Day Sixty One: Leaning Tree Trunk by Camille Corot
Hello and welcome to day 61 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today study is the 'Leaning Tree Trunk' by Camille Corot.
As I've indicated in previous blog posts where we featured paintings by Camille, he is not actually a Tonalist painter. He is a member of the Barbizon school. He is in this series because his influence on Tonalism was extensive and also because I wanted to learn more about how he put paintings together. Today's video features a track off my album All is One.
Getting back to our current assay of my Tonalist painting process; today I'd like to discuss scraping down oil paint peaks. Many painters use canvas quite happily without much concern in regards to the surface quality of their work. This seems to be the rule these days. After visiting several excellent museums that featured Tonalist and Hudson River school paintings. I began my quest to have a more museum like surface in my work. There are several things that I do in my process to contribute to an interesting surface quality.
Creating a beautiful surface quality starts with the grain of the wood panel I am using. The gesso texture I add also contributes quite a lot. Lastly, the way I apply my paint is perhaps the greatest factor in how the surface of my painting will look. If I lay my paint on very thinly, there will not be much deviation from the texture of the panel. Conversely, if I apply my paint very thickly, there will be a lot of peaks and valleys in the paint. My preference is for something between these two extremes. I like some variation of the surface but I do not like intense peaks that catch the light and therefore are distracting.
About a year and a half ago I began using a small palette knife to scrape away these peaks. I first scrape the peaks away from my dried drawing stage, removing excess paint from the thicker areas. After that, I will scrape the peaks off of my dried first color pass.
This is fairly easy to do and also quite easy to mess up. I have to be extremely conscious and careful while doing this scraping. If I momentarily lose control of the knife it will gouge into the paint surface and sometimes all the way down to the panel itself. While this is not something that I cannot fix, I don't like it. I find that it's all about the angle that I'm holding the knife and also about not trying to take off too much paint all in one go, direction is also a factor in avoiding those gouges.
I keep a paper towel on my work surface and I wipe off the scraped paint onto it as I work. This is important to do, sometimes there will be small amounts of wet paint inside of the peaks that will smear onto other areas if I'm not careful.
"Scraping down," as I call it actually takes me a while to do, but I feel that it adds quite a lot to the painting. Not having the peaks that catch the light really makes it easier to look at and enjoy the painting.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Leaning Tree Trunk' by Camille Corot; I'm told that Corot favored the square format but I've not seen many other landscape painters use it.
I enjoyed rendering the atmospheric edges of Corot's trees. He was the Master of getting atmospheric quality into a landscape painting. I learned a lot by doing this study.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
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As I've indicated in previous blog posts where we featured paintings by Camille, he is not actually a Tonalist painter. He is a member of the Barbizon school. He is in this series because his influence on Tonalism was extensive and also because I wanted to learn more about how he put paintings together. Today's video features a track off my album All is One.
Getting back to our current assay of my Tonalist painting process; today I'd like to discuss scraping down oil paint peaks. Many painters use canvas quite happily without much concern in regards to the surface quality of their work. This seems to be the rule these days. After visiting several excellent museums that featured Tonalist and Hudson River school paintings. I began my quest to have a more museum like surface in my work. There are several things that I do in my process to contribute to an interesting surface quality.
Creating a beautiful surface quality starts with the grain of the wood panel I am using. The gesso texture I add also contributes quite a lot. Lastly, the way I apply my paint is perhaps the greatest factor in how the surface of my painting will look. If I lay my paint on very thinly, there will not be much deviation from the texture of the panel. Conversely, if I apply my paint very thickly, there will be a lot of peaks and valleys in the paint. My preference is for something between these two extremes. I like some variation of the surface but I do not like intense peaks that catch the light and therefore are distracting.
About a year and a half ago I began using a small palette knife to scrape away these peaks. I first scrape the peaks away from my dried drawing stage, removing excess paint from the thicker areas. After that, I will scrape the peaks off of my dried first color pass.
This is fairly easy to do and also quite easy to mess up. I have to be extremely conscious and careful while doing this scraping. If I momentarily lose control of the knife it will gouge into the paint surface and sometimes all the way down to the panel itself. While this is not something that I cannot fix, I don't like it. I find that it's all about the angle that I'm holding the knife and also about not trying to take off too much paint all in one go, direction is also a factor in avoiding those gouges.
I keep a paper towel on my work surface and I wipe off the scraped paint onto it as I work. This is important to do, sometimes there will be small amounts of wet paint inside of the peaks that will smear onto other areas if I'm not careful.
"Scraping down," as I call it actually takes me a while to do, but I feel that it adds quite a lot to the painting. Not having the peaks that catch the light really makes it easier to look at and enjoy the painting.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Leaning Tree Trunk' by Camille Corot; I'm told that Corot favored the square format but I've not seen many other landscape painters use it.
I enjoyed rendering the atmospheric edges of Corot's trees. He was the Master of getting atmospheric quality into a landscape painting. I learned a lot by doing this study.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Leaning Tree Trunk by Camille Corot |