North of Town 8x10
Hello and welcome to Tonalist paintings by M Francis McCarthy.
Our video today features the progression of this painting from its initial drawing stages through to my final glazes and last color pass, so please check that out.
I've been doing a lot (of what I call drawings) over the last several days in the studio. I call them drawings because that is the mindset that I have while creating them. I'm doing them with paint and a brush so it could be more accurate to refer to them as underpaintings.
There are times that I will go in and paint an entire scene without a underpainting/drawing. I tend to do this if I'm reusing a panel that has a older painting on it that I do not like. I will just start by painting with my darkest tones right over the top of the old painting. I don't paint this way very often, but I do have a stack of old paintings only good for this purpose, so I try to do a few every year this way.
Many artists do not do an underpainting or drawing for their paintings. In many ways this is something that distinguishes a lot of modern painters from the Masters that came before. In the days of the old Masters, the drawing was very important and to a large degree painting for them consisted of mostly applying colors over and onto the drawing that they'd prepared and then transferred to the painting surface.
If you have seen my videos here on this blog, you would be aware of my drawing process. I like to work with burnt sienna and pthalo green. I also use an oil (alkyd) medium that tends to act as my lightest painted color. When applied to the board, the medium makes that area of the panel slightly darker than the areas that are dry. Sometimes I'll add the smallest amount of burnt sienna to my initial oil drawing mixture as well.
I like to start very light, as light as I can, and then build up the underpainting that way. I correct as I go and I don't obsess about my drawing being 100% accurate in comparison to the reference, sometimes certain areas will deviate in width or proportion from the photo reference. If I deviate too far however, I can have issues later. I spend a lot of time when I'm cropping my photos in Photoshop making (hopefully good) compositional decisions that I intend to follow through on in the painting itself.
As I progress with my drawing I will begin to work with gradations of pigment upto 100% burnt sienna. Depending on the coloration of my panel and how light or dark it is, the sienna can be medium in tone, or can appear quite dark. After that I will mix pthalo green with burnt sienna for my darkest areas. Sometimes I will do the darkest areas first and then follow up with burnt sienna to smooth things out. I like the darkness I get with the pthalo green and burnt sienna mixed. At the time I'm doing the drawing this mixture can feel very dark. Later on when I'm doing the color stages of the painting using my favorite dark combination of pthalo green and alizarin crimson, I can go much darker so I still have some room to move after my underpainting stage.
I've noticed that even though my entire underpainting gets covered over in the initial color pass, that the decisions I've made regarding composition and proportion while doing that initial drawing will follow through the entire painting. Also, if you look at my work closely in a zoomed in photograph, you will see that little bits of the underpainting are peeking through as well as the board itself so that under painting is not a wasted effort. It sets things up so I can focus on color and refine values in my later painting stages.
For artists that choose not to do an underpainting I can understand their hesitation as it can stiffen up your work if your not careful. However for the type of personality that I have and paintings I do, I find that it's very advantageous to do an underpainting/drawing first.
A long time back I experimented with projecting my reference photographs onto the board and tracing the image with charcoal. I would then go over that with my burnt sienna/pthalo green mixture. I learned the error of working this way quite a while back. It's far better for the underpainting to be done with my hand and my eye. There's nothing in the photograph that is so important that it needs to be projected onto the board, especially if an artist is an able draftsman.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
A bit about 'North of Town' 8x10; this painting is more typically Tonalist than a lot of my other recent work. I'm using a limited range of colors and values in this painting. The sky is more subtle and subdued then I generally go for as well.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
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| North of Town 8x10 by M Francis McCarthy, 8x10 Oil Painting on Wood Panel |
Today's painting is 'North of Town' 8x10.
Our video today features the progression of this painting from its initial drawing stages through to my final glazes and last color pass, so please check that out.
I've been doing a lot (of what I call drawings) over the last several days in the studio. I call them drawings because that is the mindset that I have while creating them. I'm doing them with paint and a brush so it could be more accurate to refer to them as underpaintings.
There are times that I will go in and paint an entire scene without a underpainting/drawing. I tend to do this if I'm reusing a panel that has a older painting on it that I do not like. I will just start by painting with my darkest tones right over the top of the old painting. I don't paint this way very often, but I do have a stack of old paintings only good for this purpose, so I try to do a few every year this way.
Many artists do not do an underpainting or drawing for their paintings. In many ways this is something that distinguishes a lot of modern painters from the Masters that came before. In the days of the old Masters, the drawing was very important and to a large degree painting for them consisted of mostly applying colors over and onto the drawing that they'd prepared and then transferred to the painting surface.
If you have seen my videos here on this blog, you would be aware of my drawing process. I like to work with burnt sienna and pthalo green. I also use an oil (alkyd) medium that tends to act as my lightest painted color. When applied to the board, the medium makes that area of the panel slightly darker than the areas that are dry. Sometimes I'll add the smallest amount of burnt sienna to my initial oil drawing mixture as well.
I like to start very light, as light as I can, and then build up the underpainting that way. I correct as I go and I don't obsess about my drawing being 100% accurate in comparison to the reference, sometimes certain areas will deviate in width or proportion from the photo reference. If I deviate too far however, I can have issues later. I spend a lot of time when I'm cropping my photos in Photoshop making (hopefully good) compositional decisions that I intend to follow through on in the painting itself.
As I progress with my drawing I will begin to work with gradations of pigment upto 100% burnt sienna. Depending on the coloration of my panel and how light or dark it is, the sienna can be medium in tone, or can appear quite dark. After that I will mix pthalo green with burnt sienna for my darkest areas. Sometimes I will do the darkest areas first and then follow up with burnt sienna to smooth things out. I like the darkness I get with the pthalo green and burnt sienna mixed. At the time I'm doing the drawing this mixture can feel very dark. Later on when I'm doing the color stages of the painting using my favorite dark combination of pthalo green and alizarin crimson, I can go much darker so I still have some room to move after my underpainting stage.
I've noticed that even though my entire underpainting gets covered over in the initial color pass, that the decisions I've made regarding composition and proportion while doing that initial drawing will follow through the entire painting. Also, if you look at my work closely in a zoomed in photograph, you will see that little bits of the underpainting are peeking through as well as the board itself so that under painting is not a wasted effort. It sets things up so I can focus on color and refine values in my later painting stages.
For artists that choose not to do an underpainting I can understand their hesitation as it can stiffen up your work if your not careful. However for the type of personality that I have and paintings I do, I find that it's very advantageous to do an underpainting/drawing first.
A long time back I experimented with projecting my reference photographs onto the board and tracing the image with charcoal. I would then go over that with my burnt sienna/pthalo green mixture. I learned the error of working this way quite a while back. It's far better for the underpainting to be done with my hand and my eye. There's nothing in the photograph that is so important that it needs to be projected onto the board, especially if an artist is an able draftsman.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
A bit about 'North of Town' 8x10; this painting is more typically Tonalist than a lot of my other recent work. I'm using a limited range of colors and values in this painting. The sky is more subtle and subdued then I generally go for as well.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| North of Town 8x10 (detail) |