Rocky Meadow 5x5
Hello and welcome to Tonalist painting with M Francis McCarthy.
Today's painting is 'Rocky Meadow' 5x5.
Our video features the progression of this painting 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 would like to talk about getting drawings onto your painting surface. When I first started out painting I wasn't doing a drawing layer at all. I just went in and worked alla prima. I think most contemporary landscape painter's work this way, it's known as working direct.
About a year or two into my time as a landscape painter I started working indirect. By this, I mean I would do a drawing with paint and a brush that I let dry before painting my color layers. For quite a while I would just do my drawings freehand. Sometimes I played with turning my reference image upside down and doing my drawing upside down as well and then turning that back the right way to do the actual painting. You'd be surprised how much more accurate your drawing can be when you take this sort of approach.
I abandoned that approach after time as it felt too stiff. After that, I was doing pretty well just doing my drawings freehand and then painting the color layers. Sometime around 2011 as I was endeavoring to work larger, I encountered some difficulties with a few scenes I was trying to portray. The way that I solved the drawing problems then, was to use the good old reliable Griding system. For those of you that are not aware, this entails drawing a grid over your reference image and another grid over your painting surface and using the grid to help you find the correct location of the shapes that you are attempting to render.
When I first started working at my studio at the Quarry Arts Center, I invested in a projector. My thinking was that this would be more effective and easier than griding. I proceeded to project a bunch of my reference images onto a pile of wood panels using charcoal and then went ahead and did my drawing with Burnt Sienna and black afterwards.
I worked like this for about a year before I realized that this method was having an adverse effect on my painting. I think this is because most photographs are lacking in all of the necessary compositional elements that are required to make a good painting. It is incumbent upon the painter to modify, correct and adjust the scene so that they can produce a good painting.
Using a projector is basically exacerbating the problems that are inherent in using photography as reference for painting in the first place. I've talked a lot about those problems on this blog so I won't be going into that any further here, but if you search with the term photography I'm sure you'll get an earful of information.
Since I abandoned using the projector, I have gone back to just drawing my images directly on the panel with a brush and some paint. While this may sometimes produce distortions or inaccuracies these terms are a bit of a misnomer because what's important and special about a painting is that it is a unique expression of the painter's individual viewpoint. The point is not to produce something that exactly replicates the photographic qualities of the scene but more so to create an expressive interpretation of that scene.
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Rocky Meadow' 5x5; This small study lives in my studio at the moment and it looks good. We'll be getting into the larger version next week.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
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| ''Rocky Meadow' by M Francis McCarthy, 5x5 Oil Painting on Wood Panel |
Our video features the progression of this painting 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 would like to talk about getting drawings onto your painting surface. When I first started out painting I wasn't doing a drawing layer at all. I just went in and worked alla prima. I think most contemporary landscape painter's work this way, it's known as working direct.
About a year or two into my time as a landscape painter I started working indirect. By this, I mean I would do a drawing with paint and a brush that I let dry before painting my color layers. For quite a while I would just do my drawings freehand. Sometimes I played with turning my reference image upside down and doing my drawing upside down as well and then turning that back the right way to do the actual painting. You'd be surprised how much more accurate your drawing can be when you take this sort of approach.
I abandoned that approach after time as it felt too stiff. After that, I was doing pretty well just doing my drawings freehand and then painting the color layers. Sometime around 2011 as I was endeavoring to work larger, I encountered some difficulties with a few scenes I was trying to portray. The way that I solved the drawing problems then, was to use the good old reliable Griding system. For those of you that are not aware, this entails drawing a grid over your reference image and another grid over your painting surface and using the grid to help you find the correct location of the shapes that you are attempting to render.
When I first started working at my studio at the Quarry Arts Center, I invested in a projector. My thinking was that this would be more effective and easier than griding. I proceeded to project a bunch of my reference images onto a pile of wood panels using charcoal and then went ahead and did my drawing with Burnt Sienna and black afterwards.
I worked like this for about a year before I realized that this method was having an adverse effect on my painting. I think this is because most photographs are lacking in all of the necessary compositional elements that are required to make a good painting. It is incumbent upon the painter to modify, correct and adjust the scene so that they can produce a good painting.
Using a projector is basically exacerbating the problems that are inherent in using photography as reference for painting in the first place. I've talked a lot about those problems on this blog so I won't be going into that any further here, but if you search with the term photography I'm sure you'll get an earful of information.
Since I abandoned using the projector, I have gone back to just drawing my images directly on the panel with a brush and some paint. While this may sometimes produce distortions or inaccuracies these terms are a bit of a misnomer because what's important and special about a painting is that it is a unique expression of the painter's individual viewpoint. The point is not to produce something that exactly replicates the photographic qualities of the scene but more so to create an expressive interpretation of that scene.
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Rocky Meadow' 5x5; This small study lives in my studio at the moment and it looks good. We'll be getting into the larger version next week.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
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| Rocky Meadow 5x5 (Detail) |
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| Rocky Meadow 5x5 (Detail 2) |