Day Fifty: Early Autumn by Alexander Hellwig Wyant
Hello and welcome to day 50 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today study is of 'Early Autumn' by Alexander Hellwig Wyant.
I will be reading some biographical information about Hellwig in today's video narration so please check that out.
Continuing on with our discussion about my painting process, today I would like to discuss how I manipulate photography in Photoshop prior to using it as painting reference. In yesterday's post I spoke a bit about my history with photographic manipulation as it relates to my painting and, also the reasons why I began to more extensively manipulate photography for use in my work.
The first and easiest to miss manipulation for any photograph is how it is cropped. How a photograph is cropped will largely determine where the eye is directed in and through the photograph. The first thing I like to do after selecting an assortment of images for a series is to determine which will be rectangular, which will be vertical and which will be square formats.
The next area that I concentrate on is generally the insertion of a dramatic and appropriate sky for the scene that I am setting up. I strongly favor skies with good contrast and color. It is quite difficult to find a scene that has a good composition and also an appropriate sky. Over the years I have mastered many techniques for knocking out the existing sky from my photograph so that I may replace it with something better.
For my replacement skies I often scout around on the Internet or utilize my own extensive library of skies that I've photographed in the past. It's important to make sure that lighting in the skies corresponds to the lighting in the scene although there is often more latitude than you might think.
After compositing in a new sky, I will generally use the colors in the sky to adjust and rekey colors within the scene itself. After replacing the sky I will begin thinking about the approach I want to take to the color for that scene. I have many different strategies that I utilize, one of my favorites for example, would be a green/violet color scheme. Another approach I like to use occasionally is a golden or sepia toned color scheme and there have been times in the past where I have made all of the colors in the scene various shades of blue or cool green.
After designing my colors for a given scene I begin working on adjusting contrast both globally and locally. For the most part I prefer there to be more intense contrasts in the foreground that soften as the scene recedes into the picture plane. Once I have adjusted the overall contrast for the image, I will at times, go in and begin painting in stronger highlight areas or deeper shadow areas. I use this technique quite a lot depending on the particular scene. It's very important to establish where your strongest highlights and greatest contrasts are in a subject before painting it.
Often my next step will be to take my composited scene where it overlaps the sky and to soften and lighten these areas so as to avoid harsh silhouettes especially where the darker trees overlap the brighter sky. This can sometimes make the photograph itself appear somewhat synthetic, but as I stated in my previous post the purpose of my manipulated photography is not stand on its own but to serve as fodder for my landscape painting.
One of the last steps that I will undertake with my photo manipulation is to strategically darken certain areas of the scene to help direct the eye further to the points of interest that I've established. This means darkening the lower corners, or sometimes darkening the upper edges of the photograph.
All of my manipulation of the photograph are done with the express intention of getting the photo to look and feel as much like my initial inspiration and mental image when first coming upon the place in nature.
As we will be discussing in future posts regarding my painting process, this does not mean that I am always successful in this regard and many times it is not until I actually produce a painting using the manipulated photographic reference, that I can tell if it's going to make a good painting or not. This is one of the reasons why I do a study 5 x 7 or 5 x 5 of the motif prior to doing a larger painting.
Tomorrow we will be discussing how I prepare my boards and also a bit of history in regards to various painting substrates that I have experimented with and eventually settled on for doing my landscape paintings.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Early Autumn' by Alexander Hellwig Wyant; this is a painting I've been looking at for quite a while and I've always been very intrigued by Alexander's use of very strong dark areas offset against an intensely expressive sky.
I felt that he succeeded nicely in this painting and it is one of the ones that I was looking forward to painting from the start of this series. The aspect of this study that I enjoyed painting the most, was the intensely structured and textured sky.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Early Autumn by Alexander Hellwig Wyant, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
Today study is of 'Early Autumn' by Alexander Hellwig Wyant.
I will be reading some biographical information about Hellwig in today's video narration so please check that out.
Continuing on with our discussion about my painting process, today I would like to discuss how I manipulate photography in Photoshop prior to using it as painting reference. In yesterday's post I spoke a bit about my history with photographic manipulation as it relates to my painting and, also the reasons why I began to more extensively manipulate photography for use in my work.
The first and easiest to miss manipulation for any photograph is how it is cropped. How a photograph is cropped will largely determine where the eye is directed in and through the photograph. The first thing I like to do after selecting an assortment of images for a series is to determine which will be rectangular, which will be vertical and which will be square formats.
The next area that I concentrate on is generally the insertion of a dramatic and appropriate sky for the scene that I am setting up. I strongly favor skies with good contrast and color. It is quite difficult to find a scene that has a good composition and also an appropriate sky. Over the years I have mastered many techniques for knocking out the existing sky from my photograph so that I may replace it with something better.
For my replacement skies I often scout around on the Internet or utilize my own extensive library of skies that I've photographed in the past. It's important to make sure that lighting in the skies corresponds to the lighting in the scene although there is often more latitude than you might think.
After compositing in a new sky, I will generally use the colors in the sky to adjust and rekey colors within the scene itself. After replacing the sky I will begin thinking about the approach I want to take to the color for that scene. I have many different strategies that I utilize, one of my favorites for example, would be a green/violet color scheme. Another approach I like to use occasionally is a golden or sepia toned color scheme and there have been times in the past where I have made all of the colors in the scene various shades of blue or cool green.
After designing my colors for a given scene I begin working on adjusting contrast both globally and locally. For the most part I prefer there to be more intense contrasts in the foreground that soften as the scene recedes into the picture plane. Once I have adjusted the overall contrast for the image, I will at times, go in and begin painting in stronger highlight areas or deeper shadow areas. I use this technique quite a lot depending on the particular scene. It's very important to establish where your strongest highlights and greatest contrasts are in a subject before painting it.
Often my next step will be to take my composited scene where it overlaps the sky and to soften and lighten these areas so as to avoid harsh silhouettes especially where the darker trees overlap the brighter sky. This can sometimes make the photograph itself appear somewhat synthetic, but as I stated in my previous post the purpose of my manipulated photography is not stand on its own but to serve as fodder for my landscape painting.
One of the last steps that I will undertake with my photo manipulation is to strategically darken certain areas of the scene to help direct the eye further to the points of interest that I've established. This means darkening the lower corners, or sometimes darkening the upper edges of the photograph.
All of my manipulation of the photograph are done with the express intention of getting the photo to look and feel as much like my initial inspiration and mental image when first coming upon the place in nature.
As we will be discussing in future posts regarding my painting process, this does not mean that I am always successful in this regard and many times it is not until I actually produce a painting using the manipulated photographic reference, that I can tell if it's going to make a good painting or not. This is one of the reasons why I do a study 5 x 7 or 5 x 5 of the motif prior to doing a larger painting.
Tomorrow we will be discussing how I prepare my boards and also a bit of history in regards to various painting substrates that I have experimented with and eventually settled on for doing my landscape paintings.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Early Autumn' by Alexander Hellwig Wyant; this is a painting I've been looking at for quite a while and I've always been very intrigued by Alexander's use of very strong dark areas offset against an intensely expressive sky.
I felt that he succeeded nicely in this painting and it is one of the ones that I was looking forward to painting from the start of this series. The aspect of this study that I enjoyed painting the most, was the intensely structured and textured sky.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Early Autumn by Alexander Hellwig Wyant |
Day Thirty Four: Wayside pool by Alexander Helwig Wyant
Hello and welcome to day 34 of 100 days of tonalism.
Today's study is of 'Wayside Pool' by Alexander Helwig Wyant
Alexander Helwig Wyant was a Tonalist painter born in 1836 and died in 1892. He was a contemporary of George Inness and like George Inness, his style modulated over the years from a very detailed Hudson River School approach to a more diffuse and obfuscated Tonalist approach.
I will be covering some biographical information about Alexander Helwig Wyant in today's video so check that out if you'd like to learn more about him. Also, there is a great site dedicated to his work here.
Over the last several weeks we've been discussing different defining aspects of Tonalism and today, I'd like to discuss painting in a Minor key versus painting in a Major key. As in music, Major keys tend to be more bright, celebratory, and open. Whereas music in Minor keys is more moody, poetic and dark. For the purposes of art you could consider Impressionism Major and Tonalism Minor equivalents.
One of the first things that I did after deciding to work in a more Tonalist style was to darken the pallet of my paintings significantly. Prior to that I was working with a more impressionistic style which tends to be brighter and higher key.
I am sometimes asked by people who come to visit my studio why I tend to favor a more dark approach to landscape subjects. I always answer that it's much like music in that, most songs you hear on the radio are not happy songs, they tend to have a bit of melancholy. Also it is quite difficult to achieve a poetic result in a bright painting just as it is difficult to get a melancholic approach across in a song by a marching band.
Sometime around late 2012 after having visited the Louvre in Paris and studying the work of Master painters there, it also dawned on me that even if a painting is quite dark that you should have spots of intense light to create an interesting contrast. Prior to that I was usually keeping the overall key of my work very low and avoiding strong contrasts.
At that time I also kept the chroma of my colors fairly muted. This is something you'll see in evidence in quite a few Tonalist paintings. However this is not true of all tonal paintings. A good example of a Tonalist painter that used strong chroma would be George Inness himself who is a preeminent Tonalist painter.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Wayside Pool' by Alexander Helwig Wyant, I really like the original painting by Alexander and I quite enjoyed doing a study from it. One of the things I concentrated on was getting that fresh morning quality into the study. This painting is also very similar in composition to the sort of thing I like to do on a regular basis.
To see more of my work, visit my site here.
 |
| Painted after - Wayside pool by Alexander Helwig Wyant, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
Today's study is of 'Wayside Pool' by Alexander Helwig Wyant
Alexander Helwig Wyant was a Tonalist painter born in 1836 and died in 1892. He was a contemporary of George Inness and like George Inness, his style modulated over the years from a very detailed Hudson River School approach to a more diffuse and obfuscated Tonalist approach.
I will be covering some biographical information about Alexander Helwig Wyant in today's video so check that out if you'd like to learn more about him. Also, there is a great site dedicated to his work here.
Over the last several weeks we've been discussing different defining aspects of Tonalism and today, I'd like to discuss painting in a Minor key versus painting in a Major key. As in music, Major keys tend to be more bright, celebratory, and open. Whereas music in Minor keys is more moody, poetic and dark. For the purposes of art you could consider Impressionism Major and Tonalism Minor equivalents.
One of the first things that I did after deciding to work in a more Tonalist style was to darken the pallet of my paintings significantly. Prior to that I was working with a more impressionistic style which tends to be brighter and higher key.
I am sometimes asked by people who come to visit my studio why I tend to favor a more dark approach to landscape subjects. I always answer that it's much like music in that, most songs you hear on the radio are not happy songs, they tend to have a bit of melancholy. Also it is quite difficult to achieve a poetic result in a bright painting just as it is difficult to get a melancholic approach across in a song by a marching band.
Sometime around late 2012 after having visited the Louvre in Paris and studying the work of Master painters there, it also dawned on me that even if a painting is quite dark that you should have spots of intense light to create an interesting contrast. Prior to that I was usually keeping the overall key of my work very low and avoiding strong contrasts.
At that time I also kept the chroma of my colors fairly muted. This is something you'll see in evidence in quite a few Tonalist paintings. However this is not true of all tonal paintings. A good example of a Tonalist painter that used strong chroma would be George Inness himself who is a preeminent Tonalist painter.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Wayside Pool' by Alexander Helwig Wyant, I really like the original painting by Alexander and I quite enjoyed doing a study from it. One of the things I concentrated on was getting that fresh morning quality into the study. This painting is also very similar in composition to the sort of thing I like to do on a regular basis.
To see more of my work, visit my site here.
 |
| Original painting, Wayside pool by Alexander Helwig Wyant |