#10 George Inness 'Moonrise' - 25 Days of Tonalism
Hello and welcome to Tonalist painting with M Francis McCarthy.
Today's study is painted after 'Moonrise' by George Inness.
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.
Today I like to talk about how the concepts of constraints apply to painting in general, and landscape painting specifically. People often think of constraints as a bad thing but when it comes to art, having constraints are absolutely vital to the creation of any work of art that is successful.
One of the first ways a painter constrains themselves is by the support that they choose to paint on. Each of the different supports whether it be canvas, paper or board has its good points as well as its drawbacks. Some artists choose to paint on canvas attached to a board but even then they are constrained by the texture of the canvas. A painting done on canvas will have a different feeling than a painting done on board or paper. I have written about different supports in the past and will do so again in the future.
Another obvious constraint involved with painting is the media that the artist chooses to execute their work. There are a plethora of different media available to the artist today from watercolor to pastel to acrylic or oil paint, not to mention other alternative medias like encaustic resin. The media you choose to create your painting with will be one of the major constraints you are placing upon yourself as an artist. I have chosen oil paint to do all of my work and to be honest, I don't think there's another type of media more flexible or permanent.
I've known artists that like to jump from one media to the next and from one type of support to the another. I guess it depends on your personality, but to me this seems like a good way to avoid mastery of any one media. For this reason, I choose to constrain my painting to oil paint only. Oil paint can work very thin or thick and retains its original coloration even after drying. I have not run up against too many things that I could not accomplish with oil paint that I would be able to do with some other media better.
Another way that I constrain myself as an artist, is by focusing on landscape painting. There have been many artists in history that did not specialize in only one type of painting. Most of the great Masters of landscape painting did not often paint other subject matter very often. Constraining myself in this way enables me to focus on improving the way I approach the landscape and I'm constantly building on a series of previous successes and failures. Were I to fracture my attention by doing a landscape one day and a figurative painting or still life the next, I might accomplish some good paintings, but for the way I work, I would not really be succeeding majorly at any of them.
In a world full of options, setting constraints enables an artist to focus on directing their inspiration into realization instead of wasting a lot of time of fiddling about with the tools used in the process. Tools, should be just that, tools that enable the artist to create something that is greater than the parts that went into it the painting, this includes the reference used, the inspiration as well as the tools used to execute the painting.
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about my study after 'Moonrise' by George Inness; though very small, this study got an appreciable amount of attention when it was residing in the drying area of my studio. It is a striking motif and while not one of the greatest paintings that George Inness created, it is still pretty awesome.
I got quite a lot out of doing this study and I'm hoping to integrate some of those lessons into my own paintings.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
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| Painted after - 'Moonrise' by George Inness, 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.
Today I like to talk about how the concepts of constraints apply to painting in general, and landscape painting specifically. People often think of constraints as a bad thing but when it comes to art, having constraints are absolutely vital to the creation of any work of art that is successful.
One of the first ways a painter constrains themselves is by the support that they choose to paint on. Each of the different supports whether it be canvas, paper or board has its good points as well as its drawbacks. Some artists choose to paint on canvas attached to a board but even then they are constrained by the texture of the canvas. A painting done on canvas will have a different feeling than a painting done on board or paper. I have written about different supports in the past and will do so again in the future.
Another obvious constraint involved with painting is the media that the artist chooses to execute their work. There are a plethora of different media available to the artist today from watercolor to pastel to acrylic or oil paint, not to mention other alternative medias like encaustic resin. The media you choose to create your painting with will be one of the major constraints you are placing upon yourself as an artist. I have chosen oil paint to do all of my work and to be honest, I don't think there's another type of media more flexible or permanent.
I've known artists that like to jump from one media to the next and from one type of support to the another. I guess it depends on your personality, but to me this seems like a good way to avoid mastery of any one media. For this reason, I choose to constrain my painting to oil paint only. Oil paint can work very thin or thick and retains its original coloration even after drying. I have not run up against too many things that I could not accomplish with oil paint that I would be able to do with some other media better.
Another way that I constrain myself as an artist, is by focusing on landscape painting. There have been many artists in history that did not specialize in only one type of painting. Most of the great Masters of landscape painting did not often paint other subject matter very often. Constraining myself in this way enables me to focus on improving the way I approach the landscape and I'm constantly building on a series of previous successes and failures. Were I to fracture my attention by doing a landscape one day and a figurative painting or still life the next, I might accomplish some good paintings, but for the way I work, I would not really be succeeding majorly at any of them.
In a world full of options, setting constraints enables an artist to focus on directing their inspiration into realization instead of wasting a lot of time of fiddling about with the tools used in the process. Tools, should be just that, tools that enable the artist to create something that is greater than the parts that went into it the painting, this includes the reference used, the inspiration as well as the tools used to execute the painting.
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about my study after 'Moonrise' by George Inness; though very small, this study got an appreciable amount of attention when it was residing in the drying area of my studio. It is a striking motif and while not one of the greatest paintings that George Inness created, it is still pretty awesome.
I got quite a lot out of doing this study and I'm hoping to integrate some of those lessons into my own paintings.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting 'Moonrise' by George Inness |
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| Painted after - 'Moonrise' by George Inness (Detail 1) |
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| Painted after - 'Moonrise' by George Inness (Detail 2) |