Direct vs Indirect Painting

A welcome friend                                                     M Francis McCarthy

"Why are your paintings so dark?"

I get asked this once in awhile at my studio by visitors. I reply that the paintings are rendered in a lower key than what is currently fashionable. Also, to my eyes many modern landscapes seem excessively bright and their colors too chromatic and lacking in subtlety.

Paintings that are made using transparent or semi opaque layers tend to need a lot more light on them to reveal themselves at their best. For this reason many of these types of paintings benefit from having a light directly on them.

There are two distinct approaches to painting; direct and indirect. Good examples of direct painting are artists like: Monet, William Merritt Chase and Vincent Van Gogh. Good examples of indirect painting are: George Inness, Charles Warren Eaton and Whistler. You can do great stuff either way or by combining the approaches.

I prefer indirect for my final paintings as it can convey multiple layers of mood and color. Also because I can reflect and correct as I go but ideally there is a trail of movement just below the surface that shows the structure as well as the finish. I enjoy painting my oil sketches directly as they are small and quickly realized.

Layering transparent glazes of oil tends to darken as the light source must work it's way through the layers and bounce back to the viewer. More opaque styles reflect the source light more directly from the surface.

Late Summer                                                    M Francis McCarthy

You would think that the study would be lighter but it is dark because I'm heading towards a larger more fully realized version. The study above "Late Summer" has just been more fully painted. I hope to put it up here sometime soon.

As a side bar. On my recent trip to Paris I saw many excellent paintings at the Louvre. Many of them would be considered quite dark. What was interesting to me as a modern painter was the focused use of intent contrasts between the lights and dark's in a painting that drew the views eye to where the painter wanted it. Someting thats hard to do if the whole painting is light.

Painting Thoughts

Hey there, another day, another blog!

I cannot promise substance every day (though I'll try) but I'm determined to get this thing up in the air so off we go...

Here's a painting I did about a year ago, it is a pretty typical New Zealand view. Several things about this painting are unique. First off it has conical pines in it. I try to avoid conical pines as they present many composition issues. Beautiful as they are I find they often make me feel cornered in my skies.

Another feature of this painting is the dirt road. Many people ask me why I don't paint moire things like fences and houses in my work. The reason is that I prefer the landscape to speak for it self. It seems that any man made feature steals the show focusing the apprehenders attention in ways that I as the paintings creator do not like. The huge exception to this is paths or roads. In my view they fold right in to the landscape as well as direct to eye in pleasant ways.

Speaking of pleasant., I enjoy creating pleasant images that sooth the viewer. I'm certainly not saying that that's the only type of image that anyone should paint, but for me it's the best use of my time and talent. Just for the record I've been employed to create images like this...

I know, hard to believe it's the same artist eh? Anyway just making a point that at this time I feel the world needs soothing reflective art so that is what I enjoy painting. I did enjoy rendering the dino above also but really that's far more of a technical expression. Btw some of you may have seen this dinosaur on a tee shirt if you knew a kid and went shopping at JC pennies or the like about six years ago...

Why paint?

I have been creating art for 42 years. In that time, I have worked with many different medias. For a long time I was content to use pencil and pen ink to create drawings. The mastery of rendering form in light and shade was for quite a while enough.

With the advent of the computer I began applying colour to my art work in both in the virtual realm and from without. The freedom that I felt working in the virtual world was incredible! I could change anything I wanted at any time. I could also add and remove things at will. It was amazing, a revelation really...

For many years I utilized the skills that I'd learned in creating artwork on the computer to make a living as a graphic illustrator. I found this work to be quite engaging and fulfilling for a time. However, I eventually began to feel a yearning for a deeper connection with my art and it's apprehenders. This desire is what eventually drove me to study painting in oil.

When I first started painting in oils in 2007 I found that many of the skills that I had acquired through a lifetime of creating artwork were applicable in this medium. I also learned that many of the things that work for me in the virtual realm did not work well when I was creating artwork by hand using oil paints and a hardwood substrate.

While creating an actual physical painting I am aware that a transference occurs. It seems this is a transference of energy and consciousness between myself the painting and the apprehender of the painting. Speaking only for myself I do not find this occurs when creating artwork digitally and printing it out. As far as I know this phenomenon exists only with original artworks being viewed by a person in the presence of the original art .

This is a fascinating and rewarding endeavour and is an interesting reason to paint as well. There are more reasons to paint of course and perhaps we will go further into those in future blog posts.