Evening River 5x5 study
Hello and welcome to Tonalist paintings by M Francis McCarthy.
Today's study is 'Evening River' 5x5.
On today's video you can follow the progression of this study from its inception to its glorious finish, accompanied by my usual rambling narration,so please check that out.
On the video narration today, I was talking about how I visited an online site that I used to sell work on. If you're curious as to the name of that site please check out the video, I do not wish to mention the name in print. I had a good experience with these folks and they do have some nice work on their site, however much of the work that they feature is what I would term at an amateur or semi-pro level.
I thought it would be good to talk today about some of the ways that an artist can endeavor to bring their work up to a professional level. As I stated on the video narration, the two ways that many artists seem to fall short of this goal are; poor composition and poor color.
Of these two ways that many artists works are falling short, I would say that poor composition is by far the most prevalent. I suppose that the reason for this is because many modern painters are utilizing photographic reference while creating their paintings.
I've talked extensively on this blog about the inherent dangers of photographic reference so I won't belabor my point today, other than to point out that because of the filtering system that our minds uses to look at reality, we create scenes in our mind that are harmonious because we are filtering out much of the egregious detail and other distracting aspects of any scene in front of us. The same is true of photography in that most photos are in focus across the entire field of vision, and for that reason photographs are scanned by the human eye in the same way that nature is.
It is incumbent on the painter of landscape to do this filtering for the viewer before completing their painting. This seems like such an obvious thing to state but you would be amazed how many paintings I see that fail because of this very simple fact. For an artist to create a good painting they must design the scene, not just copy what's in front of them.
This is an area that even artists doing professional quality work will struggle with. Composition is a harsh mistress and she is difficult to master. Even knowing everything that I have learned over the last eight or so years of landscape painting, I still regularly make errors of judgment. Fortunately I have developed working methods that help me to catch these errors. Chief among these is working through a series of motifs over a period of time as opposed to trying to complete one painting every week (for example). The reason this is a valuable working practice is that it gives you time and distance from your initial effort to evaluate and critique your work before finishing the painting.
The previous post on this blog is all about composition and there are entire books about this topic. Not that reading a book is going to help you that much really. The only way to really get good at composition is by doing a lot of paintings.
The second way I see many modern painters fall short of a professional quality in their work, is flat, dull and boring color. This is an epidemic of major proportions as far as I can see with many modern landscape paintings. Some of the paintings on the aforementioned online site that I thought had good composition, failed when it came to their coloration. Which is of course very sad and I wish that it would be otherwise.
One of the reasons why I do this blog and share freely what information I have learned, is to try and not only raise my own profile as a painter but also to open the eyes of other artists that have missed some of the important lessons of past Masters.
Any painter worth their salt needs to study the work of those that have come before, or fall prey to attempting to reinvent a wheel that has been thoroughly invented. Much of the work I see these days speaks for itself in this regard. Many painters out there have not taken this simple lesson to heart and are indeed very occupied with wheel invention. This is keeping them from achieving a high level of quality in their painting and breaking through into professional level work.
In some ways mastering color is more difficult than composition, in that you must have a well grounded and intuitive sense of aesthetics to really do good color. Whereas good composition is achieved through trial and error over an artists lifetime, color can be far harder to master especially when you attempt to move into the more sublime realms of the greatest colorists that have ever worked. Studying the color of some of these masters is very valuable in developing your own internal sense of aesthetics. This is one of the reasons why I spent the better part of 2015 copying Tonalist masterworks.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Evening River' 5x5; as I stated on the video I'm very happy with this study. I am pleased with the composition, feel and coloration of the scene and also it's larger sibling that we will be discussing on Saturday. Sometimes you know when the painting is going to work out and sometimes you are pleasantly surprised while you are creating it. In the case of 'Evening River' it was while I was painting the study that I could tell it was going to be good.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
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| Evening River by M Francis McCarthy, 5x5 Oil Painting on Wood Panel |
On today's video you can follow the progression of this study from its inception to its glorious finish, accompanied by my usual rambling narration,so please check that out.
On the video narration today, I was talking about how I visited an online site that I used to sell work on. If you're curious as to the name of that site please check out the video, I do not wish to mention the name in print. I had a good experience with these folks and they do have some nice work on their site, however much of the work that they feature is what I would term at an amateur or semi-pro level.
I thought it would be good to talk today about some of the ways that an artist can endeavor to bring their work up to a professional level. As I stated on the video narration, the two ways that many artists seem to fall short of this goal are; poor composition and poor color.
Of these two ways that many artists works are falling short, I would say that poor composition is by far the most prevalent. I suppose that the reason for this is because many modern painters are utilizing photographic reference while creating their paintings.
I've talked extensively on this blog about the inherent dangers of photographic reference so I won't belabor my point today, other than to point out that because of the filtering system that our minds uses to look at reality, we create scenes in our mind that are harmonious because we are filtering out much of the egregious detail and other distracting aspects of any scene in front of us. The same is true of photography in that most photos are in focus across the entire field of vision, and for that reason photographs are scanned by the human eye in the same way that nature is.
It is incumbent on the painter of landscape to do this filtering for the viewer before completing their painting. This seems like such an obvious thing to state but you would be amazed how many paintings I see that fail because of this very simple fact. For an artist to create a good painting they must design the scene, not just copy what's in front of them.
This is an area that even artists doing professional quality work will struggle with. Composition is a harsh mistress and she is difficult to master. Even knowing everything that I have learned over the last eight or so years of landscape painting, I still regularly make errors of judgment. Fortunately I have developed working methods that help me to catch these errors. Chief among these is working through a series of motifs over a period of time as opposed to trying to complete one painting every week (for example). The reason this is a valuable working practice is that it gives you time and distance from your initial effort to evaluate and critique your work before finishing the painting.
The previous post on this blog is all about composition and there are entire books about this topic. Not that reading a book is going to help you that much really. The only way to really get good at composition is by doing a lot of paintings.
The second way I see many modern painters fall short of a professional quality in their work, is flat, dull and boring color. This is an epidemic of major proportions as far as I can see with many modern landscape paintings. Some of the paintings on the aforementioned online site that I thought had good composition, failed when it came to their coloration. Which is of course very sad and I wish that it would be otherwise.
One of the reasons why I do this blog and share freely what information I have learned, is to try and not only raise my own profile as a painter but also to open the eyes of other artists that have missed some of the important lessons of past Masters.
Any painter worth their salt needs to study the work of those that have come before, or fall prey to attempting to reinvent a wheel that has been thoroughly invented. Much of the work I see these days speaks for itself in this regard. Many painters out there have not taken this simple lesson to heart and are indeed very occupied with wheel invention. This is keeping them from achieving a high level of quality in their painting and breaking through into professional level work.
In some ways mastering color is more difficult than composition, in that you must have a well grounded and intuitive sense of aesthetics to really do good color. Whereas good composition is achieved through trial and error over an artists lifetime, color can be far harder to master especially when you attempt to move into the more sublime realms of the greatest colorists that have ever worked. Studying the color of some of these masters is very valuable in developing your own internal sense of aesthetics. This is one of the reasons why I spent the better part of 2015 copying Tonalist masterworks.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Evening River' 5x5; as I stated on the video I'm very happy with this study. I am pleased with the composition, feel and coloration of the scene and also it's larger sibling that we will be discussing on Saturday. Sometimes you know when the painting is going to work out and sometimes you are pleasantly surprised while you are creating it. In the case of 'Evening River' it was while I was painting the study that I could tell it was going to be good.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Evening River 5x5 (Detail) |