#2 Camille Corot "The Valley" - 25 Days of Tonalism

Hello and welcome to Tonalist painting by M Francis McCarthy.

Painted after - "The Valley" by Camille Corot, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel

Today's painting is a study painted after Camille Corot called "The Valley. It is the second study in our 25 days of Tonalism and features a blog post and video each week of me making a study after a Tonalist Masters painting.

Our video today 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.

How do you get glowing color in a painting?

I've been asked this question by people that read to my blog here and also on YouTube. I have a lot of different techniques for arriving at glowing color. I got to thinking about this topic during our last day of Tonalism that featured a painting by Frank Peyraud. His painting was absolutely glowing and reminded me of my own work in the way that he had saturated his color and also contrasted it with strong dark areas.

I have a lot of different strategies for trying to achieve glowing color and I utilize most of them in each painting I do.

The first and most essential technique is that I work on a burnt sienna colored painting surface (ground) this sets up an interesting juxtaposition of colors from the very first brushstroke I place. When I paint a patch of blue (or any other complementary color) against the burnt sienna it has a vibrancy and intensity that would be difficult to achieve if I were working directly over white. Also, bits of the burnt sienna will tend to peek out in between areas of brushwork that do not completely overlap. This also creates vibrancy and contributes to an overall glowing quality.

Another way that I get a glowing quality in my work is to set it up in my initial painting reference to the best of my ability. This means ramping up certain colors and areas of contrast in Photoshop with the intention of executing the image in paint. Many times I will overdo it with the photo because I wish to have a lot of extra color input while painting. This is not full proof however, and there are times I have found myself painting desaturated and under toned work from reference that was highly saturated.

This leads us to the idea of saturation. Saturation means that the color is very vivid and intense. To get a quality of intense color you need to remember that not all of the colors in your painting can be highly saturated. You have to have areas with more grayish and dull color to offset the intense colors. In other words, if everything is saturated then nothing is saturated.

Another way that I get a glowing quality in my work is by deepening my shadow areas and forcing strong contrasts against the brighter and more saturated areas of my painting. This would typically be the sky, I'm well known for painting colorful skies. Like the saturation, and above, if everything in the painting was dark than there would be no contrast just as if everything was very bright nothing is going to resonate with light.

The last way that I try to get a glowing quality in my painting, is by injecting areas of intense lights into the sky. This seldom is as intense and bright as pure white from the tube but I will use quite a lot of yellow and white in certain areas to pump up the contrast to create an offset against the more pure and intense colors.

M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz

A bit about my study of 'The Valley' after Camille Corot; Camille often gets a great feeling of light in his paintings, however his colors are usually more subdued than the kind of thing that I do. Very often his paintings have a sort of silvery quality that is very beautiful. I often intend to work more in this sort of mode but forget while using my more colorful approach.

The thing I like best about this study is the composition and there's no question that Camille was an absolute Master of composition and probably one of the best that ever painted a landscape. I find it extremely educational and illuminating every time I do a study after one of his paintings. 

Here are a few links featuring some sites relating to Camille Corot here and here.

To see more of my work, visit my site here

Original painting, Camille Corot "The Valley"

Painted after - "The Valley" by Camille Corot (Detail 1)

Painted after - "The Valley" by Camille Corot (Detail 2)