Day Sixty Four: Hidden Moon by Lowell Birge Harrison
Hello and welcome to day 64 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is 'Hidden Moon' by Lowell Birge Harrison.
We've done a few studies after Harrison. As I stated in this previous blog posts he is well known for being an excellent landscape artist. Harrison is also a teacher. He wrote a book about landscape painting that is very good and has quite a lot of information about Tonalism and how to make Tonalist paintings. We have a music track today instead of narration, the song is 24th from my album The Light in Darkness.
Today, I would like to talk little bit about art philosophy. I think a lot about art, which might be a good thing since I spend most of my working life doing it. A lady came into my studio the other day who was also an artist. Her interest lay mainly in creating art that had a strong political message. This got me to thinking about how art/painting can basically serve one of two masters. Your work can serve beauty or your art can serve a message of some kind.
I don't claim for this to be a universally true law, but I do believe it is true for the most part. If your desire is for your art to serve beauty, then you have to open yourself up to many different aspects of painting. For example, it would be very beneficial to have some knowledge of the history of painting and of the beautiful works that have come before. Without this sort of knowledge you would be forced to reinvent the wheel and that could take a while. If creating beauty is the goal of your art, it's also important to know the essential rules of composition, color theory and, also to have a good working knowledge of your materials and what they can do.
Conversely, if your art is serving some sort of message you need not concern yourself with any of the above. As a matter of fact, it may serve your message far more to ignore the ideals of art theory and instead shock your audience with cleverness. For example you could put your own excrement in a can and label it "shit". Er, I think that's been done, and there is a message there, I'm just not sure what it is.
What I'm not saying is, that art that conveys a message cannot be beautiful. That is very possible. In the case of modern painting however, it's best to serve beauty or a message but not both.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Hidden Moon' by Lowell Birge Harrison ; This painting is almost an abstract. It's very mysterious and I like how he's made a painting thats almost completely sky. In fact, it's very hard to tell where the sky ends and the land begins.
I thought it would be fun to take a crack at doing a study. I did my study in two painting passes and I did quite a lot of glazing as well.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Hidden Moon by Lowell Birge Harrison , Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
Today's study is 'Hidden Moon' by Lowell Birge Harrison.
We've done a few studies after Harrison. As I stated in this previous blog posts he is well known for being an excellent landscape artist. Harrison is also a teacher. He wrote a book about landscape painting that is very good and has quite a lot of information about Tonalism and how to make Tonalist paintings. We have a music track today instead of narration, the song is 24th from my album The Light in Darkness.
Today, I would like to talk little bit about art philosophy. I think a lot about art, which might be a good thing since I spend most of my working life doing it. A lady came into my studio the other day who was also an artist. Her interest lay mainly in creating art that had a strong political message. This got me to thinking about how art/painting can basically serve one of two masters. Your work can serve beauty or your art can serve a message of some kind.
I don't claim for this to be a universally true law, but I do believe it is true for the most part. If your desire is for your art to serve beauty, then you have to open yourself up to many different aspects of painting. For example, it would be very beneficial to have some knowledge of the history of painting and of the beautiful works that have come before. Without this sort of knowledge you would be forced to reinvent the wheel and that could take a while. If creating beauty is the goal of your art, it's also important to know the essential rules of composition, color theory and, also to have a good working knowledge of your materials and what they can do.
Conversely, if your art is serving some sort of message you need not concern yourself with any of the above. As a matter of fact, it may serve your message far more to ignore the ideals of art theory and instead shock your audience with cleverness. For example you could put your own excrement in a can and label it "shit". Er, I think that's been done, and there is a message there, I'm just not sure what it is.
 |
| Piero Manzoni, shit |
What I'm not saying is, that art that conveys a message cannot be beautiful. That is very possible. In the case of modern painting however, it's best to serve beauty or a message but not both.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Hidden Moon' by Lowell Birge Harrison ; This painting is almost an abstract. It's very mysterious and I like how he's made a painting thats almost completely sky. In fact, it's very hard to tell where the sky ends and the land begins.
I thought it would be fun to take a crack at doing a study. I did my study in two painting passes and I did quite a lot of glazing as well.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Hidden Moon by Lowell Birge Harrison |
Day Fifty Eight: Moonlight over a Pond by Lowell Birge Harrison
Hello and welcome to day 58 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is of 'Moonlight over a Pond' by Lowell Birge Harrison.
Lowell Birge Harrison was a popular painter in his day and was also well known as a teacher. He wrote a book that is still in print about landscape painting. I personally found this book highly informative and helpful in regards to understanding the Tonal painting approach. I found some great information about Lowell Birge Harrison in my copy of A History of American Tonalism by David Cleveland and I've read it on today's videos narration so please check that out.
Continuing on with our current assay regarding my Tonalist painting process; today, we're going to discuss the progression of my color palette since I began painting, especially what I consider to be the essential colors.
As I stated in my previous blog post, I started out with a very limited color palette, consisting of cadmium yellow, alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue and titanium white. I started out with this limited color palette because it seemed to me to be the best way to learn what I could do with oil paints. By trying to mix my colors from as few pigments as possible.
This sort of logic comes easily to me because of my experience working for screen printing as an illustrator. Quite often in screenprinting you are severely limited as to how many colors can be used to print a design. This tends to force you to get the maximum use out of every color you have available to you.
After this minimal start, one of the first colors that I added to my pallet was yellow ocher. Yellow ocher is a very flexible and an appropriate color for painting landscapes. I found it useful if not absolutely vital. The next color I added would be burnt sienna, another earth color. After that I added viridian green. Viridian green is a very deep, somewhat dark green, I have since replaced viridian with Phthalo green. Phthalo green is more transparent, has a much stronger tinting strength, and also is darker than viridian. While I enjoyed using viridian for quite a while, I feel that it is a bit chalky so I do not miss it.
Moving on, I replaced ultramarine on my pallet with cobalt blue. To be honest I do not care for the ultramarine very much. Is quite popular because it has good tinting strength and is also a fairly cheap pigment. It has a bit of a purplish cast and a underlying murkiness that I find less than pleasant. Many painters love ultramarine but I was happy to see it go.
Most of the instruction materials that I engaged with while learning to paint, discouraged the use of black. The logic behind this is that new students of painting will try to use black to darken their colors or for painting their shadows instead of mixing new colors. This tends to give a cold and unpleasant effect to landscape paintings. A superior dark color can be easily obtained by mixing phthalo green with alizarin crimson. This give a chromatic black and is the method that I have used for a long time now for my dark areas.
I use black mostly as a color killer, to dampen colors that have an excess of chroma and also to make expedient greys. For this job its hard to beat and in my opinion, it is an absolutely essential color for Tonalist painting.
My core pallet consists of the following colors: white, cadmium yellow, yellow ocher, burnt sienna, alizarin crimson, phthalo green, cobalt blue, and black. I could accomplish pretty much every painting that I do with this pallet if I had to, though I would certainly miss many of my secondary pigments very much.
I will discuss with you tomorrow, the colors I've added to this basic group of pigments and the reasons that I have included them on my current painting pallet.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about Moonlight over a Pond' by Lowell Birge Harrison; this is one of the paintings in this series of 100 days of Tonalism that I had to paint in a slightly different manner than the others.
First of all, I had to re tint my under drawing to a tealish tone, though a bit of the burnt sienna undertone was still peeking through. Then I built up my forms with several passes of transparent pigment. Only at the final stage of the painting did I use any opaque mixtures of paint.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Moonlight over a Pond by Lowell Birge Harrison, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
Today's study is of 'Moonlight over a Pond' by Lowell Birge Harrison.
Lowell Birge Harrison was a popular painter in his day and was also well known as a teacher. He wrote a book that is still in print about landscape painting. I personally found this book highly informative and helpful in regards to understanding the Tonal painting approach. I found some great information about Lowell Birge Harrison in my copy of A History of American Tonalism by David Cleveland and I've read it on today's videos narration so please check that out.
Continuing on with our current assay regarding my Tonalist painting process; today, we're going to discuss the progression of my color palette since I began painting, especially what I consider to be the essential colors.
As I stated in my previous blog post, I started out with a very limited color palette, consisting of cadmium yellow, alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue and titanium white. I started out with this limited color palette because it seemed to me to be the best way to learn what I could do with oil paints. By trying to mix my colors from as few pigments as possible.
This sort of logic comes easily to me because of my experience working for screen printing as an illustrator. Quite often in screenprinting you are severely limited as to how many colors can be used to print a design. This tends to force you to get the maximum use out of every color you have available to you.
After this minimal start, one of the first colors that I added to my pallet was yellow ocher. Yellow ocher is a very flexible and an appropriate color for painting landscapes. I found it useful if not absolutely vital. The next color I added would be burnt sienna, another earth color. After that I added viridian green. Viridian green is a very deep, somewhat dark green, I have since replaced viridian with Phthalo green. Phthalo green is more transparent, has a much stronger tinting strength, and also is darker than viridian. While I enjoyed using viridian for quite a while, I feel that it is a bit chalky so I do not miss it.
Moving on, I replaced ultramarine on my pallet with cobalt blue. To be honest I do not care for the ultramarine very much. Is quite popular because it has good tinting strength and is also a fairly cheap pigment. It has a bit of a purplish cast and a underlying murkiness that I find less than pleasant. Many painters love ultramarine but I was happy to see it go.
Most of the instruction materials that I engaged with while learning to paint, discouraged the use of black. The logic behind this is that new students of painting will try to use black to darken their colors or for painting their shadows instead of mixing new colors. This tends to give a cold and unpleasant effect to landscape paintings. A superior dark color can be easily obtained by mixing phthalo green with alizarin crimson. This give a chromatic black and is the method that I have used for a long time now for my dark areas.
I use black mostly as a color killer, to dampen colors that have an excess of chroma and also to make expedient greys. For this job its hard to beat and in my opinion, it is an absolutely essential color for Tonalist painting.
My core pallet consists of the following colors: white, cadmium yellow, yellow ocher, burnt sienna, alizarin crimson, phthalo green, cobalt blue, and black. I could accomplish pretty much every painting that I do with this pallet if I had to, though I would certainly miss many of my secondary pigments very much.
I will discuss with you tomorrow, the colors I've added to this basic group of pigments and the reasons that I have included them on my current painting pallet.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about Moonlight over a Pond' by Lowell Birge Harrison; this is one of the paintings in this series of 100 days of Tonalism that I had to paint in a slightly different manner than the others.
First of all, I had to re tint my under drawing to a tealish tone, though a bit of the burnt sienna undertone was still peeking through. Then I built up my forms with several passes of transparent pigment. Only at the final stage of the painting did I use any opaque mixtures of paint.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Moonlight over a Pond by Lowell Birge Harrison |