Day Eighty Nine: Evening by John Francis Murphy
Hello and welcome to Day 89 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is 'Evening' by John Francis Murphy.
Those of you that have been following this blog will be well aware of John Francis Murphy by this point. We've done several studies after his paintings and he was one of the greatest Tonalist painters that ever picked up a brush. In today's video narration, I've read some biographical information about Murphy from the book, A History of American Tonalism 1882 to 1920 by David A Cleveland, so please check out the video.
Yesterday we were talking about my history as an artist and Tonalist landscape painter. Specifically, we were talking about color and how my approach to color has evolved as my sensitivity has expanded and experience been gained. Today I like to talk about how my approach to values has evolved.
My history as a pen and ink artist and later as a commercial artist involved in creating illustrations for various projects, really honed my understanding and approach to values in my art. Especially the work I did for screen printing reproduction, as in many cases I had very few colors to work with, so values would have to tell the story much more than color. Strong attention to values has informed my approach as a landscape painter from the very beginning.
When I first started doing landscape paintings I would mostly duplicate the value structure in my photographic reference, making small modifications aesthetically as I saw fit. After being introduced to Tonalism and really wanting to modify what I was doing into that artistic language I began by clipping the value range of my paintings. If you were to visualize a gray scale from 1 to 10, one being the darkest and ten the lightest, I would have moved from a scale like that to a scale more like 1 to 7 with seven being the lightest.
This removed quite a lot of contrast from my work that was present previously, One of the hallmarks of Tonalism is that a lot of Tonalist paintings eschew strong contrasts. Many of them are scenes of very early in the morning, overcast days, twilight and dusk scenes or nocturnes. Although I got some good results in my earliest attempts at painting in the tonal manner, I think I went a little too far with the lack of contrast. If you compare the work I was doing about five years ago with what I'm doing now, this is one of the main things that would stand out.
These days I tend to want to accentuate at least a few points in the painting with stronger light values. Normally this will be in the sky and quite often I will put the focus up against a dark vertical tree area.
I was very much influenced in this regard by my trip to the Louvre in Paris in 2012. I noticed when I was there that many of the landscape paintings were quite dark overall. However, another thing I noticed was that even if a painting was almost completely dark, was that the Masters would almost always put an area of extreme brightness in their paintings.
Having an area of strong contrasting light creates a lot more interest and excitement in the picture. After learning this firsthand by viewing the works of Master painters I incorporated that knowledge into my own painting.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Evening' by John Francis Murphy; this is one of my favorite studies out of all of the hundred days. I love the subdued olive toned greens that contrast with subtle violets, mauve tones and pearlescent grays. I'm very happy with the way my study turned out and I learned a lot by making a study after John Francis Murphy's awesome painting.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
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| Painted after - Evening by John Francis Murphy , Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
Today's study is 'Evening' by John Francis Murphy.
Those of you that have been following this blog will be well aware of John Francis Murphy by this point. We've done several studies after his paintings and he was one of the greatest Tonalist painters that ever picked up a brush. In today's video narration, I've read some biographical information about Murphy from the book, A History of American Tonalism 1882 to 1920 by David A Cleveland, so please check out the video.
Yesterday we were talking about my history as an artist and Tonalist landscape painter. Specifically, we were talking about color and how my approach to color has evolved as my sensitivity has expanded and experience been gained. Today I like to talk about how my approach to values has evolved.
My history as a pen and ink artist and later as a commercial artist involved in creating illustrations for various projects, really honed my understanding and approach to values in my art. Especially the work I did for screen printing reproduction, as in many cases I had very few colors to work with, so values would have to tell the story much more than color. Strong attention to values has informed my approach as a landscape painter from the very beginning.
When I first started doing landscape paintings I would mostly duplicate the value structure in my photographic reference, making small modifications aesthetically as I saw fit. After being introduced to Tonalism and really wanting to modify what I was doing into that artistic language I began by clipping the value range of my paintings. If you were to visualize a gray scale from 1 to 10, one being the darkest and ten the lightest, I would have moved from a scale like that to a scale more like 1 to 7 with seven being the lightest.
This removed quite a lot of contrast from my work that was present previously, One of the hallmarks of Tonalism is that a lot of Tonalist paintings eschew strong contrasts. Many of them are scenes of very early in the morning, overcast days, twilight and dusk scenes or nocturnes. Although I got some good results in my earliest attempts at painting in the tonal manner, I think I went a little too far with the lack of contrast. If you compare the work I was doing about five years ago with what I'm doing now, this is one of the main things that would stand out.
These days I tend to want to accentuate at least a few points in the painting with stronger light values. Normally this will be in the sky and quite often I will put the focus up against a dark vertical tree area.
I was very much influenced in this regard by my trip to the Louvre in Paris in 2012. I noticed when I was there that many of the landscape paintings were quite dark overall. However, another thing I noticed was that even if a painting was almost completely dark, was that the Masters would almost always put an area of extreme brightness in their paintings.
Having an area of strong contrasting light creates a lot more interest and excitement in the picture. After learning this firsthand by viewing the works of Master painters I incorporated that knowledge into my own painting.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Evening' by John Francis Murphy; this is one of my favorite studies out of all of the hundred days. I love the subdued olive toned greens that contrast with subtle violets, mauve tones and pearlescent grays. I'm very happy with the way my study turned out and I learned a lot by making a study after John Francis Murphy's awesome painting.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Evening by John Francis Murphy |