Through the Forest 8x10
Hello and welcome to Tonalist paintings by M Francis McCarthy.
Today's painting is 'Through the Forest' 8x10.
The video traces the progression of this painting from its initial drawing stages through to my final color application as well as my usual rambling narration,so please check that out.
Landscape painting is easy to do badly. If you'd asked me when I was young if I thought I would ever become a landscape painter I would've laughed at you, because in the 60s and 70s when I was a child there was an awful lot of really bad landscape art around. It wasn't until I became older that I started seeing things that I really liked.
I was more interested in drawing superheroes when I was younger, I really loved artists like Frank Frazetta and science fiction and fantasy art in general. Oddly enough, it was Frazetta more than anyone else who opened up my young eyes to the possibilities of paint. His work was so loose and expressive yet cohesive, you could see how it was put together (almost). It's not easy to achieve that fluid looseness and still produce work that is cohesive at the same time. This is one of the greatest challenges any painter faces.
I have a whole array of strategies that are designed to assist me in being loose yet cohesive. I've talked about supporting yourself as an artist in a recent blog post. I rely on all the various approaches and preliminary stages that I do for my paintings to enable me, when I am actually going in with my first color pass to be loose and expressive. At that stage, I don't want to be attempting to be loose and expressive while solving compositional problems (although God knows that happens far too often), I want to be laying in my color in a free, liberal and expressive manner while moving across the painting surface in a deliberate and expeditious manner.
It is necessary for me to plan for looseness in my work. Some artists don't have this problem and perhaps they would be better served by learning how to discipline themselves more, and to hunker down and actually figure out how some of the objects that they are attempting to paint actually work.
Everybody is different and no one approach is going to work for every painter. The sort of approach that I do will work well for somebody that is into working in an organized way and yet still is sensitive to being expressive instead of just delineating what they perceive.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Through the Forest' 8x10: I'm happy with this painting. I think I got a good balance between the detail and big shapes as well as nice shifts in color.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Through the Forest by M Francis McCarthy,8x10 Oil Painting on Wood Panel |
The video traces the progression of this painting from its initial drawing stages through to my final color application as well as my usual rambling narration,so please check that out.
Landscape painting is easy to do badly. If you'd asked me when I was young if I thought I would ever become a landscape painter I would've laughed at you, because in the 60s and 70s when I was a child there was an awful lot of really bad landscape art around. It wasn't until I became older that I started seeing things that I really liked.
I was more interested in drawing superheroes when I was younger, I really loved artists like Frank Frazetta and science fiction and fantasy art in general. Oddly enough, it was Frazetta more than anyone else who opened up my young eyes to the possibilities of paint. His work was so loose and expressive yet cohesive, you could see how it was put together (almost). It's not easy to achieve that fluid looseness and still produce work that is cohesive at the same time. This is one of the greatest challenges any painter faces.
I have a whole array of strategies that are designed to assist me in being loose yet cohesive. I've talked about supporting yourself as an artist in a recent blog post. I rely on all the various approaches and preliminary stages that I do for my paintings to enable me, when I am actually going in with my first color pass to be loose and expressive. At that stage, I don't want to be attempting to be loose and expressive while solving compositional problems (although God knows that happens far too often), I want to be laying in my color in a free, liberal and expressive manner while moving across the painting surface in a deliberate and expeditious manner.
It is necessary for me to plan for looseness in my work. Some artists don't have this problem and perhaps they would be better served by learning how to discipline themselves more, and to hunker down and actually figure out how some of the objects that they are attempting to paint actually work.
Everybody is different and no one approach is going to work for every painter. The sort of approach that I do will work well for somebody that is into working in an organized way and yet still is sensitive to being expressive instead of just delineating what they perceive.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Through the Forest' 8x10: I'm happy with this painting. I think I got a good balance between the detail and big shapes as well as nice shifts in color.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Through the Forest 8x10 (Detail) |