Day Six: Sunrise by George Inness
Hello and welcome to day six of 100 days of tonalism.
Painted after - Sunrise by George Inness, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel
Today's study is 'Sunrise' by George Inness
Three Inness' in six days! I warned you I'd be leaning heavily on Inness, after all he is my favorite painter ever. This painting is late period Inness and is highly characteristic of that period in that there is a near total absence of detail.
This painting also strongly evidences inness' unique approach to composition. Nobody else has composed landscapes like this, then or now. In fact I have have a book called
"George Inness and the science of landscape"
that tries very hard to decipher his method. I confess, I've not finished reading it but the author does have some good ideas. Personally I think his process was highly intuitive, though he may have justified that intuition with some half-baked mystical geometry after the fact.
Still getting the hang of the audio portion of the videos. I know they could be better if I spent more time on them. I'm afraid that will not be happening any time soon though so, you'll just have to bear with my off the cuff ad libbing. I reckon it's better than complete silence.
Speaking of silence, all the background music on these videos is written and performed by yours truly. If you'd like to hear more of my music you can go to my site
. There's lots to see and hear there.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
A bit about 'Sunrise' by George Inness. Like I said on the video, I accidently painted this twice. I wish I could blame this on my assistant but, I don't have an assistant. Well, my wife helps out here and there (she's my proof reader for one), but mostly I had to get this project organized on my own and I must have lost the plot the day I was sorting my reference images out.
I am pretty happy with this study. I took quite a few liberties but, as I've stated before, the point of this exercise is not 100% accurate copies of the source paintings but rather an attempt to capture the essence of each scene as I see it. Every aspect of the painting process is done by hand with no tracing or image projecting being utilized.
I have toyed with both of those processes with my own work in the past. Using an opaque projector to trace my drawings onto my painting surface or alternatively using a grid system. These days I prefer to draw free hand with my brush. I feel this makes better paintings. It's best to let the paintings breath, if you work too tightly at the start, its harder to accomplish a successful finish.
To see more of my work, visit my site
Original painting, Sunrise by George Inness