First Light 5x7
Hello, and welcome to Tonalist paintings by M Francis McCarthy.
Today's painting is 'First Light' 5x7.
Our video features the progression of this painting from its earliest drawing stages on up through the final finishing glazes and brushstrokes. Also featured is my usual rambling narration, so please check it out.
Today I'm going to talk about working methods. Accomplishing an interesting and successful landscape painting is not easy. It is especially difficult to attain a high level of work consistently over many paintings. There is an awful lot involved besides just raw talent and ability. Besides talent, you need to have a good work ethic and also have developed strategies for accomplishing the work.
I have created many different strategies for getting work done in my studio. One of my main approaches is to do multiple paintings in a series. By the way, a series is not really tied together by anything other than the time period in which it was done. I've spoken about this approach in previous blog posts. I think it's critical for accomplishing good work consistently (at least in my case).
If you set out to do one painting and take it through all of its stages before beginning another painting, you miss out on critical time spent with the painting at each stage of the process. This time can be used effectively to evaluate and self-critique your work while in the process of completing it.
One of the downsides to doing a series is that you will not see a scene brought to completion immediately. In the past, I have done up to 18 paintings in a series. The problem I found with this was that it took me two months to get all of the paintings done. These days I work with a more reasonable 5 to 6 at a time. This is mostly because I am focusing on larger work right now and larger paintings take more time to do. My favorite amount of paintings to do in the series is about 10.
If I'm doing 10 paintings in the series that would mean that I am actually doing 20 paintings because I will do a 5x5" or 5x7" study for each scene that I'm painting.
Which brings us to another good working method; creating a study prior to going after a larger piece. This is crucial to my process because it helps me to more easily abandon my photographic reference when completing a larger painting. Also because I've done a study, I have reworked and reinterpreted the scene many times by the time I get to the second color pass of my larger painting. I find it's super helpful to have something to refer to while working. If it's a photograph all the way through the painting process, I might be inclined to insert objects present in the photograph that do not contribute to the compositional harmony or I may over-detail the painting.
Currently at my 5 to 6 paintings in the series ratio, I am completing a series in about three weeks. This is comparable to the month and a half it would take me to complete a series of 10 scenes, except that I am actually getting larger pieces done, which is great.
I believe in being thoughtful about one's working process and I think it's important to evaluate and update that process as you go, keeping the good things and improving the parts of your working process of that can be improved.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Frst Light' 5x7; this 5x7 was actually created using a larger 8x10 painting as reference instead of a photograph. I did the 8x10 painting last year and it was done in two stages. The first stage was a landscape that had a road and that version was less than successful. About six months after doing the initial painting I revised it thoroughly. The revised painting looks really good and I'm very happy with it, so I decided to make it one of the candidates that I was going to use as reference for a larger 18x24 version of the scene.
I referred to this 5x7 mostly when doing the larger painting alternating with using the 8x10 as reference as well. I was looking for my original photographic reference for the initial iteration of the painting but was unsuccessful in finding it and frankly, it doesn't really matter because I changed it so extensively.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
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| First Light by M Francis McCarthy, 5x7 Oil Painting on Wood Panel |
Our video features the progression of this painting from its earliest drawing stages on up through the final finishing glazes and brushstrokes. Also featured is my usual rambling narration, so please check it out.
Today I'm going to talk about working methods. Accomplishing an interesting and successful landscape painting is not easy. It is especially difficult to attain a high level of work consistently over many paintings. There is an awful lot involved besides just raw talent and ability. Besides talent, you need to have a good work ethic and also have developed strategies for accomplishing the work.
I have created many different strategies for getting work done in my studio. One of my main approaches is to do multiple paintings in a series. By the way, a series is not really tied together by anything other than the time period in which it was done. I've spoken about this approach in previous blog posts. I think it's critical for accomplishing good work consistently (at least in my case).
If you set out to do one painting and take it through all of its stages before beginning another painting, you miss out on critical time spent with the painting at each stage of the process. This time can be used effectively to evaluate and self-critique your work while in the process of completing it.
One of the downsides to doing a series is that you will not see a scene brought to completion immediately. In the past, I have done up to 18 paintings in a series. The problem I found with this was that it took me two months to get all of the paintings done. These days I work with a more reasonable 5 to 6 at a time. This is mostly because I am focusing on larger work right now and larger paintings take more time to do. My favorite amount of paintings to do in the series is about 10.
If I'm doing 10 paintings in the series that would mean that I am actually doing 20 paintings because I will do a 5x5" or 5x7" study for each scene that I'm painting.
Which brings us to another good working method; creating a study prior to going after a larger piece. This is crucial to my process because it helps me to more easily abandon my photographic reference when completing a larger painting. Also because I've done a study, I have reworked and reinterpreted the scene many times by the time I get to the second color pass of my larger painting. I find it's super helpful to have something to refer to while working. If it's a photograph all the way through the painting process, I might be inclined to insert objects present in the photograph that do not contribute to the compositional harmony or I may over-detail the painting.
Currently at my 5 to 6 paintings in the series ratio, I am completing a series in about three weeks. This is comparable to the month and a half it would take me to complete a series of 10 scenes, except that I am actually getting larger pieces done, which is great.
I believe in being thoughtful about one's working process and I think it's important to evaluate and update that process as you go, keeping the good things and improving the parts of your working process of that can be improved.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Frst Light' 5x7; this 5x7 was actually created using a larger 8x10 painting as reference instead of a photograph. I did the 8x10 painting last year and it was done in two stages. The first stage was a landscape that had a road and that version was less than successful. About six months after doing the initial painting I revised it thoroughly. The revised painting looks really good and I'm very happy with it, so I decided to make it one of the candidates that I was going to use as reference for a larger 18x24 version of the scene.
I referred to this 5x7 mostly when doing the larger painting alternating with using the 8x10 as reference as well. I was looking for my original photographic reference for the initial iteration of the painting but was unsuccessful in finding it and frankly, it doesn't really matter because I changed it so extensively.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
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| First Light 5x7 (Detail) |
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| First Light 5x7 (Detail 2) |