Day Seventy Seven: Upland Pasture by Alden Weir
Hello and welcome to day 77 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today study is of 'Upland Pasture' by Alden Weir.
Alden Weir was predominately known as an American Impressionist painter, however some of his paintings definitely fall into the Tonalist camp. Here is some biographical information about Alden. We have one of my music tracks on todays video 'The Night is Falling' from my album 'It Never Was' so please check that out,
Continuing on with the discussion we started yesterday regarding my journey to becoming a landscape painter; I stated yesterday that I wasn't really sure why in my 20s I thought that I might want to have a career as a landscape painter when I was older. After having thought about it, it occurred to me that there were definitely some signs and motivators that I had not immediately recalled.
Some time in 1985 I decided that I wanted to do some pencil drawings of oak trees. I'm not really sure what my motivation was. I got my friend David who had a camera to go with me and we did some photography in the local foothills. I selected about five or so of the photographs, to draw. I rendered these on illustration board with various grades of pencil.
After that I would sometimes do artwork for the company I worked for at the time that was doing picture framing for the mass-market. We had accounts like JCPenney and Sears. My employer wanted to do a series of framed, colored drawings of various California landmarks. I did a bunch of research and produced about six ink drawings which were then colored with watercolor.
Back then in the 80s the poster market was really taking off. A lot of interesting artwork became available in the form of posters. There are three landscape based poster guys that I recall from that time that I liked, one is Marcus Uzilevsky, Jerry Schurr and the guy that really put a thought in my head about landscape painting, Don Irwin. There was a piece by Don Irwin that I found especially inspiring called California hills. When I saw this poster, it got me thinking that I would really like to do something like that at some time in the future.
At that time, in the 80s I was predominately interested in drawing. I liked to draw people and fantasy type subjects. When I was in my teen years I was very inspired by artists like Roger Dean and Frazeta, not to mention quite a few comic book artists whose work I would copy in an effort to learn drawing and anatomy better. From the time I was a teen until into my 20s and even early 30s I was focused on drawing better, improving as an artist and developing my abilities.
In the early 90s I started becoming interested in doing more abstract, gestural types of drawings. I did a lot of insect drawings with Don Martin inks.
This gets us back to where we started with yesterday's blog post where I talked about using the computer to do art in 1994 and eventually got a job doing illustration using a computer in 1997.
We will pick up from here tomorrow and discuss a bit more about my experience as a commercial artist, so stay tuned for that.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Upland Pasture' by Alden Weir; this was not a scene that I had originally planned to do when I was mapping out the potential studies for my 100 days of Tonalism project. I think when I got to 77 I realized that I had painted the previous scene already, so I dug into my archives and pulled out this painting by Alden Weir. There is another Alden Weir that is it much earlier in the series and I like his work although not all of it is great.
This is quite a different composition than what I would normally do and I really enjoyed doing the yellow grasses and textures in this study and I learned a lot.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Upland Pasture by Alden Weir, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
Alden Weir was predominately known as an American Impressionist painter, however some of his paintings definitely fall into the Tonalist camp. Here is some biographical information about Alden. We have one of my music tracks on todays video 'The Night is Falling' from my album 'It Never Was' so please check that out,
Continuing on with the discussion we started yesterday regarding my journey to becoming a landscape painter; I stated yesterday that I wasn't really sure why in my 20s I thought that I might want to have a career as a landscape painter when I was older. After having thought about it, it occurred to me that there were definitely some signs and motivators that I had not immediately recalled.
Some time in 1985 I decided that I wanted to do some pencil drawings of oak trees. I'm not really sure what my motivation was. I got my friend David who had a camera to go with me and we did some photography in the local foothills. I selected about five or so of the photographs, to draw. I rendered these on illustration board with various grades of pencil.
After that I would sometimes do artwork for the company I worked for at the time that was doing picture framing for the mass-market. We had accounts like JCPenney and Sears. My employer wanted to do a series of framed, colored drawings of various California landmarks. I did a bunch of research and produced about six ink drawings which were then colored with watercolor.
Back then in the 80s the poster market was really taking off. A lot of interesting artwork became available in the form of posters. There are three landscape based poster guys that I recall from that time that I liked, one is Marcus Uzilevsky, Jerry Schurr and the guy that really put a thought in my head about landscape painting, Don Irwin. There was a piece by Don Irwin that I found especially inspiring called California hills. When I saw this poster, it got me thinking that I would really like to do something like that at some time in the future.
At that time, in the 80s I was predominately interested in drawing. I liked to draw people and fantasy type subjects. When I was in my teen years I was very inspired by artists like Roger Dean and Frazeta, not to mention quite a few comic book artists whose work I would copy in an effort to learn drawing and anatomy better. From the time I was a teen until into my 20s and even early 30s I was focused on drawing better, improving as an artist and developing my abilities.
In the early 90s I started becoming interested in doing more abstract, gestural types of drawings. I did a lot of insect drawings with Don Martin inks.
This gets us back to where we started with yesterday's blog post where I talked about using the computer to do art in 1994 and eventually got a job doing illustration using a computer in 1997.
We will pick up from here tomorrow and discuss a bit more about my experience as a commercial artist, so stay tuned for that.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Upland Pasture' by Alden Weir; this was not a scene that I had originally planned to do when I was mapping out the potential studies for my 100 days of Tonalism project. I think when I got to 77 I realized that I had painted the previous scene already, so I dug into my archives and pulled out this painting by Alden Weir. There is another Alden Weir that is it much earlier in the series and I like his work although not all of it is great.
This is quite a different composition than what I would normally do and I really enjoyed doing the yellow grasses and textures in this study and I learned a lot.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Upland Pasture by Alden Weir |