Day Sixty: Late Autumn Afternoon by John Francis Murphy
Hello and welcome to day 60 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is 'Late Autumn Afternoon' by John Francis Murphy.
It's not often we have the same artist two days in a row here. The reason for this, today, is that I had accidentally duplicated a painting by George Inness called 'Sunrise' that we covered earlier in this series. It was actually yesterday's painting 'Landscape' by John Francis Murphy that was the substitution I had been planning on doing a study of this painting from the start.
Yesterday we were reading some good stuff about Murphy from the book American Tonalism 1880 1920 David Cleveland. For today's video narration I will continue where I left off yesterday, as we were already discussing John Francis Murphy. So be sure to check out the video.
Continuing on with our current assay regarding my Tonalist painting process; we've spent the last three days talking about the colors on my palette. I had not intended to spend so long on pigments, but this blog being an organic process, it seems to me like time well spent. After all, without paint you really can't do much painting!
Today I'd like to discuss pre-mixing colors prior to starting a painting. For the first color pass, I like to premix the major colors for the painting I am getting ready to do. This is not absolutely necessary, I could just mix as I go but I feel that premixing has several advantages:
Having the major colors premixed is an extension of my philosophy of allowing parts of the painting process to carry you along, while allowing intuition more free reign. It's very important that painting be a nearly equal process between conscious and unconscious decisions, between thinking and feeling.
There's no question that while premixing I'm primarily thinking. However many times while using these mixtures while actually doing the painting, I will amend and adjust the premixed colors intuitively. This is all part of the back-and-forth, and give and take of my workflow.
The amount of color that I premix is definitely influenced by the size of the painting I'm doing. If I'm doing a 5x7 I need far less paint than when doing a 12x16.
Some contemporary artists do premixing, though I think these days most prefer to mix their colors as they go. The mix as you go method is definitely more Impressionistic. One of the main influencers of the Tonalist painting movement was James McNeill Whistler. He not only had his colors premixed but he had extended strings of each color from dark to light value. This is totally in keeping with a more classical approach to oil painting.
Tomorrow I'm going to discuss scraping down peaks on my paintings at various stages during the paintings progression. So be sure to come back and check that out.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Late Autumn Afternoon' by John Francis Murphy; while this painting is classic John Francis Murphy I feel that it shows a strong influence of George Inness, especially in the composition. This type of composition is called a seesaw because you have two opposing elements one on the left and one on the right. Generally speaking, it's advantageous to have one element larger than the other. If both elements are the same size the painting will be too static and it will not have a clear point of interest.
I enjoyed painting the warm sky and the deep reds and greens of the ground for this study. John Francis Murphy was very good at capturing an emotional quality in his work and that is a trait of his that I endeavor to emulate in my own.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
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It's not often we have the same artist two days in a row here. The reason for this, today, is that I had accidentally duplicated a painting by George Inness called 'Sunrise' that we covered earlier in this series. It was actually yesterday's painting 'Landscape' by John Francis Murphy that was the substitution I had been planning on doing a study of this painting from the start.
Yesterday we were reading some good stuff about Murphy from the book American Tonalism 1880 1920 David Cleveland. For today's video narration I will continue where I left off yesterday, as we were already discussing John Francis Murphy. So be sure to check out the video.
Continuing on with our current assay regarding my Tonalist painting process; we've spent the last three days talking about the colors on my palette. I had not intended to spend so long on pigments, but this blog being an organic process, it seems to me like time well spent. After all, without paint you really can't do much painting!
Today I'd like to discuss pre-mixing colors prior to starting a painting. For the first color pass, I like to premix the major colors for the painting I am getting ready to do. This is not absolutely necessary, I could just mix as I go but I feel that premixing has several advantages:
- With my colors premixed on my palette before I go to lunch, I'm more likely to come back to the studio after lunch and complete that painting or risk wasting the mixtures sitting on my palette.
- Premixing my colors gives me an opportunity to get an overview of the major colors in the painting prior to actually jumping in with my brush.
- Having the major colors premixed, gives me a certain amount of momentum while painting (sort of like, set them up and knock them down).
Having the major colors premixed is an extension of my philosophy of allowing parts of the painting process to carry you along, while allowing intuition more free reign. It's very important that painting be a nearly equal process between conscious and unconscious decisions, between thinking and feeling.
There's no question that while premixing I'm primarily thinking. However many times while using these mixtures while actually doing the painting, I will amend and adjust the premixed colors intuitively. This is all part of the back-and-forth, and give and take of my workflow.
The amount of color that I premix is definitely influenced by the size of the painting I'm doing. If I'm doing a 5x7 I need far less paint than when doing a 12x16.
Some contemporary artists do premixing, though I think these days most prefer to mix their colors as they go. The mix as you go method is definitely more Impressionistic. One of the main influencers of the Tonalist painting movement was James McNeill Whistler. He not only had his colors premixed but he had extended strings of each color from dark to light value. This is totally in keeping with a more classical approach to oil painting.
Tomorrow I'm going to discuss scraping down peaks on my paintings at various stages during the paintings progression. So be sure to come back and check that out.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Late Autumn Afternoon' by John Francis Murphy; while this painting is classic John Francis Murphy I feel that it shows a strong influence of George Inness, especially in the composition. This type of composition is called a seesaw because you have two opposing elements one on the left and one on the right. Generally speaking, it's advantageous to have one element larger than the other. If both elements are the same size the painting will be too static and it will not have a clear point of interest.
I enjoyed painting the warm sky and the deep reds and greens of the ground for this study. John Francis Murphy was very good at capturing an emotional quality in his work and that is a trait of his that I endeavor to emulate in my own.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Late Autumn Afternoon by John Francis Murphy |