Day Eighty One: On the Heights by Robert Crannell Minor
Hello and welcome to Day 81 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is On the Heights by Robert Crannell Minor.
Robert Crannell Minor was a Tonalist artist born in 1839 and died in 1904. I will be reading a bit about Robert on today's video narration so please check that out.
Continuing on with our recent discussion regarding my history as a landscape painter; today we're going to talk more about my earliest days as a landscape painter. As I stated yesterday, I initially started working on 6x8 canvas panels but I found the canvas to be a bit too textural at such a small size. So I started working on wood panels. I would just paint the panels with gray house paint and then do my painting.
I was using photography as reference for the paintings I was doing and I was going out and photographing an area that was behind my workplace at that time. This is the Campbell perk ponds. Campbell is a city located very close to San Jose in California.
I'm guessing I did about 45 paintings of that area. I knew, to become a good landscape painter that the key was to do a lot of paintings and so I was endeavoring to do a painting every few days. The small size made accomplishing this quite a bit easier. I'm quite proud of a lot of the paintings that I did then and I chalk a lot of my initial success up to my many years as a commercial illustrator and also to beginners luck.
I have noticed that the universe seems to give beginners a certain amount of leeway. This is mostly the case when they are starting on a path that is appropriate for their individual destiny as an artist. I have seen beginners luck at work many a time.
I started a blog to log my progress and to share what I was doing with the world at large. Here's a link to that blog here.
My initial style would've been considered to be impressionistic, but It's hard to say since the reality is I was just doing my best to do a painting from the reference I had at hand. In most cases my early paintings was quite faithful to the photograph I was working from. I was not overly concerned with style anyway, I was mostly concerned with just getting a handle on creating paintings. I've always done my best to make any artwork that I've created as beautiful as possible. The early paintings that I did were no exception, many of them came out nicely.
While I was in the process of my initial foray into oil painting I was also buying a lot of books and some DVDs as well. I mentioned in a previous blog posts the two guys that I found most helpful. I was also researching and learning a lot about the properties of oil paint including what different pigments were made from as well as about different binding mediums. The very first paintings that I did, I just used linseed oil as a medium but it didn't take me long to discover alkyd mediums.
Tomorrow we will continue on with this discussion regarding my progression and history as a landscape painter so stay tuned for that.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about On the Heights by Robert Crannell Minor; I've not heard much about Robert, but this painting of his caught my eye immediately. In many ways it struck me as semi-contemporary in that I'd seen paintings similar to this in my youth in the 60s.
I enjoyed painting the Autumn colors and I'm quite pleased with the gestural way that I handled the fence. This study has a nice resonant quality especially when viewed in real life.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - On the Heights by Robert Crannell Minor, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
Today's study is On the Heights by Robert Crannell Minor.
Robert Crannell Minor was a Tonalist artist born in 1839 and died in 1904. I will be reading a bit about Robert on today's video narration so please check that out.
Continuing on with our recent discussion regarding my history as a landscape painter; today we're going to talk more about my earliest days as a landscape painter. As I stated yesterday, I initially started working on 6x8 canvas panels but I found the canvas to be a bit too textural at such a small size. So I started working on wood panels. I would just paint the panels with gray house paint and then do my painting.
I was using photography as reference for the paintings I was doing and I was going out and photographing an area that was behind my workplace at that time. This is the Campbell perk ponds. Campbell is a city located very close to San Jose in California.
I'm guessing I did about 45 paintings of that area. I knew, to become a good landscape painter that the key was to do a lot of paintings and so I was endeavoring to do a painting every few days. The small size made accomplishing this quite a bit easier. I'm quite proud of a lot of the paintings that I did then and I chalk a lot of my initial success up to my many years as a commercial illustrator and also to beginners luck.
I have noticed that the universe seems to give beginners a certain amount of leeway. This is mostly the case when they are starting on a path that is appropriate for their individual destiny as an artist. I have seen beginners luck at work many a time.
I started a blog to log my progress and to share what I was doing with the world at large. Here's a link to that blog here.
My initial style would've been considered to be impressionistic, but It's hard to say since the reality is I was just doing my best to do a painting from the reference I had at hand. In most cases my early paintings was quite faithful to the photograph I was working from. I was not overly concerned with style anyway, I was mostly concerned with just getting a handle on creating paintings. I've always done my best to make any artwork that I've created as beautiful as possible. The early paintings that I did were no exception, many of them came out nicely.
While I was in the process of my initial foray into oil painting I was also buying a lot of books and some DVDs as well. I mentioned in a previous blog posts the two guys that I found most helpful. I was also researching and learning a lot about the properties of oil paint including what different pigments were made from as well as about different binding mediums. The very first paintings that I did, I just used linseed oil as a medium but it didn't take me long to discover alkyd mediums.
Tomorrow we will continue on with this discussion regarding my progression and history as a landscape painter so stay tuned for that.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about On the Heights by Robert Crannell Minor; I've not heard much about Robert, but this painting of his caught my eye immediately. In many ways it struck me as semi-contemporary in that I'd seen paintings similar to this in my youth in the 60s.
I enjoyed painting the Autumn colors and I'm quite pleased with the gestural way that I handled the fence. This study has a nice resonant quality especially when viewed in real life.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, On the Heights by Robert Crannell Minor |