in the members area, you get a good look at my reference image at the fore of each video as well as see the painting happen in real time in 4k!

About this composition, I don't really like big triangle shapes in my paintings, and this has several. Compositionally triangles can be very intense, so you need to think of ways to balance and soften them. It's mostly a matter of proportion. That little peninsula in the reference image came out much further into the water, but I wanted more balance between water and land so I shortened it. Also, In the reference image, there were too many grasses. For a coastal scene, that doesn't read well - there should be rocks and things. I started inventing rock shapes by laying down a series of patterns starting with dark, then working to middle and light. I tried to lay down strokes that looked good without overdoing it.

Rocks are hard to paint, they have an interesting combination of light and dark, sharp and soft. You don't want them looking round, but if they're too sharp, they attract too much attention. Rocks can be incredibly complex so you must simplify them. In this painting, what was mostly grass in the reference, I did as rocks and then just put in a few splashes of green among the rocks.

Here's a really big tip: The viewer of your painting knows nature and can easily provide the missing details from your painting. Err on the side of getting shapes in the right place - the big shapes, then middle-sized shapes, and maybe a few details from there. Then leave it alone, especially if you're inexperienced. Your paintings will come off so much better - probably the biggest, best tip I've ever shared on this blog.

Until I come back, please take good care of yourself, your family, and all your loved ones. Stay out of trouble, God bless you and your family, and fight the power!

Cheers,

Mike

Tree by a Path 8x12

Tree by a Path 8x12 is a departure from my usual painting approach. While my process differed significantly, the final result has a lush, vibrant quality that gets across essence of Tonalist landscape painting pretty well.

Tree by a Path 8x12

I started with hardboard prepared with multiple coats of house paint primer. This base carries an earthy tone with subtle red undertones that pairs well with burnt umber. The relationship between these two colors is crucial when working with the early layers of paint. The subtle reddish quality provides a warm foundation that influences every subsequent layer.

My approach to the underpainting here relied heavily on paper towel application - a technique often overlooked but incredibly valuable. This method allows for broad, efficient blocking of major compositional elements before diving into more detailed work. Mass drawing focuses mostly on establishing relationships between large shapes. These relationships ultimately determine the painting's success more than any fine detail work could ever achieve.

One significant challenge with this painting involved how I handled the distant rectangular mass of hills. Instead of creating an elaborate background , I went with a more subtle solution, introducing a grayish sky tone that merges with the hill shape. That way the transition becomes more natural and less abrupt. Also, the inclusion of a path improves the composition - without this element, the foreground would just be a bunch of grass and would lack the depth and interest that the path provides.

About my technique, while my strokey style remains a consistent element in my work, it usually plays a more subdued role. The sky received my standard treatment - direct application with controlled brushwork. However, the landscape portions called for a different approach, starting with using oil paint more like a wash, allowing interaction with the toned board beneath. Then finishing with more opaque individual brush strokes. This technique deffo harkens back to my "100 Days of Tonalism" series, where I would lay green tones over my red-toned boards to create a quick Tonalist effect.

This painting maintains a controlled color palette, with the landforms primarily existing within a red-to-green range. The sky introduces blues and pinks, providing necessary contrast. The background areas utilize cooler greens to suggest distance, following traditional atmospheric perspective principles. My brushstrokes remain visible but softened somewhat through careful blending, creating a balance between the brush stoke texture and smoothness underneath.

Working with the partially dried painting presented some unique challenges. Typically, I prefer allowing an oil-wash layer to dry completely, then apply a coat of liquin and let that dry before I continue because paint applied directly to the partially dried surface becomes permanent - allowing only minimal adjustment through softening rather than removal. The sky with its dynamic movement, I left alone as originally painted. Recognizing and preserving good elements of the painting are just as important as knowing where to make changes.

That’s it for this painting post. I hope you got some good information from reading this post and watching the video on my process. Check out my Members Area on YouTube for hundreds of live painting sessions and also my Book which has a ton of tips and insights that could help you paint Tonally.

Cheers,

Mike

Dawn Paddock 6x8

The painting I'm bringing you today is called "Dawn Paddock," a 6x8 I painted a couple days ago. I really like how this one turned out and I'm going to walk you through both the technical process and some broader thoughts about painting in our modern age. This piece is painted on MDF, primed with house paint with a reddish undertone. The ground color is critical in my process because it peeks around objects. Through years of experimentation with different tones - from dark burnt umber to bright burnt sienna - I've found this particular ground color works perfectly for my approach.

Dawn Paddock 6x8

For the underpainting, I've chosen burnt umber for its versatility. It offers both transparency and opacity when needed, dries quickly, and complements the prepared board beautifully. These technical choices form the foundation of the painting's success. The reference image, shown in the members area, underwent a significant transformation. Based on a New Zealand scene I'd painted years before, I made several crucial compositional changes. The middle-distance tree serves as a focal point, working with the trees on the right. I added a path element - something I frequently incorporate because it invites viewers into the painting, solving the common problem of a stagnant foreground.

Using Photoshop, I removed a problematic round bush at the bottom of the central tree. This decision came as a result of years of painting experience – it’s something I wouldn't have recognized as an issue in my earlier work. The ability to identify and solve these compositional problems develops through consistent practice and critical evaluation.

Modern technology has totally transformed how I set up reference materials and solve compositional problems. While Photoshop and AI tools offer powerful capabilities, they remain supplements to artistic judgment rather than replacements for it. The technology must serve the artist's vision, not the other way around. The world is rapidly embracing AI-generated illustrations. As a former commercial illustrator, I can identify AI art, and I acknowledge its impressive capabilities. However, this technological shift shouldn't discourage traditional painting - it should inspire us to focus on creating unique, physical artwork.

Digital art offers convenient features like unlimited undos and quick variations, which commercial clients love. However, physical paintings provide something unique – they are tangible artifacts in real space. This physicality will become increasingly valuable as our world digitizes further. My own transition from commercial illustration to oil painting reflects this philosophy. While proud of my commercial work and innovations, I grew tired of being used as an expression tool for clients. Fine art painting allows for pure personal expression, creating unique objects that exist in the real world.

I've been painting seriously since 2009, I have a daily practice in making art. This consistent work has created exponential growth in my skill and understanding. Each painting building upon previous experience, developing critical faculties that inform my work. The human learning process is intensely personal. While you can watch my videos or read my book, you as an artist must develop your own understanding through consistent practice. The non-transferable nature of artistic experience and expression makes each person's work inherently unique and valuable.

As automation reshapes the job market, creative expression becomes increasingly important. Physical artwork may become a new form of currency in a world where traditional jobs disappear. Regardless of economic changes, I'll continue painting because I love it and believe wholeheartedly in its intrinsic value. While AI might someday mimic my style based on my thousands of demonstration videos, it can only capture the surface elements. True artistic expression comes from human experience, emotion, and intention - something AI cannot yet replicate.

I'll keep painting and teaching regardless of how technology evolves. The future may change how we value art, but personal expression remains fundamentally important.

Take care of yourself and your family, stay out of trouble and fight the powe

Cheers,

Mike

Path to the Meadow 5x7

The painting I'm bringing you today is called "Path to the Meadow." It's a 5x7 that I painted yesterday on MDF, doing an underpainting using burnt umber.

This kind of scene is a lot of fun. I had this reference photo for quite a while, and I'm quite fond of these sorts of trees. What's interesting is that I kept passing on it because something was bothering me at a subconscious level. In the original scene, we had this mass of trees on our right and instead of a lone tree on our left, it was just this big chunk of foliage. Then it occurred to me - oh, I need to just make that a tree or something over there. Having that trunk there was really critical.

Path to the Meadow 5x7

These sorts of intuitions, these sorts of knowing’s, come from doing a lot of paintings and listening to that inner voice and reinforcing it. Whether you're an intuitive type or not, if you do a lot of painting, you're going to build up a repertoire in your mind of things that you know work and, more importantly, things that you know don't work. That's why I'm always stressing you need to paint more.

The real challenge with this kind of scene is that the foliage is all over the place. You can see hundreds of little leaves and little sky holes in the reference image. What I tend to do is come up with a certain pattern, fairly loose in the drawing. At the underpainting stage. It's only somewhat defined, but the actual details of the edges or any real detail firm up as I put in the sky.

One decision I made here was not to try and get fancy with this sky, so no clouds , just a color gradation. We're in the shaded area, and there is a lighted area ahead, that meadow that I did in the middle distance. Now, it wasn't all like that in my reference image. It was just a little subtly lighter bit. You could tell there was something there in between the grass, so I expanded on that. It wasn't long after I got into the painting process, I said, "Oh yeah, I'm going to make that nice and bright,"!

It's really one of the things that makes the painting, along with the sky being nice and bright. Even though you can see everything in this sort of shaded area, there's no real strong highlights. We're in a dark place going to a light place, and I think that's very effective. I love doing this kind of painting. This one has come out pretty well. I'm quite happy with it.

The path I inserted into the reference using the Adobe AI feature. Honestly, a lot of times, I ca get a better result by just finding a path in some other reference photo and just composing it in old-school. At the end of the day, though, I still have to take my reference image and interpret it as a painting, which is what I like to do. I want to make a painting that looks like a painting.

The interpretation that you make as a painter is your gift as an artist to the world. Don't overwork is always my motto I try to have an attitude as I’m moving through the painting of addressing each part of the painting, but then moving quickly on, putting something down and moving on.

Well, that's it for this one. I hope you're having a great week. Until I come back with another video and post for your edification and enjoyment, do me a favor, do me a solid - take care of yourself, your family, all your loved ones and stay out of trouble!

Cheers,

Mike

Riffing on William Keith 4x6

This painting completed just yesterday, is a departure from my earlier, more faithful studies of the Masters. Instead, it’s more like a cover song, if you will—of William Keith’s work. A California Tonalist whose dark, moody compositions have always intrigued me.

Riffing on William Keith 4x6

William Keith’s art is some of the darkest Tonalist work you’ll find online, and I can’t help but see the influence of George Inness in his pieces. For this painting, I took liberties with his original composition. I approximated his color palette, added a path, and reworked the sky to better suit my vision. This approach is part of an ongoing evolution in my work. Early on, I focused on faithful studies during my 100 Days of Tonalism series, followed by the Past Master Series. But now, I’m more interested in taking inspiration fom the Masters and making it my own.

One of the standout elements in this piece is the blue-orange sky, a challenging color combination due to its complementary nature. I used Prussian blue, muting it with darker tones and blending in pinks and oranges to harmonize with the landscape below.

I’ve learned that every painting takes the time it needs. My goal is always to create something beautiful, and that requires patience and dedication. If you’re a painter, I know you share this intention. Creating beauty demands effort and introspection. You need to understand what beauty means to you and how to translate that into your work. It’s not the most difficult task ever, but it does require focus and lots of practice.

I’ve been painting landscapes for about 15 years, and my process has become highly intuitive. While working, I receive intuitive prompts like; try this color, use that brush, these intuitions come from years of painting experience. Intuition in art is honed through repetition and reflection. You can’t develop good instincts without putting in the time.

This brings me to the topic of AI-generated art. While AI can produce impressive images, I believe human artists will succeed based on expressing their own unique perspectives. Mastery comes from dedication and hard work, not from tools and tricks that make creation effortless. I’ve dedicated years to painting, and the greatest rewards come from the struggle to create something meaningful.

Landscape painting, while able to be done relatively quickly, is fraught with many potential pitfalls. Completing a paintings swiftly can be helpful because it allows you to produce more work and learn from your mistakes. Many times its only by looking back at older pieces can you see what doesn’t work and refine your technique.

My process is intuitive, but it’s built on a foundation of knowledge. Every brushstroke relates to the next, and knowing when to stop is crucial. This painting could have taken longer—I could have added tiny highlights after letting it dry—but I prefer the immediacy of fresh, direct interaction with the canvas.

In the past, I enjoyed working dry over wet, but I’ve moved away from that technique because it often sapped the energy from my work. As an artist, I’m constantly figuring out how to make each piece beautiful, how to convey feeling, and how to capture the essence of a scene. If I were to paint this again today, the result would be different.

For those interested, members of my channel can view William Keith’s original reference, my modified version, and the live painting session that captures the creative struggle live in the studio. Not a struggle of hardship, but of striving to create something beautiful and meaningful.

Thank you for joining me on this journey. I hope you’re having a productive week and finding time to create. Until next time, take care of yourself, your family, and your loved ones. Stay out of trouble.

Cheers,

M Francis McCarthy

"Woolly's Bay" 5x10

It's interesting to reflect on how my approach to painting has evolved over the years, particularly in terms of finishing techniques and the pursuit of freshness in my work.

"Woolly's Bay" 5x10

One of the most significant challenges in landscape painting is maintaining the vitality of a smaller study when scaling up to larger pieces. Through my research into traditional landscape painting methods, It's easy to lose the original proportions and freshness when increasing size. For example, this peninsula that commands attention here in my small study might shrink a bit as I scale the scene up. I may do some gridding when scaling it up, ensuring the crucial proportions remain intact.

My painting process has evolved significantly over time. I used to work extensively on hardboard with transparent gesso, lately I've moved away from that approach. These days, I prefer surfaces with a more uniform tone. I work in what I'd call a direct method, typically completing most of the painting in one session after establishing an initial drawing.

Breaking free from over-finishing has been a significant development for me as an artist. Recording my painting process on video helped me recognize when to stop. I'd often see that magical moment in the footage where the painting looked just right, before I then worked it to death. Dry brushing used to be a go-to technique for me - lightly pulling a minimally loaded brush over dry paint to create interesting textures and soften edges. I've largely moved away from this approach, though occasionally I'll use other techniques to adjust hard edges when necessary.

What truly interests me now is capturing the struggle between observation and expression. When I'm working from reference material, I'm not trying to create a perfect reproduction. Instead, I'm interpreting what I see through the filter of my aesthetics, experience, and intuition. This approach means accepting certain compromises, but that's part of working in a fresh, direct manner.

For those looking to develop their own painting practice, my advice remains consistent: paint more. This might sound simplistic, but it is fundamental. Start small, perhaps with quick studies using a single color like burnt sienna. Don't wait for the perfect moment or the perfect subject. Just get some paint on a surface and start exploring.

The fear of not creating something "good enough" often prevents artists from painting at all. Instead of aiming for masterpieces, try creating quick, small works - 5x7 or 8x10 pieces that don't feel overwhelming. The goal isn't perfection but rather the act of showing up and engaging with the process.

Here in "Woolly's Bay, I'm particularly pleased with how I captured the waves picking up sand - a challenging effect to achieve without making the waves appear stiff or artificial.

The most fulfilling aspect of being an artist isn't in trying to create perfect paintings - it's engaging with that fundamental human desire to create and express. When we stop obsessing over perfection and embrace the natural struggle of the creative process, we will produce our most authentic and compelling work.

Take good care and stay out of trouble!

M Francis McCarthy

Woodland Path 6x8

Hello and welcome to another Tonal landscape oil painting demonstration! Today, I'm sharing "Woodland Path," a 6x8 painting that I finished yesterday. This painting is quite similar to a scene I painted about three or four years ago, which you can find in my book in the handling green section. One of the things I did differently this time was shift the reference image to have more of a rusty, taupey sort of feel. I'm really very fond of this kind of scene, and I have quite a few references in my folder that are similar

Woodland Path 6x8

I've been working on MDF (medium-density fiberboard) lately, which is basically compressed wood dust. I prefer panels over canvas. I've been reviewing a lot of different landscape painting books studying the techniques used by other artists lately. Sometimes working on canvas can be lovely, but it can also be distracting, especially when the texture is too pronounced.

In this painting, I decided to revisit this scene I had painted before, but on a smaller scale. I've been looking at some of my old videos recently, I've learned a lot about simplifying complex forest scenes over the years. One insight I'd like to pass along is to focus on the big shapes and group dark masses together to create a more simplified breakdown of the scene. This is very helpful when dealing with the overwhelming complexity of a forest.

Another tip is to be careful with painting bright fall colors. It's easy to go overboard and end up with a colorful mess. Instead, bring in the saturated colors sparingly and support them with greens, browns, and other natural tones. In this painting, I aimed to capture the essence of fall without letting the extreme colors take over the painting.

Until next time, take care of yourself, your family, and all your loved ones and stay out of trouble!

Cheers,

M Francis McCarthy

River to the Sea 4x6

I did this scene a long time ago, and I painted it as a square. It's very interesting, I've had successes with the square format, but it can be difficult sometimes. I think rectangles are actually a lot easier, whether they're vertical or horizontal. That said, I have done successful square paintings, and one thing I'd heard years ago was that a lot of the Old Masters, when they did a square painting, would make sure that it wasn't exactly square.

River to the Sea 4x6

On todays video I chat about AI. A lot of people are freaking out because the AI does really good art. It writes pretty well too. personally I find it's quite handy for certain reference images that have problem areas and helping me with text based tasks. The AI doesn't have an agenda; its whole agenda is to serve us. What this means for us as contemporary artists, is that we really need to focus on what it is we want to do. If it's painting, then you need to do paintings. Now, the AI can't do paintings, and that's why real world art is a great place to inhabit.

The AI can do a lot of things better than most of us, but that's nothing new. There are a lot of painters that are better than me, and I don't worry too much about it, what I try to worry about is expressing myself. What I am, and what you are, is a unique individual. There's never going to be anyone else like me or you, ever again. When you decide to make a painting or any creative work, that's what you should be putting your focus on. Your perspective is unique. Embrace your own funky self. Don't worry about the people that do things at a much technically higher level than you can, or that are able to paint or draw things that you can only dream of painting or drawing. Worry about what it is that you want to and can do, and then do the heck out of it. If you do enough painting, it will come together eventually; and you're going to be expressing yourself as an individual.

The AI can be a heck of a time-saver b for solving reference issues. Reference is very critical to the painting process. It's very critical that it is good. If the reference is bad and there are too many things wrong with it that you're not addressing, you may make make a bad painting as a result. When I'm painting with the reference in front of me, I paint lots of stuff in my painting that is not in the reference. I don't slavishly copy. I don't use a projector to project the image onto a board, trace it, and then fill everything in like it was a coloring book. That doesn't work anyway. What works better is to have some good reference that's inspiring, and if you can spot things that you think are weird or that you don't like, you can try to fix them in Photoshop. If you can't fix them in Photoshop, hopefully, you can fix them while you're doing the painting.

That's it for this post. I hope you're having a great week, and until I come back with another post and video for your edification and enjoyment, take good care of yourself, your family, all your loved ones. And stay out of trouble!

Riffing on Julius Jacobus van de Sande Bakhuyzen 6x8

Welcome to another tonal landscape oil painting demonstration. The painting I'm bringing you today is called "Riffing on Julius Jacobus van de Sande Bakhuyzen 6 x 8, ". I'm calling it a riff, but it was changed so dramatically from Julius's painting that it's hardly recognizable as being influenced by his original. It could have easily gotten away with just saying I came up with it.

Riffing on Julius Jacobus van de Sande Bakhuyzen 6x8

If you're interested to see what's up with those changes , the live video is there in my YouTube Members Area. At the beginning of all the recent live members area videos, I put my reference images up. In this case, I put my adjusted reference image up and Julius's original. So check that out if you are interested!

One of the big changes I made from his painting is to the river and the tree, in his original, he had a tree coming out of the closer bank and then the tree back behind. Also, the foreground tree was tilted. I don't like tilted trees at all. I don't think they work compositionally. You can really get too tight when painting reflections. Watch out for that because reflections in the water should never be stiff, they should be loose with everything just roughly reflected in the approximate places they should be. This painting is pretty much Alla Prima. I did the drawing-underpainting in the morning, then came back and painted the rest of it in the afternoon, and that worked well. It's good to break up the painting process into various stages.

Let's talk about overworking paintings. It's almost inevitable that you will at some point. That's why often times there are many things I would like to add to my paintings, but I don't. I just leave it at the Alla Prima stage so the painting stays fresh. Many times in my YouTube members area while a painting is coming together live, you'll hear me say, "That's it. I'm going to leave it alone. I'm going to let it breathe. I'm going to let it live."

There's something to be said for how you initially interpret the reference, whether it's a plein air scene outdoors or if you have a photographic reference. It doesn't really matter, you're looking at something and then you're making a painting from it. There's a lot to be said for that initial impetus and carring that through quickly. Sometimes later on, when your future self comes in and wants to paint in the piece, that's not the same person, so you really want to weigh putting the painting back up on the easel very seriously. There's a lot that you'll be losing by going over your initial fresh painting if you do. I'm telling you what's wise and true for me. You may find that you need to overwork a lot of paintings of your own before you've learned the lesson for yourself.

Until I come back with another video and blog post for your edification and enjoyment, take good care of yourself, stay out of trouble, God bless you and your family!

Cheers,

M Francis McCarthy

Riffing on Frederick William Cost: A Tonal Landscape Painting Demonstration

Welcome to another Tonal landscape oil painting demonstration by your painter-in-residence, M Francis McCarthy.

Today, I'll be sharing a 5x7 painting I completed recently titled "Riffing on Frederick William Kost." I'm thrilled with the way it turned out, and I hop that you'll gain valuable insights from watching me create this artwork.

Riffing on Frederick William Kost 5×7

This painting is definitely a Tonal work, but it's not a direct study of Frederick's painting, it’s a riff, my take on Fred’s piece. Much like a cover song, it is sort of similar but also very different. I've altered the sky completely, as Frederick's original featured a yellow sky and in lot’s of other large and small ways. Check it out!

If you're a member of my YouTube channel, you can access the live version of this video in the Members' area, where you'll see not only the entire painting process LIVE but also Frederick's original image and my modified reference at the start of the video.

Many Tonalists would sometimes paint the sky yellow to create a peaceful, still atmosphere. I wanted more of a payoff in the sky, as it occupies a significant portion of the painting. I think the extra color adds up to a real pay off! I'll likely create more of these "riffs" as I update the older sections of my channel. What a blessing it is having access to all this information now. The future is awesome in so many ways!

Speaking of updates, I've been shipping out copies of my book, which I'm excited to send anywhere in the world for $60 US. This price covers international shipping, ensuring that everyone has access to my work.

I was pleased with how this painting came together. One aspect I'm particularly happy with is laying down the sky and leaving it alone. This approach allows for greater expression in the painting which is always my primary goal. I believe that we all want to see an emotive quality from an artist's unique perspective when viewing a painting.

Throughout the video, I discuss various topics, such as the influence of varnish on Tonalist paintings and my decision not to varnish my work. Instead, I prefer to use Liquin as a protective layer. We no longer live in an era of gas lamps and candles so the need for varnish is greatly minimized.

I want to remind you that there's much more content available in the Members' area. Additionally, I recently released a YouTube Playlist featuring all the live videos from 2019. While my skills have improved since then, those videos still offer valuable insights.

By the way I’ve painted this scene by Kost before. way back in 2015. That is more of a straight up study and part of my first set of YouTube video in a series called 100 days of Tonalism.

I hope you enjoy and learn from this demonstration. Until next time, take good care of yourself, your family, and all of your loved ones and after watching this video, go create a painting!

Cheers,

Mike