Near the Creek 5x7

Hello and welcome to Tonalist paintings by M Francis McCarthy.

Near the Creek  by M Francis McCarthy, 5x7 Oil Painting on Wood Panel

Today's painting is 'Near the Creek' 5x7.

Today's video shows the progression of this study from inception to finish, accompanied by my usual rambling narration, so please check out the video.

I got back into painting yesterday after taking a hiatus to take care of other various chores around the studio. It's always a bit difficult getting started painting again after a break, but breaks can be valuable and also helpful to one's progression as an artist.

I have been doing some additional research for this book that I am working on about Tonalist painting for artists. I have purchased several books on landscape painting that I got way back when I first started doing oil painting by Kevin McPherson. I will be discussing those in another blog post.

The book I'd like to discuss today is called Landscape Painting Essentials by Johannes Vloothuis. This is a new book, having just been published in 2015 and I highly recommend it. I bought it not really knowing if it was good or not but after having scanned some of the reviews on Amazon and noticing it got a good rating, I went ahead.

Johannes covers a lot of great points about landscape painting and the challenges involved. He, like myself is a painter that has struggled to master this art and like myself, he is doing his best to share what he has learned.

I intend to do a more thorough reading and take some notes while actually reading the book but I thought it would be interesting to see what ideas left the greatest impression. Here below are some notes from my memory after having scanned the book last night:

Impressions from the book Landscape Painting Essentials by Johannes Vloothuis

• Had some very good tips about painting trees, one of which was, make sure the shapes are irregular.
• Limit the amount of sky holes in your trees, a few placed close to the horizon will be sufficient to allow air into the trees but too many holes and it will confuse the viewer.
• Do not put anything into your painting that does not absolutely need to be there, always strive for as much simplicity as possible.
• I was thinking today as I was pondering this idea of simplicity, how it would be good to apply it to any series of shapes in your painting and thus would be a good way to avoid that sort of patchy small brush stroke effect you can get especially as that happens when you overwork a painting.
• Avoid what I tend to call, all in a row paintings, where everything in the landscape seems to fall on one line he made some very good points as well about avoiding straight lines in the landscape altogether. As an example, he did a Lake shore that was very straight but inserted a tree trunk.
• Address strong parallel verticals in your painting, for example; tree trunks and he gave examples of tree trunks that he distorted and made irregular that were quite straight in the reference.
• Make shapes irregular. He gave some great examples of areas in the photo reference that were very smooth and symmetrical shapes that he made irregular. This is something that I can definitely improve in my own painting, especially when painting roads, streams and paths.
• In regards to painting in the landscape in plein air, he made some good points about how colors in nature tend to be oversaturated and yet not deviate much in the actual tone. So you will have one shade of green with different permutations of saturation. And that this is something that needs to be toned down in landscape painting.
• A really good example he used was taking a green from nature and mixing it to somewhere close to the color of a martini olive, that would be more pleasing to the eye than an extremely bright green.
• Also mentioned was the use of reds to modify green tones in the landscape and bring them down into harmony.
• He made a very good point about how it is very easy to achieve harmony in a landscape painting if there are no greens at all.

These are my raw notes and I pass them along in the hope that some of you out there reading will get some value from it. If so, I recommend you make the investment in Johannes's book. I liked it a lot.

Cheers,

M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz

A bit about 'Near the Creek' 5x7; I originally painted this motif in 2010 after moving out to New Zealand. The painting is in my wife's office. I really like the scene and wanted to interpret it again, so I painted the study in June 2014 and the larger version (that we will be discussing on Saturday) in July 2014.

I enjoy revisiting motifs because it gives me a good way to measure my progress and evolution as a landscape painter.

To see more of my work, visit my site here

Near the Creek  by M Francis McCarthy, 5x7 (Detail)