#1 Frank Peyraud "Twilight" - 25 Days of Tonalism
Hello and welcome to Tonalist paintings by M Francis McCarthy.
Today's study is painted after Frank Peyraud's "Twilight."
Our video features the progression of this study from its early underpainting stages, on up through the final finishing brushwork. Also featured is my usual rambling narration, so please check it out.
As I discussed in the video, this is the start of a side project on this blog called '25 days of Tonalism.' Unlike the 100 days of Tonalism project that I completed last year, I will be doing a blog post and corresponding video for each day of the '25 days of Tonalism' once a week.
I will also continue featuring my own Tonalist work on this blog, also on a weekly basis. I can't say if these days will necessarily fall together like they are going to this weekend, but I will do my best to do the two posts each week until we have done all '25 days of Tonalism.'
Similar to the regular blog posts that I do now, in each weekly post of the '25 days of Tonalism project, I will be writing about topics related to painting that may or may not actually address the specific subject or artist of the featured day of Tonalism for that week.
I will be including some links with each post and the video portion of the blog will generally feature me reading some information about that artist or the specific painting in it. So be sure to check out those videos.
Today I like to talk about injecting emotion into a landscape painting. Unlike working with the human figure where emotion can be portrayed by the pose or facial expression of the portrait subject, landscape art relies on more subtle and sometimes less distinct ways of importing emotional quality and content.
I often tell people that visit my studio and look at my work remarking on the emotional quality, that emotional quality is what I am endeavoring to paint with every painting that I do. While thinking about ways to write about this topic it occurred to me that I probably won't be doing a very good job of it, but I will try and communicate some of the ways that I inject emotion into my work.
.
The first way I get emotion across is with the relative values of the painting. Whether it is light or dark overall will set the general tone of the piece. Much of the actual tone and quality of the work is imparted by the values more than the colors used. I always set out to create a harmonious and engaging blend of different values and try to put a good emphasis on strong contrasts opposed with areas of subtle value modulation.
This is where I start, but the emotional finish is always done with color. Color is the most obvious facilitator of emotion when perceiving a painting and it is something that people tend to notice the most. I am usually going for the type of emotional response that we have when experiencing a sunrise or sunset in nature.
There is always a special feeling that is stimulated by the quality of light and the interesting colors that are arranging themselves in the sky. These colors shift and move so quickly that it is often difficult for the outdoor painter to get these sorts of effects (this would be a good topic for another post).
What I try to do with my color is set up a general theme and then to push the colors as far as I can go without making things to maudlin. For the most part, my color decisions are made intuitively after setting up the initial tone and pallet in my reference image.
I follow this up with a set of premixed to colors that I mix right before going in with my first color pass. This also helps to cement the emotional resonance of the painting (though I will and have deviated from those premixed colors should I get an additional inspiration while painting).
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about today's study painted after Frank Peyraud's 'Twilight'; you can see there is a real emotional quality to the painting that is sparked predominately by his intense use of orange and rust tones contrasted with blues and aqua's. This is the quality that drew me to the work initially and I definitely feel a kinship with Frank as an artist. Here are a few links featuring some sites relating to Frank Peyraud here and here.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
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| Painted after - Twilight by Frank Peyraud , Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x5, Oil on wood panel |
Our video features the progression of this study from its early underpainting stages, on up through the final finishing brushwork. Also featured is my usual rambling narration, so please check it out.
As I discussed in the video, this is the start of a side project on this blog called '25 days of Tonalism.' Unlike the 100 days of Tonalism project that I completed last year, I will be doing a blog post and corresponding video for each day of the '25 days of Tonalism' once a week.
I will also continue featuring my own Tonalist work on this blog, also on a weekly basis. I can't say if these days will necessarily fall together like they are going to this weekend, but I will do my best to do the two posts each week until we have done all '25 days of Tonalism.'
Similar to the regular blog posts that I do now, in each weekly post of the '25 days of Tonalism project, I will be writing about topics related to painting that may or may not actually address the specific subject or artist of the featured day of Tonalism for that week.
I will be including some links with each post and the video portion of the blog will generally feature me reading some information about that artist or the specific painting in it. So be sure to check out those videos.
Today I like to talk about injecting emotion into a landscape painting. Unlike working with the human figure where emotion can be portrayed by the pose or facial expression of the portrait subject, landscape art relies on more subtle and sometimes less distinct ways of importing emotional quality and content.
I often tell people that visit my studio and look at my work remarking on the emotional quality, that emotional quality is what I am endeavoring to paint with every painting that I do. While thinking about ways to write about this topic it occurred to me that I probably won't be doing a very good job of it, but I will try and communicate some of the ways that I inject emotion into my work.
.
The first way I get emotion across is with the relative values of the painting. Whether it is light or dark overall will set the general tone of the piece. Much of the actual tone and quality of the work is imparted by the values more than the colors used. I always set out to create a harmonious and engaging blend of different values and try to put a good emphasis on strong contrasts opposed with areas of subtle value modulation.
This is where I start, but the emotional finish is always done with color. Color is the most obvious facilitator of emotion when perceiving a painting and it is something that people tend to notice the most. I am usually going for the type of emotional response that we have when experiencing a sunrise or sunset in nature.
There is always a special feeling that is stimulated by the quality of light and the interesting colors that are arranging themselves in the sky. These colors shift and move so quickly that it is often difficult for the outdoor painter to get these sorts of effects (this would be a good topic for another post).
What I try to do with my color is set up a general theme and then to push the colors as far as I can go without making things to maudlin. For the most part, my color decisions are made intuitively after setting up the initial tone and pallet in my reference image.
I follow this up with a set of premixed to colors that I mix right before going in with my first color pass. This also helps to cement the emotional resonance of the painting (though I will and have deviated from those premixed colors should I get an additional inspiration while painting).
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about today's study painted after Frank Peyraud's 'Twilight'; you can see there is a real emotional quality to the painting that is sparked predominately by his intense use of orange and rust tones contrasted with blues and aqua's. This is the quality that drew me to the work initially and I definitely feel a kinship with Frank as an artist. Here are a few links featuring some sites relating to Frank Peyraud here and here.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Twilight by Frank Peyraud |
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| Painted after - Twilight by Frank Peyraud (Detail 1) |
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| Painted after - Twilight by Frank Peyraud (Detail 2) |