Day Fifty Three: Roman Campagna by George Inness
Hello and welcome to day 53 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is of 'Roman Campagna' by George Inness.
Per our recent studies of paintings by George Inness, I will be reading some from the book George Inness by Nikolai Cikovsky on the narration for today's video so please check that out.
Continuing on with our current assay of my painting process; today I would like to discuss mass drawing. As I referenced in the recent post about direct versus indirect painting, I like to do a duo-toned mass drawing on my prepared board prior to going in with color. The reason I like to have a drawing done first, (even though I could just go in immediately with blocked in color) is that, dividing the painting process into distinct stages has many advantages for the type of paintings I like to do.
The primary advantage for me in having a drawing done is that I have:
I find that breaking my painting process into stages, allows me to come to the painting in a manner that is always fresh and also allows for a good interplay between conscious and unconscious brush strokes being applied.
I start by affixing my boards to a vertically oriented easel. I use blue tack to temporarily attach my board to the easel. I've had mostly good experiences with blue tack and if you're thinking of using this same technique to hold up your boards, just be sure that you use enough blue tack. Small pieces of blue tack will cause your painting to fall off of the easel while you are painting and this can be very messy.
I like to do the mass drawing on my panels with a brush and two colors; burnt sienna and phthalo green. This gives me a limited range of values. As you can see in my videos the lightest value will be the color of the panel itself the next darkest value is generally just the alkaloid medium painted directly onto the board. After that I have a range of values of about four steps, which I use to render the scene. By mixing the phthalo green and the burnt sienna together I get a color that is quite dark but not nearly as dark as my later dark mixture for the color painting stage which is alizarin crimson and phthalo green.
Having a dark that is not too dark is quite handy, in that it allows me to push the painting much further in the color stage, while having some lesser darks underneath in certain areas allows me to build up nice transparent shadows.
I tend to start with a brush that is dipped in medium with just the slightest amount of pigment and I start drawing with my brush directly onto my board. I do not use charcoal or pencil.
As an aside here, I should let those of you know that wish to do an under drawing for their painting, that pencil is a very inappropriate method to start an oil painting. The reason for this is that graphite basically lays in little slats on top of itself that are very slick . The slick graphite slats resist oil paints and many times the drawing will come up through quite a few more layers of paint than you would imagine possible. For this reason, it is best to do drawings for oil paintings using charcoal or the method that I use which is just drawing with a brush and paint.
After working up a very light version of the scene with lightly tinted medium, I will go over each areas of the painting again with successively stronger amounts of pigment on my brush. I generally use just the burnt sienna at first and I will again draw almost the entire scene this way, refining as I go along.
After I have worked with the burnt sienna color I will go in with my burnt sienna and phthalo green mix for the darkest shadow areas. There have been times in the pass where I did not actually utilize phthalo green at all. Sometimes I would just use burnt sienna alone. For quite a while I was using a combination of burnt sienna and ivory black. The reason I stopped using the ivory black is that I feel it adds a sort of cool and dusty sort of effect to the painting and I'm more interested in retaining vibrancy. Phthalo green while being a dark color is actually very transparent, black is far less so.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Roman Campagna' by George Inness; this is mid period Inness. The thing I've always appreciated about this painting is the way that George Inness stacks values all the way back to the horizon and then again in the sky. He has definitely managed to capture the sort of close in feeling that one gets on a stormy day.
I am quite happy with the way the study turned out and this is a case where I did some additional work with glazing and dry brushing to approximate the feeling of texture that Inness captured in his original painting.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Roman Campagna by George Inness, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
Today's study is of 'Roman Campagna' by George Inness.
Per our recent studies of paintings by George Inness, I will be reading some from the book George Inness by Nikolai Cikovsky on the narration for today's video so please check that out.
Continuing on with our current assay of my painting process; today I would like to discuss mass drawing. As I referenced in the recent post about direct versus indirect painting, I like to do a duo-toned mass drawing on my prepared board prior to going in with color. The reason I like to have a drawing done first, (even though I could just go in immediately with blocked in color) is that, dividing the painting process into distinct stages has many advantages for the type of paintings I like to do.
The primary advantage for me in having a drawing done is that I have:
- Worked out my composition thoroughly
- Got the predominant forms and their related values mapped out
- Been able, in the mass drawing, to concentrate on what is, in essence a simplified version of the painting.
I find that breaking my painting process into stages, allows me to come to the painting in a manner that is always fresh and also allows for a good interplay between conscious and unconscious brush strokes being applied.
I start by affixing my boards to a vertically oriented easel. I use blue tack to temporarily attach my board to the easel. I've had mostly good experiences with blue tack and if you're thinking of using this same technique to hold up your boards, just be sure that you use enough blue tack. Small pieces of blue tack will cause your painting to fall off of the easel while you are painting and this can be very messy.
I like to do the mass drawing on my panels with a brush and two colors; burnt sienna and phthalo green. This gives me a limited range of values. As you can see in my videos the lightest value will be the color of the panel itself the next darkest value is generally just the alkaloid medium painted directly onto the board. After that I have a range of values of about four steps, which I use to render the scene. By mixing the phthalo green and the burnt sienna together I get a color that is quite dark but not nearly as dark as my later dark mixture for the color painting stage which is alizarin crimson and phthalo green.
Having a dark that is not too dark is quite handy, in that it allows me to push the painting much further in the color stage, while having some lesser darks underneath in certain areas allows me to build up nice transparent shadows.
I tend to start with a brush that is dipped in medium with just the slightest amount of pigment and I start drawing with my brush directly onto my board. I do not use charcoal or pencil.
As an aside here, I should let those of you know that wish to do an under drawing for their painting, that pencil is a very inappropriate method to start an oil painting. The reason for this is that graphite basically lays in little slats on top of itself that are very slick . The slick graphite slats resist oil paints and many times the drawing will come up through quite a few more layers of paint than you would imagine possible. For this reason, it is best to do drawings for oil paintings using charcoal or the method that I use which is just drawing with a brush and paint.
After working up a very light version of the scene with lightly tinted medium, I will go over each areas of the painting again with successively stronger amounts of pigment on my brush. I generally use just the burnt sienna at first and I will again draw almost the entire scene this way, refining as I go along.
After I have worked with the burnt sienna color I will go in with my burnt sienna and phthalo green mix for the darkest shadow areas. There have been times in the pass where I did not actually utilize phthalo green at all. Sometimes I would just use burnt sienna alone. For quite a while I was using a combination of burnt sienna and ivory black. The reason I stopped using the ivory black is that I feel it adds a sort of cool and dusty sort of effect to the painting and I'm more interested in retaining vibrancy. Phthalo green while being a dark color is actually very transparent, black is far less so.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Roman Campagna' by George Inness; this is mid period Inness. The thing I've always appreciated about this painting is the way that George Inness stacks values all the way back to the horizon and then again in the sky. He has definitely managed to capture the sort of close in feeling that one gets on a stormy day.
I am quite happy with the way the study turned out and this is a case where I did some additional work with glazing and dry brushing to approximate the feeling of texture that Inness captured in his original painting.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Roman Campagna by George Inness |