Landscape Painting Thoughts

Lately I've gotten around to sorting through years of photos of paintings in progress, reference pics and photos of failed attempts as well. What a ton of work it's been!

That work is going into a major update to my website landscapepainter.co.nz. I've tried a few online web services but I've settled on Ezgenerator. It's template driven but very flexible in it's own way. Can't say I enjoy doing the web work but needs must.

It will pay off for this blog too as I've discovered many litle forgotten gems that I'll be sharing as we progress along here at blog central.

M Francis McCarthy with a painting by George Inness

Me and my hero's work at the de Young museum in San Francisco, California. They have a nice wing of great American Landscape Painting that was a big influence on me after I saw the original works on display there.

Pond Reflections 6x8 by M Francis McCarthy

I started painting in a Impressionist vein. "Pond Reflections" reflects this style. As I've said before, I believe that many landscape painters are working in an Impressionist manner whether they are aware of it or not.

I know I was in the period I painted this. This painting was done with a super limited pallet of Cad Yellow, Alizarin Crimson, Ultramarine Blue and Titanium white. I was influenced in that color pallet by Kevin Macpherson who has written a few great books on Painting: Landscape Painting Inside & Out  and Fill Your Oil Paintings with Light & Color. I recommend both of these books highly.

Hey, if your a real serious M Francisophile you can check out my first long abandoned blog The Rebel Artist. I keep it up just for fun. It documents a pretty good chunk of my early painting progression and I still like a lot of those paintings and will probably revisit a few of the motifs before I'm done landscape painting.

Cheers.

Old Drawings 2

Putting up a an old drawings today. For years all I did was draw stuff in pencil and pen and ink. As I've stated in the past I believe good drawing to be the one irreplaceable element of any decent representational painting.

In this era of extreme photo manipulation, drawing could seem passe or even unnecessary. Ultimately those who can draw will produce stronger designs, illustrations or paintings. While those who cannot will spend a lot of their time finding ways around their lack of skill in this area.

Robert Fripp by M Francis McCarthy

This is a pencil drawing of Robert Fripp, illustrated circa 1985.The drawing exhibits a hatching technique I had devised of alternating horizontal and vertical cross hatches or "jits" as I some times refer to them.

I think that style is super important to young artists but as you get older becomes much more an internalized part of how you draw. I definitely appropriated quite a lot of technique from my illustration heroes. People like Bernie Wrightson  Neal Adams and John Byrne influenced me tremendously. Not to mention the king of them all Frank Frazetta.

The photo reference for this was a nice image already. Music and other popular magazines were a favorite source of drawing reference for me. My philosophy about drawing people at the time was to draw every type of person. I would often go though issues of TV guide and draw the various differnt people pictured in an effort to improve my drawing.

Charles Warren Eaton

Charles Warren Eaton (1857–1937) was an American artist best known for his tonalist landscapes.

He is remembered in American art history as one of the chief members of the Tonalist movement, along with Henry Ward Ranger, Elliott Daingerfield, and others who benefited from the lessons of French Barbizon painting and, more immediately, from the example of the poetic style of George Inness. 

Guided by his desire to convey the underlying moods of nature, he eschewed grandiose vistas in favor of quieter, more intimate views, which he depicted at dawn or dusk. His landscapes still speak to us in a quiet but consistent way of the beauty of nature and of those unexpected and felicitous moments when the man-made and natural worlds merge into unified and harmonious images.

What I love most about Eaton is the way he flattens his shapes and his way with mood and color. Detail is almost completely sublimated to atmosphere. Also his edge handling is among the best of any Tonalist painter

George Inness

I mentioned George in my last post. Really a huge influence on my painting and a towering figure of 19th century painting. Here's a few of his works:

From Wikipedia:    George Inness (May 1, 1825 – August 3, 1894) was an influential American landscape painter. His work was influenced, in turn, by that of the old masters, the Hudson River school, the Barbizon school, and, finally, by the theology of Emanuel Swedenborg, whose spiritualism found vivid expression in the work of Inness' maturity. Often called "the father of American landscape painting," Inness is best known for these mature works that not only exemplified the Tonalist movement but also displayed an original and uniquely American style.

Before I came across Inness I was influences more by Impressionism. A movement that really caught on again in the 80's and 90's and is now a huge part of the modern landscape painters vocabulary to the point I think that many painters are not even aware of it's pervasive influence.

George Inness was to foremost painter of the late 19th and early 20th century movement called Tonalism. From Wikipedia: 

Tonalism was an artistic style that emerged in the 1880s when American artists began to paint landscape forms with an overall tone of colored atmosphere or mist. Between 1880 and 1915, dark, neutral hues such as gray, brown or blue, often dominated compositions by artists associated with the style. During the late 1890s, American art critics began to use the term "tonal" to describe these works. Two of the leading associated painters were George Inness and James McNeill Whistler.

I'll write more about Tonalism in the future as I have many thoughts about the style that I'd like to share. In a nutshell for now I'll say that to me, it's about creating an evocative, atmospheric approach to the landscape. 

I never have tried to ape George Inness but to any artist familiar with his art the debts I owe him are apparent and I never shy away from acknowledging his great contribution to the art of landscape painting. A contribution that frankly has not made it's way into the minds and hearts of the modern art lover in any way near what George Inness and the modern art viewer deserves