Approaching Weather 8x10
Hello and welcome to Tonalist paintings by M Francis McCarthy.
Today's painting is 'Approaching Weather' 8x10.
Last week we talked a lot about dry brushing and that is one of the reasons why I wanted to present this painting to you guys this week. If you watch the video, especially the last portion, you'll get a good sense of how I use dry brush in my painting, so please check the video out.
On today's video I was discussing my new reference set up in my studio. Not all of you watch the videos so I thought I might discuss my approach to displaying my reference in today's blog post.
When I first started painting, I would take photos with my Canon powershot and then I would print them out using my HP inkjet printer. I would use these printouts as reference for my paintings. The only thing that changed when I came to New Zealand was that I purchased a Epson printer that gave me very nice results. The other thing that's been changing is I have been progressively modifying my reference using Photoshop since I came to New Zealand, to the point that today, my painting reference resembles very little the original photo. I've talked about this in a previous blog post somewhere in One Hundred days of Tonalism.
Speaking of the 100 days of Tonalism project is the reason why I started to use a Sony 5x7" digital frame that I had purchased several years ago in order to display images from my commercial art portfolio. As it turns out, I did not use it as much as I though I would.
Until, it occurred to me that it might be far more economical and expedient to display my reference images for the hundred days of Tonalism project on this frame, rather than going to the time and expense of printing each image out on my Epson inkjet printer.
The Epson is a very good printer, however the cartridges that it uses are very expensive and they do not seem to last very long either. I knew that if my idea of using the digital frame would work that it could be a real godsend. As it turns out, the digital frame actually gave me a superior result to printing the reference, in that the colors were nicely saturated and the digital frame also exhibited crisp detail.
I've been using this digital frame for the last nine months now quite happily. Recently though, it occurred to me that it would be nice to have my reference images bigger especially as I'm working on larger and larger paintings these days. I was disappointed to find out that most local retail outlets no longer were carrying a good selection of digital frames. The one that I did find at Noel Leeming was shoddy and disappointing so I returned it. I then decided to purchase one at an online site here in New Zealand called Trade Me, that too was disappointing.
I have been using a monitor in my studio with a desktop computer that ceased functioning last week. In the process of unplugging everything I noticed that it had a USB port and so I took the USB stick out of my small digital frame and pluged it into this monitor and lo and behold it functions very nicely as a digital frame.
I've used it so far for three initial color passes on some fairly large paintings and I'm really happy with it. Today I was using it to do some very small studies and I wouldn't say it was quite as comfortable, but in some ways I think I just need to learn to adapt.
What I like about the larger digital frame is that it is very much like looking out a window to the landscape I'm painting beyond. I don't necessarily want the larger digital frame so that I can make out detail more clearly. The truth is that this particular monitor is not exhibiting a finer degree of detail than what I was using but it is bigger. It also has good color quality and gives me the ability to make adjustments to the colors as needed so for me it's working really well.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Approaching Weather'; as I mentioned in the previous blog post featuring the study for this painting, I do not usually paint such idiosyncratic trees. I prefer my trees to be interestingly shaped but not too much so.
This tree certainly has an unique shape but in many ways this painting is more about the sky than the tree as so many of my paintings are. You'd be amazed how many people come into my studio and mentioned trees, and how much I must love them. Truth be told, my favorite thing to paint is skies and that was definitely the case with 'Approaching Weather'.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Approaching Weather by M Francis McCarthy, 8x10 Oil Painting on Wood Panel |
Last week we talked a lot about dry brushing and that is one of the reasons why I wanted to present this painting to you guys this week. If you watch the video, especially the last portion, you'll get a good sense of how I use dry brush in my painting, so please check the video out.
On today's video I was discussing my new reference set up in my studio. Not all of you watch the videos so I thought I might discuss my approach to displaying my reference in today's blog post.
When I first started painting, I would take photos with my Canon powershot and then I would print them out using my HP inkjet printer. I would use these printouts as reference for my paintings. The only thing that changed when I came to New Zealand was that I purchased a Epson printer that gave me very nice results. The other thing that's been changing is I have been progressively modifying my reference using Photoshop since I came to New Zealand, to the point that today, my painting reference resembles very little the original photo. I've talked about this in a previous blog post somewhere in One Hundred days of Tonalism.
Speaking of the 100 days of Tonalism project is the reason why I started to use a Sony 5x7" digital frame that I had purchased several years ago in order to display images from my commercial art portfolio. As it turns out, I did not use it as much as I though I would.
Until, it occurred to me that it might be far more economical and expedient to display my reference images for the hundred days of Tonalism project on this frame, rather than going to the time and expense of printing each image out on my Epson inkjet printer.
The Epson is a very good printer, however the cartridges that it uses are very expensive and they do not seem to last very long either. I knew that if my idea of using the digital frame would work that it could be a real godsend. As it turns out, the digital frame actually gave me a superior result to printing the reference, in that the colors were nicely saturated and the digital frame also exhibited crisp detail.
I've been using this digital frame for the last nine months now quite happily. Recently though, it occurred to me that it would be nice to have my reference images bigger especially as I'm working on larger and larger paintings these days. I was disappointed to find out that most local retail outlets no longer were carrying a good selection of digital frames. The one that I did find at Noel Leeming was shoddy and disappointing so I returned it. I then decided to purchase one at an online site here in New Zealand called Trade Me, that too was disappointing.
I have been using a monitor in my studio with a desktop computer that ceased functioning last week. In the process of unplugging everything I noticed that it had a USB port and so I took the USB stick out of my small digital frame and pluged it into this monitor and lo and behold it functions very nicely as a digital frame.
I've used it so far for three initial color passes on some fairly large paintings and I'm really happy with it. Today I was using it to do some very small studies and I wouldn't say it was quite as comfortable, but in some ways I think I just need to learn to adapt.
What I like about the larger digital frame is that it is very much like looking out a window to the landscape I'm painting beyond. I don't necessarily want the larger digital frame so that I can make out detail more clearly. The truth is that this particular monitor is not exhibiting a finer degree of detail than what I was using but it is bigger. It also has good color quality and gives me the ability to make adjustments to the colors as needed so for me it's working really well.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Approaching Weather'; as I mentioned in the previous blog post featuring the study for this painting, I do not usually paint such idiosyncratic trees. I prefer my trees to be interestingly shaped but not too much so.
This tree certainly has an unique shape but in many ways this painting is more about the sky than the tree as so many of my paintings are. You'd be amazed how many people come into my studio and mentioned trees, and how much I must love them. Truth be told, my favorite thing to paint is skies and that was definitely the case with 'Approaching Weather'.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Approaching Weather by M Francis McCarthy (Detail) |