Day Fifty Nine: Landscape by John Francis Murphy
Hello and welcome to day 59 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is 'Landscape' by John Francis Murphy.
Those of you that have been following this blog will be no stranger to John Francis Murphy by now. He is one of my favorite all-time painters and a pre-eminent Tonalist. I will be reading some biographical information about Murphy from my copy of A History of American Tonalism on today's video narration so please check that out.
Continuing on with our current assay regarding my own Tonalist painting process; for the last several days we've been discussing my color palette and it's progression since I started painting. Today I'd like to discuss the secondary colors that I've added through the years to supplement my core palette.
Working from right to left, the first color that I'll mention is, transparent earth yellow by Gamblin. This is an very flexible color that is basically like yellow ocher but is completely non-opaque. It has a decent amount of tinting strength and I really like using it for glazing.
Continuing towards the left side of my palette, next is raw umber. Raw umber is a color that I've added quite recently and like the ivory black that I was talking about yesterday, I use it as a color killer. In the case of raw umber it tends to knock the intense chroma off of colors, but is far more warm than ivory black which is very cool in nature.
The next color working towards the left side is green gold. This is a color that I got a tube of several months ago and it is produced by Gamblin. Is very similar to a green that I mix using cadmium yellow (hue) and black.The tube version is far less opaque and has less covering power than my own mixed version. I do not have green gold on my palette at the moment because I tried a replacement tube from another paint manufacturer and found it to be so weak in strength that I had to throw in away. For the moment I am mixing my own in a fairly decent quantity and putting that on my palette in green golds place.
Moving to the left, next is cadmium orange (hue). I added cadmium orange (hue) about a year and a half ago and I find it very useful especially for mixing with blue to get warm complementary grays in the sky.
Right next to to cadmium orange (hue) is cadmium red (hue). This is a color that I use infrequently but I will use it to dull down a strong green or to move a green color towards a more complimentary feeling. It is so bright, and so red that I seldom use it on its own in a painting.
The next secondary color that I'd like to discuss is permanent green light. This is a very bright and light green color that I use infrequently. I find it useful for pushing other colors that I have already mixed into subtle green tones. It is quite weak in tinting strength, but this is actually a factor that makes it easier to use. It's not a color that I would ever use straight up. On its own I would describe it as a poison looking green.
Continuing to the left, the next color is cobalt violet (hue). This is a color I use infrequently but it is very handy for injecting a bit of purple into a sky or into shadow areas of the landscape. Cobalt violet (hue) is not very strong. This is actually not a bad thing since I'm generally using it for subtle applications.
Continuing on to the left, our next secondary color is cerulean blue. I added this color about six months ago. I can get by without this color very easily by just using cobalt blue with a touch of black and white. However it has some interesting differences in that it is less strong and more chalky than cobalt blue. I don't mind a bit of chalkiness in the sky. Another thing that makes cerulean so useful is that it is very close to a straight up sky-blue. It is a color that I tend to grab and use while painting the sky as opposed to using in the pre-mixtures that I do prior to a painting session.
The next secondary color is phthalo blue. Phthalo blue has very strong tinting strength and is also quite transparent. It has the added benefit of being a very reasonable pigment. I phthalo blue because it is a cool blue and contrasts with cobalt blue which is more of a warm blue. With these two blues and black I can do almost any blue tone that I would ever need.
The last color on our list all the way on the left of my palette is torrit gray. As I discussed in our first blog post regarding my color palette, this is a Gamblin color that is manufactured from all of the pigments collected from their filtration system. It is a different gray every year. This is not a color that can actually be purchased. It is generally given to you by the art store when you buy several tubes of other Gamblin pigments. I got a tube a month or two ago, and I find it very useful because it is quite close to a 50% gray. When I run out I will probably just makes a little pile of gray in its place.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about "Landscape' by John Francis Murphy; I really love doing studies of Murphy's paintings. Of all of the Tonalist painters he is probably the one I relate to the most. I may love George Inness better but his painting is more esoteric.
What I enjoyed most about this study was painting the warm yellows and grays in the sky and then doing the ground with greens washed over my burnt sienna underpainting. This is a technique that I've utilize quite a lot in this series to good effect.
 | |
|
Those of you that have been following this blog will be no stranger to John Francis Murphy by now. He is one of my favorite all-time painters and a pre-eminent Tonalist. I will be reading some biographical information about Murphy from my copy of A History of American Tonalism on today's video narration so please check that out.
Continuing on with our current assay regarding my own Tonalist painting process; for the last several days we've been discussing my color palette and it's progression since I started painting. Today I'd like to discuss the secondary colors that I've added through the years to supplement my core palette.
Working from right to left, the first color that I'll mention is, transparent earth yellow by Gamblin. This is an very flexible color that is basically like yellow ocher but is completely non-opaque. It has a decent amount of tinting strength and I really like using it for glazing.
Continuing towards the left side of my palette, next is raw umber. Raw umber is a color that I've added quite recently and like the ivory black that I was talking about yesterday, I use it as a color killer. In the case of raw umber it tends to knock the intense chroma off of colors, but is far more warm than ivory black which is very cool in nature.
The next color working towards the left side is green gold. This is a color that I got a tube of several months ago and it is produced by Gamblin. Is very similar to a green that I mix using cadmium yellow (hue) and black.The tube version is far less opaque and has less covering power than my own mixed version. I do not have green gold on my palette at the moment because I tried a replacement tube from another paint manufacturer and found it to be so weak in strength that I had to throw in away. For the moment I am mixing my own in a fairly decent quantity and putting that on my palette in green golds place.
Moving to the left, next is cadmium orange (hue). I added cadmium orange (hue) about a year and a half ago and I find it very useful especially for mixing with blue to get warm complementary grays in the sky.
Right next to to cadmium orange (hue) is cadmium red (hue). This is a color that I use infrequently but I will use it to dull down a strong green or to move a green color towards a more complimentary feeling. It is so bright, and so red that I seldom use it on its own in a painting.
The next secondary color that I'd like to discuss is permanent green light. This is a very bright and light green color that I use infrequently. I find it useful for pushing other colors that I have already mixed into subtle green tones. It is quite weak in tinting strength, but this is actually a factor that makes it easier to use. It's not a color that I would ever use straight up. On its own I would describe it as a poison looking green.
Continuing to the left, the next color is cobalt violet (hue). This is a color I use infrequently but it is very handy for injecting a bit of purple into a sky or into shadow areas of the landscape. Cobalt violet (hue) is not very strong. This is actually not a bad thing since I'm generally using it for subtle applications.
Continuing on to the left, our next secondary color is cerulean blue. I added this color about six months ago. I can get by without this color very easily by just using cobalt blue with a touch of black and white. However it has some interesting differences in that it is less strong and more chalky than cobalt blue. I don't mind a bit of chalkiness in the sky. Another thing that makes cerulean so useful is that it is very close to a straight up sky-blue. It is a color that I tend to grab and use while painting the sky as opposed to using in the pre-mixtures that I do prior to a painting session.
The next secondary color is phthalo blue. Phthalo blue has very strong tinting strength and is also quite transparent. It has the added benefit of being a very reasonable pigment. I phthalo blue because it is a cool blue and contrasts with cobalt blue which is more of a warm blue. With these two blues and black I can do almost any blue tone that I would ever need.
The last color on our list all the way on the left of my palette is torrit gray. As I discussed in our first blog post regarding my color palette, this is a Gamblin color that is manufactured from all of the pigments collected from their filtration system. It is a different gray every year. This is not a color that can actually be purchased. It is generally given to you by the art store when you buy several tubes of other Gamblin pigments. I got a tube a month or two ago, and I find it very useful because it is quite close to a 50% gray. When I run out I will probably just makes a little pile of gray in its place.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about "Landscape' by John Francis Murphy; I really love doing studies of Murphy's paintings. Of all of the Tonalist painters he is probably the one I relate to the most. I may love George Inness better but his painting is more esoteric.
What I enjoyed most about this study was painting the warm yellows and grays in the sky and then doing the ground with greens washed over my burnt sienna underpainting. This is a technique that I've utilize quite a lot in this series to good effect.
