Forest Path 10x14
Hello, and welcome to Tonalist paintings by M Francis McCarthy.
Today's painting is 'Forest Path' 10x14.
Our video features the progression of this painting from its early underpainting stages, on up through the final finishing brushstrokes. Also featured is my usual rambling narration, so please check it out.
Today, would I like to talk about greens in painting. Where my studio is at the Quarry Art Center in Whangarei, New Zealand, I recently saw someone carting around some rather large landscape paintings the other day. These paintings were clearly done by an amateur, one of the primary ways that I could tell, even from a distance, was the approach that the painter had used for the greens in their landscape.
Their greens were all extremely bright and what I like to term "poisonous looking". These are the typical greens that you get from any unmodified, premixed tube green. It can be amazing to see the disconnect between what people put on the canvas versus the actual reality of the scene that they are attempting to portray.
Our world is full of myriad greens from bright to dull and light to dark. Any artist that is going to become accomplished at landscape painting needs to have several good strategies for portraying the greens present in many scenes.
Just as an aside before I get into green strategies, I would like to mention (for those of you using photographic reference), that photos only capture a small percentage of the greens that we can perceive with our eyes. If you're going to utilize photos to create your paintings you need to be aware of this fact and not just robotically copy the greens present in your photographic reference. Instead, you need to inject some imagination and memory to accurately depict how reality actually works.
Now, onto green strategies. My first strategy for dealing with greens is to have an appropriate base green on my pallet at all times. I currently have 2 tube greens on my pallet, they are Pthalo green and permanent green light. I very rarely if ever use these greens in any form even remotely resembling the way they come out of the tube.
In the case of Pthalo green, I might add it to a green mixture if I feel like I need a very cold green. In the case of permanent green light which is a very bright and sickly looking green, I tend to use it more to modify colors than on its own. It is effective for adding to a mixture that might be a tan or yellow or even reddish tone that you want to push into a green direction. By the way, Gamblin makes the best permanent green light, no other manufacturers version of this color seems to work for me very well.
The number one green that I keep on my pallet at all times does not come from a tube at all, it is a mixture of Gamblin Hansa yellow light and black. A very similar color can also be created with cadmium yellow and black. This is my baseline green and it is awesome because it is very earthy and feels very natural.
I will modify this base green mixture with colors like yellow ocher or raw umber. Another excellent green in a similar vein that you can mix is a combination of Gamblin Hansa yellow light and raw umber. There is a tube color from Gamblin that is similar to my base green mixture called green gold, but green gold is very transparent and also quite expensive compared to just mixing black with Hansa yellow light. So, I will just mix up a good sized blob of my favorite base green while setting up my pallet to paint each day.
Another thing to really keep in mind when approaching greens is how much red there is in most of the greens in nature. Red is a complementary to green and the pure forms of each will produce a sort of brownish color. In reality, because I'm not working with pure green tones it is very easy to modify greens using red or my favorite green modifier, burnt sienna. You would be amazed how much burnt sienna you can put into a green mixture and have it still visually seem to be green.
I also tend to add a lot of yellow ocher to my base green mixture of Hansa yellow light and black, for a range of light green tones. This color variation can also be modified extensively with reds. I should note here that I do not often make green colors by mixing blue and yellow because this tends to produce a synthetic looking green that needs a lot of additional modification anyway. I will occasionally add blues to my base green mixture for certain effects, especially if I'm mixing cool greens.
Another thing I like to do is add the neutral gray mixture that I keep on my pallet to various greens. Especially where the greens I am painting might be meeting or overlapping the sky. As I've stated in the past on this blog, I like to keep a neutral gray mixture on my pallet that is a combination of ivory black and titanium white. I mostly use this for various colors in the sky but it's handy for a lot of different uses.
In closing, I would like to say that when it comes to greens, red is your friend and in general you want to avoid painting with greens directly from the tube.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Forest Path' 10x14; as I stated with the 5x7 version of this scene that we did last week. I am fairly happy with this painting if not exactly ecstatic. I did a version as an 8x10 a few years ago that I liked.
There were many, many greens in this painting and I employed a lot of the strategies as outlined in this blog post today.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Forest Path by M Francis McCarthy, 10x14 Oil Painting on Wood Panel |
Our video features the progression of this painting from its early underpainting stages, on up through the final finishing brushstrokes. Also featured is my usual rambling narration, so please check it out.
Today, would I like to talk about greens in painting. Where my studio is at the Quarry Art Center in Whangarei, New Zealand, I recently saw someone carting around some rather large landscape paintings the other day. These paintings were clearly done by an amateur, one of the primary ways that I could tell, even from a distance, was the approach that the painter had used for the greens in their landscape.
Their greens were all extremely bright and what I like to term "poisonous looking". These are the typical greens that you get from any unmodified, premixed tube green. It can be amazing to see the disconnect between what people put on the canvas versus the actual reality of the scene that they are attempting to portray.
Our world is full of myriad greens from bright to dull and light to dark. Any artist that is going to become accomplished at landscape painting needs to have several good strategies for portraying the greens present in many scenes.
Just as an aside before I get into green strategies, I would like to mention (for those of you using photographic reference), that photos only capture a small percentage of the greens that we can perceive with our eyes. If you're going to utilize photos to create your paintings you need to be aware of this fact and not just robotically copy the greens present in your photographic reference. Instead, you need to inject some imagination and memory to accurately depict how reality actually works.
Now, onto green strategies. My first strategy for dealing with greens is to have an appropriate base green on my pallet at all times. I currently have 2 tube greens on my pallet, they are Pthalo green and permanent green light. I very rarely if ever use these greens in any form even remotely resembling the way they come out of the tube.
In the case of Pthalo green, I might add it to a green mixture if I feel like I need a very cold green. In the case of permanent green light which is a very bright and sickly looking green, I tend to use it more to modify colors than on its own. It is effective for adding to a mixture that might be a tan or yellow or even reddish tone that you want to push into a green direction. By the way, Gamblin makes the best permanent green light, no other manufacturers version of this color seems to work for me very well.
The number one green that I keep on my pallet at all times does not come from a tube at all, it is a mixture of Gamblin Hansa yellow light and black. A very similar color can also be created with cadmium yellow and black. This is my baseline green and it is awesome because it is very earthy and feels very natural.
I will modify this base green mixture with colors like yellow ocher or raw umber. Another excellent green in a similar vein that you can mix is a combination of Gamblin Hansa yellow light and raw umber. There is a tube color from Gamblin that is similar to my base green mixture called green gold, but green gold is very transparent and also quite expensive compared to just mixing black with Hansa yellow light. So, I will just mix up a good sized blob of my favorite base green while setting up my pallet to paint each day.
Another thing to really keep in mind when approaching greens is how much red there is in most of the greens in nature. Red is a complementary to green and the pure forms of each will produce a sort of brownish color. In reality, because I'm not working with pure green tones it is very easy to modify greens using red or my favorite green modifier, burnt sienna. You would be amazed how much burnt sienna you can put into a green mixture and have it still visually seem to be green.
I also tend to add a lot of yellow ocher to my base green mixture of Hansa yellow light and black, for a range of light green tones. This color variation can also be modified extensively with reds. I should note here that I do not often make green colors by mixing blue and yellow because this tends to produce a synthetic looking green that needs a lot of additional modification anyway. I will occasionally add blues to my base green mixture for certain effects, especially if I'm mixing cool greens.
Another thing I like to do is add the neutral gray mixture that I keep on my pallet to various greens. Especially where the greens I am painting might be meeting or overlapping the sky. As I've stated in the past on this blog, I like to keep a neutral gray mixture on my pallet that is a combination of ivory black and titanium white. I mostly use this for various colors in the sky but it's handy for a lot of different uses.
In closing, I would like to say that when it comes to greens, red is your friend and in general you want to avoid painting with greens directly from the tube.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Forest Path' 10x14; as I stated with the 5x7 version of this scene that we did last week. I am fairly happy with this painting if not exactly ecstatic. I did a version as an 8x10 a few years ago that I liked.
There were many, many greens in this painting and I employed a lot of the strategies as outlined in this blog post today.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Forest Path by M Francis McCarthy, 10x14 (Detail) |
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| Forest Path by M Francis McCarthy, 10x14 (Detail 2) |