Day One Hundred: A Stream Through the Meadow by Arthur Parton
Hello and welcome to Day 100 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is 'A Stream Through the Meadow' by Arthur Parton.
Well, we've made it to the 100 and I'm proud to say without any gap or days missed. That wasn't always easy especially when I came down with a very nasty flu, however we made it!
Arthur Parton seems to be a popular 19th century painter, lesser known today. Born in 1842 and died in 1914, I've read some biographical information about him on today's video narration, so please check that out.
Just reading over some of my initial blog posts at the start of this series of 100 days of Tonalism; I set out to do four basic things:
I feel that I more than accomplished those aims and I'm very happy with the studies I've painted and satisfied with the writing on the blog and my video work. I would've liked to have been more authoritative in my knowledge of art history and I would've liked to have spent more time with the video narration and the writing that I've done.
However, I've done this blog and the attendant studies and videos in the same spirit that I produce all of my work, and that is through intellectual intention combined with intuition and perspiration. The creative process is intriguing to study in and of itself, and though I ponder it, I do not spend too much time engaged in that endeavor. I prefer to spend my time creating paintings, and I am happy to say that I do that every day and have through the writing of every post on this blog.
It would be disingenuous to say that this project has not affected the quantity of my own paintings that I could've accomplished. It has had a strong positive impact on my work though, and for that I am grateful. As I've stated on this blog previously, I am predominantly self educated having never attended art school or university.
This is one of the main reasons I decided to interrupt the usual work flow of my painting with a period of study and education. I've also succeeded in creating some beautiful studies, and hopefully the work I've done here will help to educate and inspire other artists,laypersons and art collectors to more fully understand and appreciate this compelling period in art history, as well as my contemporary take on Tonalism.
As I stated on today's video narration, I will be continuing this blog on a weekly basis. It occurred to me today that were I to consistently do this I would have another 56 blog posts in a year from now, with far less strain. I intend to put up some videos of my own Tonalist painting and I will be writing accompanying posts. We will probably get a lot deeper into some of the topics and issues that I've discussed on this blog so far, but with a bit more of a personal slant.
Thanks for staying with me this far and please tune in next week to see what I've hatched..
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about a 'Stream through the Meadow' by Arthur Parton; it occurs to me now that I might have selected perhaps an Inness or a Murphy, to end the series but they've had their day and this is Arthur's chance to shine.
I wasn't able to discover a whole lot of biographical information about Arthur online but what I did find I read in today's video. And I did notice that he was referred to as an Impressionist, however the study that we're doing after his painting today is clearly a Tonalist effort on his part.
This painting of his was selected because it is the type of composition that I enjoy painting in my own work. I like to paint a road, river or path that leads the viewer up into the painting and masses of trees on either side with a large expansive sky.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
Today's study is 'A Stream Through the Meadow' by Arthur Parton.
 |
| Painted after - A Stream Through the Meadow by Arthur Parton, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
Well, we've made it to the 100 and I'm proud to say without any gap or days missed. That wasn't always easy especially when I came down with a very nasty flu, however we made it!
Arthur Parton seems to be a popular 19th century painter, lesser known today. Born in 1842 and died in 1914, I've read some biographical information about him on today's video narration, so please check that out.
Just reading over some of my initial blog posts at the start of this series of 100 days of Tonalism; I set out to do four basic things:
- Increase awareness of this vital and fascinating movement in painting.
- Help to expand the audience for my work.
- Expand the general public's awareness and appreciation of Tonalism.
- Generate income from the sale of these fine arts studies.
I feel that I more than accomplished those aims and I'm very happy with the studies I've painted and satisfied with the writing on the blog and my video work. I would've liked to have been more authoritative in my knowledge of art history and I would've liked to have spent more time with the video narration and the writing that I've done.
However, I've done this blog and the attendant studies and videos in the same spirit that I produce all of my work, and that is through intellectual intention combined with intuition and perspiration. The creative process is intriguing to study in and of itself, and though I ponder it, I do not spend too much time engaged in that endeavor. I prefer to spend my time creating paintings, and I am happy to say that I do that every day and have through the writing of every post on this blog.
It would be disingenuous to say that this project has not affected the quantity of my own paintings that I could've accomplished. It has had a strong positive impact on my work though, and for that I am grateful. As I've stated on this blog previously, I am predominantly self educated having never attended art school or university.
This is one of the main reasons I decided to interrupt the usual work flow of my painting with a period of study and education. I've also succeeded in creating some beautiful studies, and hopefully the work I've done here will help to educate and inspire other artists,laypersons and art collectors to more fully understand and appreciate this compelling period in art history, as well as my contemporary take on Tonalism.
As I stated on today's video narration, I will be continuing this blog on a weekly basis. It occurred to me today that were I to consistently do this I would have another 56 blog posts in a year from now, with far less strain. I intend to put up some videos of my own Tonalist painting and I will be writing accompanying posts. We will probably get a lot deeper into some of the topics and issues that I've discussed on this blog so far, but with a bit more of a personal slant.
Thanks for staying with me this far and please tune in next week to see what I've hatched..
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about a 'Stream through the Meadow' by Arthur Parton; it occurs to me now that I might have selected perhaps an Inness or a Murphy, to end the series but they've had their day and this is Arthur's chance to shine.
I wasn't able to discover a whole lot of biographical information about Arthur online but what I did find I read in today's video. And I did notice that he was referred to as an Impressionist, however the study that we're doing after his painting today is clearly a Tonalist effort on his part.
This painting of his was selected because it is the type of composition that I enjoy painting in my own work. I like to paint a road, river or path that leads the viewer up into the painting and masses of trees on either side with a large expansive sky.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, A Stream Through the Meadow by Arthur Parton |
Day Ninety Nine: October by George Inness
Hello and welcome to Day 99 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is 'October' by George Inness.
One more day to go and this is our last Inness. I knew I would enjoy making studies after Inness' paintings and I'm so glad that I've had the experience, though it was a lot of hard work. I will be reading from the book George Inness by Nicolai Cikovsky in today's video narration, so please check that out.
Well, we spent the last couple days talking about Modern art which might seem a little disingenuous as the name of the blog is Tonalist Paintings by M Francis McCarthy, and the series we are in is called 100 days of Tonalism.
The reasons I brought up Modern art here are because it has nearly the full attention and financial backing of the current art establishment. Representational art has been making some major inroads though and after 100 years of disparaging representational art, many artists are tired of the freak show and are looking for meaning beyond clever artspeak.
Today, since we have just one more post to go, I think I'll just talk about what attracted me to Tonalism and why I love it. I've always enjoyed art and when I was a young man I was captivated by the art of men like Frank Frazetta and all of the comic greats from my era. I had awareness of fine art as well and a deep respect for people like Michelangelo and Albrecht Durer. As I stated in a previous blog post it wasn't until sometime in the 80s that I began to visualize wanting to be a landscape painter. I've outlined most of that process of discovery fairly well elsewhere in this series of blog posts, so have a look for that if you are interested.
The major thing that has attracted me to Tonalist painting is the richness and strong emotive qualities of it. There are many ways to paint a landscape but after my initial exposure to Tonalism I felt I'd discovered the pinnacle of what had been accomplished by the great artists of the late 1800s and early 20th century. Sadly, as some of you know, much of this work was forgotten as were the artists that created it. This is changing and I'd like to think that my series here, 100 days of Tonalism is helping in that regard.
I was talking to a friend of mine the other day about a book called the Agony and the Ecstasy about Michelangelo. I read this book when I was a young man and it had a great impact on me. The main thing that struck me about Michelangelo was how passionate he was. At that time in Europe, art was primarily two-dimensional/flat in feel, and though there were plenty of representations of people, often times you could not clearly make out any real anatomy for all of the rendering of folds that was going on. The Europeans did have access to ancient statuary created by the Romans and the Greeks that depicted the human figure correctly and powerfully, but there was little understanding about anatomy in the pre renaissance or, how to accurately render it.
Because Michelangelo was aware of this huge disparity between, what had been in the past and how it surpassed art in his time, he was curious about how to create anatomical art himself that would match or, even surpass the achievements of the Greeks and Romans. He set about teaching himself anatomy studiously even to the point where he would dissect corpses (an act that was illegal in his day).
The reason I bring up Michelangelo in regards to Tonalism is that I see the same sort of thing happening now with landscape painting, in that there are all these masterful Tonalist paintings that exist however, because they've been mostly bypassed and forgotten by art history, many artists are unaware of the achievement and just sort of do whatever it is they're doing, whether that is working in some sort of Impressionist vein, or just doing their best to copy photographs using oil paint. Like Michelangelo I can see that much of the landscape painting that is done by contemporary artists falls far short of the high mark set by the Tonalists at the peak of landscape painting.
After becoming aware of Tonalism I set about doing my best to create paintings that captured the same sort of mood and spiritual depth as the Masters. Whether I've succeeded or not is perhaps best judged by others but I am certainly proud of the attempt and I will continue to create landscape paintings that I find personally moving until I am no longer able to.
As I stated above there are many ways that you can accomplish landscape painting and many moods and ideas can be conveyed by various approaches. For me, no other school of painting has come even close to the level of Tonalism and that is why I spent the better part of this year working on this series in an endeavor to learn more, and also to bring greater awareness to this awesome school of art.
If you are a person that has any questions about Tonalism or Tonalist painting that you feel I can answer, I can be reached easily through my website Landscaperpainter.co.nz I am happy to help you in any way I can, so do not hesitate to contact me.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'October' by George Inness; this is a really great painting by George and one of the studies I am most proud of doing.
I'm very happy with the textural approach that I achieved on the study and as I've stated in previous blog posts, this has very much informed my own Tonalist painting.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - October by George Inness, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
One more day to go and this is our last Inness. I knew I would enjoy making studies after Inness' paintings and I'm so glad that I've had the experience, though it was a lot of hard work. I will be reading from the book George Inness by Nicolai Cikovsky in today's video narration, so please check that out.
Well, we spent the last couple days talking about Modern art which might seem a little disingenuous as the name of the blog is Tonalist Paintings by M Francis McCarthy, and the series we are in is called 100 days of Tonalism.
The reasons I brought up Modern art here are because it has nearly the full attention and financial backing of the current art establishment. Representational art has been making some major inroads though and after 100 years of disparaging representational art, many artists are tired of the freak show and are looking for meaning beyond clever artspeak.
Today, since we have just one more post to go, I think I'll just talk about what attracted me to Tonalism and why I love it. I've always enjoyed art and when I was a young man I was captivated by the art of men like Frank Frazetta and all of the comic greats from my era. I had awareness of fine art as well and a deep respect for people like Michelangelo and Albrecht Durer. As I stated in a previous blog post it wasn't until sometime in the 80s that I began to visualize wanting to be a landscape painter. I've outlined most of that process of discovery fairly well elsewhere in this series of blog posts, so have a look for that if you are interested.
The major thing that has attracted me to Tonalist painting is the richness and strong emotive qualities of it. There are many ways to paint a landscape but after my initial exposure to Tonalism I felt I'd discovered the pinnacle of what had been accomplished by the great artists of the late 1800s and early 20th century. Sadly, as some of you know, much of this work was forgotten as were the artists that created it. This is changing and I'd like to think that my series here, 100 days of Tonalism is helping in that regard.
I was talking to a friend of mine the other day about a book called the Agony and the Ecstasy about Michelangelo. I read this book when I was a young man and it had a great impact on me. The main thing that struck me about Michelangelo was how passionate he was. At that time in Europe, art was primarily two-dimensional/flat in feel, and though there were plenty of representations of people, often times you could not clearly make out any real anatomy for all of the rendering of folds that was going on. The Europeans did have access to ancient statuary created by the Romans and the Greeks that depicted the human figure correctly and powerfully, but there was little understanding about anatomy in the pre renaissance or, how to accurately render it.
Because Michelangelo was aware of this huge disparity between, what had been in the past and how it surpassed art in his time, he was curious about how to create anatomical art himself that would match or, even surpass the achievements of the Greeks and Romans. He set about teaching himself anatomy studiously even to the point where he would dissect corpses (an act that was illegal in his day).
The reason I bring up Michelangelo in regards to Tonalism is that I see the same sort of thing happening now with landscape painting, in that there are all these masterful Tonalist paintings that exist however, because they've been mostly bypassed and forgotten by art history, many artists are unaware of the achievement and just sort of do whatever it is they're doing, whether that is working in some sort of Impressionist vein, or just doing their best to copy photographs using oil paint. Like Michelangelo I can see that much of the landscape painting that is done by contemporary artists falls far short of the high mark set by the Tonalists at the peak of landscape painting.
After becoming aware of Tonalism I set about doing my best to create paintings that captured the same sort of mood and spiritual depth as the Masters. Whether I've succeeded or not is perhaps best judged by others but I am certainly proud of the attempt and I will continue to create landscape paintings that I find personally moving until I am no longer able to.
As I stated above there are many ways that you can accomplish landscape painting and many moods and ideas can be conveyed by various approaches. For me, no other school of painting has come even close to the level of Tonalism and that is why I spent the better part of this year working on this series in an endeavor to learn more, and also to bring greater awareness to this awesome school of art.
If you are a person that has any questions about Tonalism or Tonalist painting that you feel I can answer, I can be reached easily through my website Landscaperpainter.co.nz I am happy to help you in any way I can, so do not hesitate to contact me.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'October' by George Inness; this is a really great painting by George and one of the studies I am most proud of doing.
I'm very happy with the textural approach that I achieved on the study and as I've stated in previous blog posts, this has very much informed my own Tonalist painting.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, October by George Inness |
Day Ninety Eight: Sunset by Charles Warren Eaton
Hello and welcome to day 98 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is 'Sunset' by Charles Warren Eaton.
We've done a lot of Eaton's in the series and this is the last one. As I mentioned in our previous Eaton post I recently received a book by David A Cleveland called Intimate Landscapes Charles Warren Eaton and the Tonalist movement in American art 1880 to 1920. This book was written before Davids seminal work A History of American Tonalism 1880 to 1920 and is currently out of print. The book was not cheap and I recommend it only for only the most fanatical fans of Tonalism out there (which would include myself). I will be reading from this book today in the video narration so please check that out.
Yesterday I was writing about how there is nothing new in art. I'm afraid my post devolved into yet another rant against a Modern art. I'd like to qualify my views on Modern art a little more extensively today, as this is a topic with a lot of grays and my post yesterday made it seem like my views are black and white.
I am not arguing (as some do) that there should never have been a shift in painting towards, what is now termed Modern art. The reality is that there are many Modern artists whose work I admire and find moving. A short list off the top of my head would include Rothko, Gerhard Richter, Franz Klein, Picasso, Gauguin, late period Willem de Kooning and others that I'm sure just are not coming to mind at the moment. I'm also fan of much of the surrealist work done by Salvador Dali.
I am not an art historian, I am an artist. For that reason I feel absolutely no need to be objective about Modern art or the reasons why it came into existence. I do think that it was probably a good thing that Modern art came along to shake things up. Although, truth be told, things were changing prior to abstracted work taking over, starting with the Barbizon School, moving to Impressionism and post-impressionism and of course Tonalism. Prior to Modern art, some of the classic representational art was becoming staid, over polished and plastic in quality. It's clear that something needed to change.
Even though art needed to shift, much of value was lost in the process, to the point where we're facing an extreme devolution of art now that needs to be remedied. I don't want to list the names of offending Modern artists but I will say that a majority of modern art that I am exposed to, I find to be loathsome and highly offensive. The story that always comes to mind is the Emperor's new clothes. As in that story, something that did not exist and was not worth admiring was regarded highly and lies were put forward as truth while everyone clapped along.
I will always find this offensive. I do not blame artists that are enmeshed in the Modern art hyperbole. Well, I don't blame them much. The fact that some non-representational modern art is actually moving and worth looking at just complicates matters.
In most things, I think you can apply the 80/20 rule but when it comes to much of contemporary modern art, I think it's probably more accurate to apply the 98% versus 2% rule. In other words, 98% of contemporary modern art is dreck and does not deserve to exist, much less be promulgated as anything worth paying attention to let alone paid for.
Sorry, (ahem) it's so easy for me to rant about this topic because I feel very strongly about it. I do try to be fair though, and since that was the initial purpose of this blog post, let me just end todays post here by saying that some Modern art is absolutely wonderful and some Modern artists are really fantastic. Although I often tar the entire movement of contemporary Modern art with the same brush, it deserves to be stated that some of this stuff is okay and a very small percentage is better than okay, it's great.
It's up to each of us as artists or appreciators of art, in the contemporary milieu, to set upon a course whereby we are separating the wheat from the chaff of Modern art, at least for ourselves.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Sunset' by Charles Warren Eaton; this is a later period Eaton and I've seen it online quite a few times. In the painting by Eaton you can make out that the background has houses in it. I didn't bother to put that in preferring to keep it somewhat oblique. I enjoyed painting this study and I like the way that the gold and ochre tones contrasts against the green in the foreground.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Sunset by Charles Warren Eaton, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
We've done a lot of Eaton's in the series and this is the last one. As I mentioned in our previous Eaton post I recently received a book by David A Cleveland called Intimate Landscapes Charles Warren Eaton and the Tonalist movement in American art 1880 to 1920. This book was written before Davids seminal work A History of American Tonalism 1880 to 1920 and is currently out of print. The book was not cheap and I recommend it only for only the most fanatical fans of Tonalism out there (which would include myself). I will be reading from this book today in the video narration so please check that out.
Yesterday I was writing about how there is nothing new in art. I'm afraid my post devolved into yet another rant against a Modern art. I'd like to qualify my views on Modern art a little more extensively today, as this is a topic with a lot of grays and my post yesterday made it seem like my views are black and white.
I am not arguing (as some do) that there should never have been a shift in painting towards, what is now termed Modern art. The reality is that there are many Modern artists whose work I admire and find moving. A short list off the top of my head would include Rothko, Gerhard Richter, Franz Klein, Picasso, Gauguin, late period Willem de Kooning and others that I'm sure just are not coming to mind at the moment. I'm also fan of much of the surrealist work done by Salvador Dali.
I am not an art historian, I am an artist. For that reason I feel absolutely no need to be objective about Modern art or the reasons why it came into existence. I do think that it was probably a good thing that Modern art came along to shake things up. Although, truth be told, things were changing prior to abstracted work taking over, starting with the Barbizon School, moving to Impressionism and post-impressionism and of course Tonalism. Prior to Modern art, some of the classic representational art was becoming staid, over polished and plastic in quality. It's clear that something needed to change.
Even though art needed to shift, much of value was lost in the process, to the point where we're facing an extreme devolution of art now that needs to be remedied. I don't want to list the names of offending Modern artists but I will say that a majority of modern art that I am exposed to, I find to be loathsome and highly offensive. The story that always comes to mind is the Emperor's new clothes. As in that story, something that did not exist and was not worth admiring was regarded highly and lies were put forward as truth while everyone clapped along.
I will always find this offensive. I do not blame artists that are enmeshed in the Modern art hyperbole. Well, I don't blame them much. The fact that some non-representational modern art is actually moving and worth looking at just complicates matters.
In most things, I think you can apply the 80/20 rule but when it comes to much of contemporary modern art, I think it's probably more accurate to apply the 98% versus 2% rule. In other words, 98% of contemporary modern art is dreck and does not deserve to exist, much less be promulgated as anything worth paying attention to let alone paid for.
Sorry, (ahem) it's so easy for me to rant about this topic because I feel very strongly about it. I do try to be fair though, and since that was the initial purpose of this blog post, let me just end todays post here by saying that some Modern art is absolutely wonderful and some Modern artists are really fantastic. Although I often tar the entire movement of contemporary Modern art with the same brush, it deserves to be stated that some of this stuff is okay and a very small percentage is better than okay, it's great.
It's up to each of us as artists or appreciators of art, in the contemporary milieu, to set upon a course whereby we are separating the wheat from the chaff of Modern art, at least for ourselves.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Sunset' by Charles Warren Eaton; this is a later period Eaton and I've seen it online quite a few times. In the painting by Eaton you can make out that the background has houses in it. I didn't bother to put that in preferring to keep it somewhat oblique. I enjoyed painting this study and I like the way that the gold and ochre tones contrasts against the green in the foreground.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting,Sunset by Charles Warren Eaton |
Day Ninety Seven: Le Monastere Derrier Les-Arbres by Camille Corot
Hello and welcome to day 97 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is 'Le Monastere Derrier Les-Arbres' by Camille Corot.
Camile Corot was very influential on the Tonalist movement in American art. Camille was not actually a Tonalist painter himself, he was a member of the French Barbizon school. Today's video features a track from my album It Never Was, so please check that out.
I'd like to talk today about the concept of newness and modern art. Frankly, there is no such thing as newness in art. What passes for newness these days? Is it art that has been done over and over again for the last hundred years? The idea that the purpose of art is to shock, comment on societal ills or serve the whims of fashion is not new in any way, shape or form. Yet, these ideas are still passed off over and over again as fresh.
There is a conspiracy promulgated by art schools and the fine art establishment in general to keep artists from researching the true history of art, and also from developing a real skillset based on hours of experience drawing and painting. What is replacing this valid education based on experience, is some sort of idea that art should strike you like a lightning bolt out of the blue, that the less you know about (real) art the better you will be.
When people do not have a skill set based on actual experience most of their artistic output will be regurgitated from the work of others and not in a good way. What I mean is a lot of cribbing/stealing decorated with elusive,enigmatic titles and disguised as original work.
If the purpose of your work is to be clever and to receive accolades from the art establishment all you really need to do is learn how to do artspeak and kiss the asses of the local art establishment. I've talked about this negative idea called Modern art many times. I would apologize except for the fact that so many regular people have given up on fine art and just dismissed it (often deservedly) as vacant and lacking in true purpose or meaning.
When you see a painting of some colored dots assembled in rows above each other selling for 40 or $50,000 (that was not even painted by the artist whose name is going on the canvas), most normal people will disregard this as bogus and simply spend their time and attention in more fruitful pursuits, like sports, eating stuff or watching Netflix.
What's unfortunate about this state of affairs, is that fine art has the power and ability to spiritually uplift humanity and yet many worthy artists receive little support financially or emotionally from their communities. Perhaps the reason for this is that many of our museums are mostly full of claptrap instead of art of a moving and significant nature.
Getting back to our theme today. There is nothing new that has not already been done. Nothing. So what is a contemporary artist to do?
I believe that this question is best answered with self-examination and consideration of what has come before. When a cabinet maker creates a piece of furniture, he does not set out to create something new, he sets out to build something that is functional, useful and beautiful. I believe you can apply this same sort of criteria to the creation of fine art.
If your intention is to uplift people's spirits and create beauty, you need to acquire the skills that will make this possible. You should study the work of the past Masters to accomplish this goal. By doing this and being true to who and what you are as a human being and an artist, your work will be fresh and new, There can only be one of each of us, but to create great work, that uniqueness must be educated, tested, toughened and most of all experienced.
I'm not saying that you should actively copy the work of past Masters unless you are doing so (as I am in this series) for the sake of education or illumination. I believe you should create from the heart and from the deepest recesses of your own being. And there is absolutely no problem with that creation being informed by the great work that has come before.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Le Monastere Derrier Les-Arbres' by Camille Corot; this was an interesting study to do/ One of the best parts of Camille's painting is the atmospheric quality. I did my best to get this across in my study as well as the muted taupe and silver quality of his painting.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Le Monastere by Camille Corot, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
Camile Corot was very influential on the Tonalist movement in American art. Camille was not actually a Tonalist painter himself, he was a member of the French Barbizon school. Today's video features a track from my album It Never Was, so please check that out.
I'd like to talk today about the concept of newness and modern art. Frankly, there is no such thing as newness in art. What passes for newness these days? Is it art that has been done over and over again for the last hundred years? The idea that the purpose of art is to shock, comment on societal ills or serve the whims of fashion is not new in any way, shape or form. Yet, these ideas are still passed off over and over again as fresh.
There is a conspiracy promulgated by art schools and the fine art establishment in general to keep artists from researching the true history of art, and also from developing a real skillset based on hours of experience drawing and painting. What is replacing this valid education based on experience, is some sort of idea that art should strike you like a lightning bolt out of the blue, that the less you know about (real) art the better you will be.
When people do not have a skill set based on actual experience most of their artistic output will be regurgitated from the work of others and not in a good way. What I mean is a lot of cribbing/stealing decorated with elusive,enigmatic titles and disguised as original work.
If the purpose of your work is to be clever and to receive accolades from the art establishment all you really need to do is learn how to do artspeak and kiss the asses of the local art establishment. I've talked about this negative idea called Modern art many times. I would apologize except for the fact that so many regular people have given up on fine art and just dismissed it (often deservedly) as vacant and lacking in true purpose or meaning.
When you see a painting of some colored dots assembled in rows above each other selling for 40 or $50,000 (that was not even painted by the artist whose name is going on the canvas), most normal people will disregard this as bogus and simply spend their time and attention in more fruitful pursuits, like sports, eating stuff or watching Netflix.
What's unfortunate about this state of affairs, is that fine art has the power and ability to spiritually uplift humanity and yet many worthy artists receive little support financially or emotionally from their communities. Perhaps the reason for this is that many of our museums are mostly full of claptrap instead of art of a moving and significant nature.
Getting back to our theme today. There is nothing new that has not already been done. Nothing. So what is a contemporary artist to do?
I believe that this question is best answered with self-examination and consideration of what has come before. When a cabinet maker creates a piece of furniture, he does not set out to create something new, he sets out to build something that is functional, useful and beautiful. I believe you can apply this same sort of criteria to the creation of fine art.
If your intention is to uplift people's spirits and create beauty, you need to acquire the skills that will make this possible. You should study the work of the past Masters to accomplish this goal. By doing this and being true to who and what you are as a human being and an artist, your work will be fresh and new, There can only be one of each of us, but to create great work, that uniqueness must be educated, tested, toughened and most of all experienced.
I'm not saying that you should actively copy the work of past Masters unless you are doing so (as I am in this series) for the sake of education or illumination. I believe you should create from the heart and from the deepest recesses of your own being. And there is absolutely no problem with that creation being informed by the great work that has come before.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Le Monastere Derrier Les-Arbres' by Camille Corot; this was an interesting study to do/ One of the best parts of Camille's painting is the atmospheric quality. I did my best to get this across in my study as well as the muted taupe and silver quality of his painting.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Le Monastere Derrier Les-Arbres by Camille Corot |
Day Ninety Six: Untitled by Robertson Kirtland Mygatt
Hello and welcome to day 96 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today study is 'Untitled' by Robertson Kirtland Mygatt.
Robertson Kirtland Mygatt is a lesser-known Tonalist artist. I have found some biographical information about him which I've read in today's video narration, so please check that out.
Every artist is different and is motivated by different aspects of life to create art. For my part, I essentially decided to be an artist when I was about 13 years old. Art was just one of the many things that I was good at back then. Being a teenager, I was aware that it wouldn't be that long before I would have to leave the shelter of my family and make my own way in the world.
Though my personality was still forming in many ways, I had a decent amount of self-awareness, and after considering the types of career that would be complementary with my personality, I decided art would be the way to go.
From that time forward, I started applying myself industriously to learning how to draw. I remember doing an oil painting back then. I had such a clear image in my mind of what I wanted to do, yet when it came time to paint it, I discovered how little I knew about painting and, how difficult it would be to create something that was even close to comparable with the work of the artists that I admired.
I bailed on that early painting but I stuck with drawing. I would draw everyday, back then, I was very into comic books and I would spend time copying the pictures. I would draw the anatomy of the figures in the various panels. It wasn't long before I became aware of the differences between pencilers and inkers. I noticed that mediocre pencils could be made to look quite good if the penciler had a good inker and conversely that a great pencilled work could be super diminished with shoddy or haphazard inking.
I started teaching myself how to ink using dip pens, I also would use technical pens. After a while I learned how to use a sable brush to ink my pencil drawings. This put me quite far ahead of my peers that were also interested in drawing. They would work very hard on their pencil drawings but would be loath to ink them as they had no real experience of inking. I think that this early exposure to working with brushes and ink was very helpful for my later career as a oil painter.
The thing about ink is that it is much different than pencil. When you make a mark with pen and ink it is either black or white. There is no gray, no intermediate values just on or off. this approach to values provided good learning experience.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Untitled' by Robertson Kirtland Mygatt; Robert is one of those artists that you really need to know his middle name to find out anything about. He seems to been almost completely forgotten. This painting is very representative of the work of his I've seen in my research into him online.
I've actually completed two studies, having sold the first version a few months ago. It's interesting to me how my painting changes with time and accompanying shifts in consciousness.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Untitled by Robertson Kirtland Mygatt, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x5, Oil on wood panel |
Robertson Kirtland Mygatt is a lesser-known Tonalist artist. I have found some biographical information about him which I've read in today's video narration, so please check that out.
Every artist is different and is motivated by different aspects of life to create art. For my part, I essentially decided to be an artist when I was about 13 years old. Art was just one of the many things that I was good at back then. Being a teenager, I was aware that it wouldn't be that long before I would have to leave the shelter of my family and make my own way in the world.
Though my personality was still forming in many ways, I had a decent amount of self-awareness, and after considering the types of career that would be complementary with my personality, I decided art would be the way to go.
From that time forward, I started applying myself industriously to learning how to draw. I remember doing an oil painting back then. I had such a clear image in my mind of what I wanted to do, yet when it came time to paint it, I discovered how little I knew about painting and, how difficult it would be to create something that was even close to comparable with the work of the artists that I admired.
I bailed on that early painting but I stuck with drawing. I would draw everyday, back then, I was very into comic books and I would spend time copying the pictures. I would draw the anatomy of the figures in the various panels. It wasn't long before I became aware of the differences between pencilers and inkers. I noticed that mediocre pencils could be made to look quite good if the penciler had a good inker and conversely that a great pencilled work could be super diminished with shoddy or haphazard inking.
I started teaching myself how to ink using dip pens, I also would use technical pens. After a while I learned how to use a sable brush to ink my pencil drawings. This put me quite far ahead of my peers that were also interested in drawing. They would work very hard on their pencil drawings but would be loath to ink them as they had no real experience of inking. I think that this early exposure to working with brushes and ink was very helpful for my later career as a oil painter.
The thing about ink is that it is much different than pencil. When you make a mark with pen and ink it is either black or white. There is no gray, no intermediate values just on or off. this approach to values provided good learning experience.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Untitled' by Robertson Kirtland Mygatt; Robert is one of those artists that you really need to know his middle name to find out anything about. He seems to been almost completely forgotten. This painting is very representative of the work of his I've seen in my research into him online.
I've actually completed two studies, having sold the first version a few months ago. It's interesting to me how my painting changes with time and accompanying shifts in consciousness.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Untitled by Robertson Kirtland Mygatt |
Day Ninety Five: By the Lake by George Inness
Hello and welcome day 95 to 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is 'By the Lake' by George Inness.
Just one more George Inness study after this one. This piece I believe is mid period Inness, most likely painted somewhere in the 1870s. On today's video narration, I read some biographical information about George Inness from the book George Inness by Nicolai Cikovsky Jr so please check that out.
I was reading from a book I just acquired about Charles Warren Eaton today. I mentioned this book in our last post about Charles Warren Eaton. The book was very interesting because it was discussing the beginnings of the Tonalist movement in art.
In many ways this period in art history from 1880 to 1920 is disregarded by some art historians or it is lumped in with the Barbizon school. In actuality, Tonalism is a very American form of painting and is quite different from Barbizon work. Although many of the greatest proponents of Tonalism were trained in the Barbizon school, what they created in the United States was very much a reflection of American and not European art.
Previous to the Tonalist movement, the style of painting that was popular in the United States was a movement called the Hudson River School. I've mentioned them many times on this blog. The Hudson River School was dedicated to capturing the splendor of the American landscape in large canvases, exquisitely detailed and rendered with polished finishes. In many ways this movement in art was running along with Tonalism which superseded and improved upon it.
Whereas the Hudson River School was about objective depictions of the vastness of nature with scenes often depicting glorious vistas of the unexplored American wilderness, Tonalism endeavored to portray a more subjective and emotional approach. Many Tonalist paintings being of every day farm life, of vacant fields or views by a river or creek. This Tonalist move from the objective to subjective is one of the precursors to modern art.
Though Tonalism is considered to be representational art; because it features the subjective, it is more poetical than scientific and, for that reason, timeless. When I first came upon this type of work I could not believe that it was not more widely known about. Our blog post yesterday spoke about some of the ways and reasons that artwork from the representational era is considered by some to be passé and not relevant to modern sensibilities.
If this sort of thinking was actually true, then there would be no reason to read any book that was published further back than 10 or 20 years. Anybody with any sense knows that this would be a stupid idea. So much classic literature going back to the Iliad by Homer is worthy of study and conveys emotion and poetry as powerfully now as it did when it was written.
This is true of fine painting as well. I dedicated a large portion of my working life this year to the study and promotion of these Tonalist Masters. I also devoted quite a lot of time to videotaping, editing videos and writing this blog. It's my way of learning on the job but also giving something back to the artists that came before me.
As someone who did not officially go to art school or study for any great length of time in the studio of a Master painter I felt it was incumbent upon me to take some time from my own painting life to learn more about how these great painters of the past accomplished the magnificent work that they did, and to share that knowledge and hopefully convert some of it to wisdom.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'By the Lake' by George Inness; this was a fun and relatively easy study to do. As I stated in the video I enjoyed painting the sky and I really feel that it is the focal point of this painting.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - By the Lake by George Inness, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
Just one more George Inness study after this one. This piece I believe is mid period Inness, most likely painted somewhere in the 1870s. On today's video narration, I read some biographical information about George Inness from the book George Inness by Nicolai Cikovsky Jr so please check that out.
I was reading from a book I just acquired about Charles Warren Eaton today. I mentioned this book in our last post about Charles Warren Eaton. The book was very interesting because it was discussing the beginnings of the Tonalist movement in art.
In many ways this period in art history from 1880 to 1920 is disregarded by some art historians or it is lumped in with the Barbizon school. In actuality, Tonalism is a very American form of painting and is quite different from Barbizon work. Although many of the greatest proponents of Tonalism were trained in the Barbizon school, what they created in the United States was very much a reflection of American and not European art.
Previous to the Tonalist movement, the style of painting that was popular in the United States was a movement called the Hudson River School. I've mentioned them many times on this blog. The Hudson River School was dedicated to capturing the splendor of the American landscape in large canvases, exquisitely detailed and rendered with polished finishes. In many ways this movement in art was running along with Tonalism which superseded and improved upon it.
Whereas the Hudson River School was about objective depictions of the vastness of nature with scenes often depicting glorious vistas of the unexplored American wilderness, Tonalism endeavored to portray a more subjective and emotional approach. Many Tonalist paintings being of every day farm life, of vacant fields or views by a river or creek. This Tonalist move from the objective to subjective is one of the precursors to modern art.
Though Tonalism is considered to be representational art; because it features the subjective, it is more poetical than scientific and, for that reason, timeless. When I first came upon this type of work I could not believe that it was not more widely known about. Our blog post yesterday spoke about some of the ways and reasons that artwork from the representational era is considered by some to be passé and not relevant to modern sensibilities.
If this sort of thinking was actually true, then there would be no reason to read any book that was published further back than 10 or 20 years. Anybody with any sense knows that this would be a stupid idea. So much classic literature going back to the Iliad by Homer is worthy of study and conveys emotion and poetry as powerfully now as it did when it was written.
This is true of fine painting as well. I dedicated a large portion of my working life this year to the study and promotion of these Tonalist Masters. I also devoted quite a lot of time to videotaping, editing videos and writing this blog. It's my way of learning on the job but also giving something back to the artists that came before me.
As someone who did not officially go to art school or study for any great length of time in the studio of a Master painter I felt it was incumbent upon me to take some time from my own painting life to learn more about how these great painters of the past accomplished the magnificent work that they did, and to share that knowledge and hopefully convert some of it to wisdom.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'By the Lake' by George Inness; this was a fun and relatively easy study to do. As I stated in the video I enjoyed painting the sky and I really feel that it is the focal point of this painting.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, By the Lake by George Inness |
Day Ninety Four: Hillside by John Francis Murphy
Hello welcome to Day 94 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is 'Hillside' by John Francis Murphy.
This is our last John Francis Murphy today, I saved one of the nicest studies for last. In today's video narration I read from the book A History of American Tonalism 1882-1920 by David A Cleveland, so please check that out.
Yesterday I was reading a very interesting post from a site called artrenewal.org. Artrenewal.org is a site that supports representational art and features the work of many artists throughout history as well as artists, it refers to as Living Masters. They run yearly competitions where they give prizes and they also have a large amount of imagery there. That is always been my predominant attraction to the site.
The article I was reading yesterday was very interesting. It was by a gentleman named Frederick Ross and the title of the article is 'Why Realism?'
I'm providing you with a link to the article here. It is very long and I cannot say that I agree with everything that Frederick says in it, however he makes some excellent points in regards to modern art. Those of you that have read this blog for any length of time will be aware that though there is some modern art that I enjoy, much of it I find odious, foul and an insult to the term art.
Here's a quotation from that article that I think is very pertinent to 'Modern art':
What Modernists have done has been to aid and abet the destruction of the only universal language by which artists can communicate our humanity to the rest of ...well humanity. It has been a goal of mine for many years to expose the truth of modernist art history, and it is very much on topic to bring into question any practice which purports to analyze art history in a way that deliberately suppresses a valid and correct understanding of what actually happened.
And it is of the utmost importance that the history of what actually took place not be lost for all time due to the transitory prejudice and tastes of a single era. This must be done if art history as a field of scholarship is not to be ultimately discovered to have devolved into nothing more than documents of propaganda; geared towards market enhancement for valuable collections passed down as wealth conserving stores of value.
Successful dealers, who derived great wealth by selling such works...works created in hours instead of weeks... had little trouble lining up articulate masters of our language to build complex jargon presented everywhere as brilliant analysis. These market influenced treatises ensured the financial protection of these collections.
Such "artspeak" as it has come to be known is a form of contrivance which uses self consciously complex and convoluted word combinations (babble) to impress, mesmerize and ultimately to silence the human instinct so that it cannot identify honestly what has been paraded before it.
This is accomplished by brainwashing through authority, confounding the evidence of our senses that otherwise any sane person would question. The "authority" of high positions, and the "authority" of books and print, and the "authority" of certificates of accreditation attached to the names of the chief proponents of modernism, have all conspired to impress and humble those whose common sense would rise up in opposition to what would have been evident nonsense if it had emanated from the mouths and pens of anyone without such a preponderance of "authority" backing them up.
Frederick Ross
Strong words from Frederick, but he's calling it the way he sees it and it's hard to disagree. Sad as it is, in today's art market words have replaced perception. Obfuscation has replaced lucidity and cleverness has replaced craft.
It doesn't have to be that way. I for one refuse to surrender my art to artifice. Every artist should be true to their own inner voice and guidance. The artwork that we leave behind speaks for us more than words ever could. And ultimately the work will speak louder than the 'artspeak' propaganda that supports so much mediocrity these days.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Hillside' by John Francis Murphy; this was such a fun study to do. I really got a lot out of working at the feet of the Master.
If you tune into today's video narration there is some excellent information provided by David A Cleveland about John Francis Murphy's later period and I highly recommend you check it out.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Hillside by John Francis Murphy, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
This is our last John Francis Murphy today, I saved one of the nicest studies for last. In today's video narration I read from the book A History of American Tonalism 1882-1920 by David A Cleveland, so please check that out.
Yesterday I was reading a very interesting post from a site called artrenewal.org. Artrenewal.org is a site that supports representational art and features the work of many artists throughout history as well as artists, it refers to as Living Masters. They run yearly competitions where they give prizes and they also have a large amount of imagery there. That is always been my predominant attraction to the site.
The article I was reading yesterday was very interesting. It was by a gentleman named Frederick Ross and the title of the article is 'Why Realism?'
I'm providing you with a link to the article here. It is very long and I cannot say that I agree with everything that Frederick says in it, however he makes some excellent points in regards to modern art. Those of you that have read this blog for any length of time will be aware that though there is some modern art that I enjoy, much of it I find odious, foul and an insult to the term art.
Here's a quotation from that article that I think is very pertinent to 'Modern art':
What Modernists have done has been to aid and abet the destruction of the only universal language by which artists can communicate our humanity to the rest of ...well humanity. It has been a goal of mine for many years to expose the truth of modernist art history, and it is very much on topic to bring into question any practice which purports to analyze art history in a way that deliberately suppresses a valid and correct understanding of what actually happened.
And it is of the utmost importance that the history of what actually took place not be lost for all time due to the transitory prejudice and tastes of a single era. This must be done if art history as a field of scholarship is not to be ultimately discovered to have devolved into nothing more than documents of propaganda; geared towards market enhancement for valuable collections passed down as wealth conserving stores of value.
Successful dealers, who derived great wealth by selling such works...works created in hours instead of weeks... had little trouble lining up articulate masters of our language to build complex jargon presented everywhere as brilliant analysis. These market influenced treatises ensured the financial protection of these collections.
Such "artspeak" as it has come to be known is a form of contrivance which uses self consciously complex and convoluted word combinations (babble) to impress, mesmerize and ultimately to silence the human instinct so that it cannot identify honestly what has been paraded before it.
This is accomplished by brainwashing through authority, confounding the evidence of our senses that otherwise any sane person would question. The "authority" of high positions, and the "authority" of books and print, and the "authority" of certificates of accreditation attached to the names of the chief proponents of modernism, have all conspired to impress and humble those whose common sense would rise up in opposition to what would have been evident nonsense if it had emanated from the mouths and pens of anyone without such a preponderance of "authority" backing them up.
Frederick Ross
Strong words from Frederick, but he's calling it the way he sees it and it's hard to disagree. Sad as it is, in today's art market words have replaced perception. Obfuscation has replaced lucidity and cleverness has replaced craft.
It doesn't have to be that way. I for one refuse to surrender my art to artifice. Every artist should be true to their own inner voice and guidance. The artwork that we leave behind speaks for us more than words ever could. And ultimately the work will speak louder than the 'artspeak' propaganda that supports so much mediocrity these days.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Hillside' by John Francis Murphy; this was such a fun study to do. I really got a lot out of working at the feet of the Master.
If you tune into today's video narration there is some excellent information provided by David A Cleveland about John Francis Murphy's later period and I highly recommend you check it out.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Hillside by John Francis Murphy |
Day Ninety Three: November Landscape by Charles Warren Eaton
Hello and welcome to day 93 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today study is 'November Landscape' by Charles Warren Eaton.
We've done a lot of studies after Eaton in this series. Today study is very representative of his later period, when he was doing a lot of white pines, often silhouetted against sunset or twilight skies. I will be reading some information about Charles Warren Eaton from the book Intimate Landscapes: Charles Warren Eaton by David a Cleveland (which I have just received in the mail), on today's video narration so please check that out.
Today, I'd like to talk about capturing feeling in art. In yesterday's video narration I was speaking about how there are so many feelings that we have, that words cannot describe easily. When you actually think about it, we have a very limited palette with which to render our feelings. We have words like happy, sad, angry or depressed. These words capture only the most extroverted and dense feelings.
For expressing the subtler feelings we have poetry and we have painting. Both of these arts are difficult to master. It is all too easy to make bad paintings and to write bad poetry. For these mediums to appropriately convey the more subtle feelings, the artist or poet must work at their craft for a good while and even then there is no guarantee that they will be able to express anything that actually moves other people.
I was attracted to Tonalism because of the visceral emotive power of this mode of expression. It has taken me many years to get to a point where I feel that I'm doing work that is accurately conveying emotion. When people ask me why I do landscapes and not portraiture or still life, the reason that I give them is that I feel that landscape has the greatest ability to impart emotion, better than any other subject matter. The reason for this is that the landscape is essentially neutral, we all come to it as individuals.
If I were to make a painting of an emotional person it would not have the same ability to move someone especially in the subtle ways that a landscape painting can. If you've ever been outside during a sunset or twilight, you know that special magical feeling that we can all experience. This is a time of enchanting, luminescent light.
Using art to convey emotion is one of the highest accomplishments that any artists can achieve. And by emotion I mean the most profound and ephemeral feelings we have. It's no secret that art can be used to portray the coarser emotions as well, but I see no point in that other than the pursuit of some sort of cleverness.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'November Landscape' by Charles Warren Eaton; I enjoyed doing this study although I felt a bit constrained by the very small size of the panel and, also by the fact that my reference image is a bit blown out.
Like most of Eaton's paintings of white pines so much of the painting's success relies on the contours of the trees against the brighter sky.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - November Landscape by Charles Warren Eaton, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x5, Oil on wood panel |
We've done a lot of studies after Eaton in this series. Today study is very representative of his later period, when he was doing a lot of white pines, often silhouetted against sunset or twilight skies. I will be reading some information about Charles Warren Eaton from the book Intimate Landscapes: Charles Warren Eaton by David a Cleveland (which I have just received in the mail), on today's video narration so please check that out.
Today, I'd like to talk about capturing feeling in art. In yesterday's video narration I was speaking about how there are so many feelings that we have, that words cannot describe easily. When you actually think about it, we have a very limited palette with which to render our feelings. We have words like happy, sad, angry or depressed. These words capture only the most extroverted and dense feelings.
For expressing the subtler feelings we have poetry and we have painting. Both of these arts are difficult to master. It is all too easy to make bad paintings and to write bad poetry. For these mediums to appropriately convey the more subtle feelings, the artist or poet must work at their craft for a good while and even then there is no guarantee that they will be able to express anything that actually moves other people.
I was attracted to Tonalism because of the visceral emotive power of this mode of expression. It has taken me many years to get to a point where I feel that I'm doing work that is accurately conveying emotion. When people ask me why I do landscapes and not portraiture or still life, the reason that I give them is that I feel that landscape has the greatest ability to impart emotion, better than any other subject matter. The reason for this is that the landscape is essentially neutral, we all come to it as individuals.
If I were to make a painting of an emotional person it would not have the same ability to move someone especially in the subtle ways that a landscape painting can. If you've ever been outside during a sunset or twilight, you know that special magical feeling that we can all experience. This is a time of enchanting, luminescent light.
Using art to convey emotion is one of the highest accomplishments that any artists can achieve. And by emotion I mean the most profound and ephemeral feelings we have. It's no secret that art can be used to portray the coarser emotions as well, but I see no point in that other than the pursuit of some sort of cleverness.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'November Landscape' by Charles Warren Eaton; I enjoyed doing this study although I felt a bit constrained by the very small size of the panel and, also by the fact that my reference image is a bit blown out.
Like most of Eaton's paintings of white pines so much of the painting's success relies on the contours of the trees against the brighter sky.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, November Landscape by Charles Warren Eaton |
Day Ninety Two: Moonlight Tarpon Springs by George Inness
Hello and welcome to day 92 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today study is 'Moonlight Tarpon Springs' by George Inness.
Those of you following this blog will be well aware of the work of George Inness by now. This is our second to last Inness study. One of the major reasons that I undertook this project was in an effort to absorb and integrate more of George Inness' style into my own working methods. I will be reading from the book George Inness by Nikolai Cikovsky on today's video narration, so please check that out.
Today I'd like to talk about working methods and the concept of momentum. I get a lot of people coming in my studio that are either part-time artists or wish to become artists. I'm always stressing with these people that the best way to accomplish that goal is to have a regular working practice and a strong work ethic. You can read all of the books out there, you can take infinite classes and have lots of discussions about it, but there is no substitute for experience when it comes to art.
When I first arrived in New Zealand I was coming off of 26 years of working full time. My first year here in New Zealand I did about 20 paintings. Last year I did around 250. This would include my small studies as well as the larger paintings I've done. I work every day on painting and the only exceptions are days I might go out of town with my wife. I am industrious by nature but I can fall prey to laziness just like everyone else and this is where I think the idea of momentum becomes very important.
By keeping a momentum going in your work life you can avoid many of the deepest lows and yet still accomplish most of the highs. I'm not saying that if you work all the time that you will not occasionally produce a painting that is a dud, that's just how reality works. People are quite surprised when I tell them that landscape painting doesn't necessarily get easier with experience. Your work may improve and you will get better, but painting is so challenging to the spirit and intellect as an occupation, that I can easily see spending another 50 years doing it and still not getting to the bottom of it.
Momentum is one of the greatest allies that you can enlist in this artistic journey. Momentum will keep you moving forward and making progress better than anything else I know. If you stop and start constantly in your artistic life it's a bit like a rocket taking off from the earth. Most of the force and energy required to do it is needed at the beginning. If you're constantly taking large breaks from your work life it means that every time you want to start again you must make a supreme effort. With momentum you are basically coasting on your initial effort and continuing on your journey in a progressive manner.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Moonlight Tarpon Springs' by George Inness; this painting by Inness has a mysterious quality that I think I painted well.
My drawing is a bit different than George's but I did capture the spirit of his painting in my study and for that reason I am pleased with it.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Moonlight Tarpon Springs by George Inness, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
Those of you following this blog will be well aware of the work of George Inness by now. This is our second to last Inness study. One of the major reasons that I undertook this project was in an effort to absorb and integrate more of George Inness' style into my own working methods. I will be reading from the book George Inness by Nikolai Cikovsky on today's video narration, so please check that out.
Today I'd like to talk about working methods and the concept of momentum. I get a lot of people coming in my studio that are either part-time artists or wish to become artists. I'm always stressing with these people that the best way to accomplish that goal is to have a regular working practice and a strong work ethic. You can read all of the books out there, you can take infinite classes and have lots of discussions about it, but there is no substitute for experience when it comes to art.
When I first arrived in New Zealand I was coming off of 26 years of working full time. My first year here in New Zealand I did about 20 paintings. Last year I did around 250. This would include my small studies as well as the larger paintings I've done. I work every day on painting and the only exceptions are days I might go out of town with my wife. I am industrious by nature but I can fall prey to laziness just like everyone else and this is where I think the idea of momentum becomes very important.
By keeping a momentum going in your work life you can avoid many of the deepest lows and yet still accomplish most of the highs. I'm not saying that if you work all the time that you will not occasionally produce a painting that is a dud, that's just how reality works. People are quite surprised when I tell them that landscape painting doesn't necessarily get easier with experience. Your work may improve and you will get better, but painting is so challenging to the spirit and intellect as an occupation, that I can easily see spending another 50 years doing it and still not getting to the bottom of it.
Momentum is one of the greatest allies that you can enlist in this artistic journey. Momentum will keep you moving forward and making progress better than anything else I know. If you stop and start constantly in your artistic life it's a bit like a rocket taking off from the earth. Most of the force and energy required to do it is needed at the beginning. If you're constantly taking large breaks from your work life it means that every time you want to start again you must make a supreme effort. With momentum you are basically coasting on your initial effort and continuing on your journey in a progressive manner.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Moonlight Tarpon Springs' by George Inness; this painting by Inness has a mysterious quality that I think I painted well.
My drawing is a bit different than George's but I did capture the spirit of his painting in my study and for that reason I am pleased with it.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Moonlight Tarpon Springs by George Inness |
Day Ninety One: Untitled by William King Amsden
Hello and welcome to day 91 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today study is Untitled by William King Amsden.
William King Amsden is not very well known these days and I've hada bit of a problem finding much biographical information about him on the Internet. I did find one page with some information which I will be reading on today's video narration so please check that out.
In today's blog post I'd like to talk about why I chose to become a Tonalist painter. I knew and I felt that I was going to become a landscape painter in the second half of my life, but I was not aware of Tonalism until about six or seven years ago. After becoming familiar with this artistic movement I knew that I had to find a way to bring what was good and magical about it into my own work as a modern painter.
I was reading a book today called a History of American Tonalism. Those of you that have been following this blog will be very familiar with this book by now as I have been reading sections of it for the video narration of several of the artists that we've covered in this series 100 days of Tonalism.
In his introduction the author David A Cleveland is remarking how it is almost criminal that Tonalism has been forgotten by many Art Historians to a large degree. The roots of modern art are buried within this movement and not in the early part of the 20th century as almost any book on art history will tell you.
I've been known to rant about modern art. The truth of the matter is that I actually like some modern art, though the overwhelming majority of it has no real reason to exist other than to stroke the egos and enrich the bank accounts of artists that have pursued this paper chimera.
The reasons we do art are more important than the substrates we paint on or the materials we use or even the artists that have influenced us. The reason that you paint is the foundation of what you create.
If you are creating work for the good strokes of your fellow artists or validation from the 'art community you essentially have feet of clay and it's hard to believe that the work you create will have any lasting historical significance.
The thing that is powerful about Tonalism and Tonalist paintings is that they are pregnant with emotion and strongly convey what it is to be a human being perceiving nature. This is an innovation that came about after painting movements like the Hudson River school where nature was faithfully copyed in every detail. Those artist strove to objectively depict nature.
While I admire many paintings from the Hudson River school and the Luminists, their work falls flat in comparison to the Tonalist school that came after. The reason for this I think is that Tonalism embraces subjectivity. The landscapes produced by Tonalist painters are brimming with emotion and a sense of being. It is so easy to connect with these paintings that it almost seems like a bit of a conspiracy the way that these artists have been shunted by art history and relegated to the auction houses.
Sometimes that which is moving, subtle and beautiful requires a similar state in the consciousness of the viewer in order to be appreciated. With the advent of modern art, these sorts of ideas have become unpopular and what we are given instead of moving beauty is cleverness disguised as intellectual authenticity.
When I am in nature and I am experiencing the beauty of a sunset or a storm, I am moved very deeply and as an artist I wish to convey that feeling to the best of my ability. This is why when I came across Tonalism I felt like I had found my family artistically.
I do not attempt to make paintings that look old or function as antiques although my work is sometimes perceived that way by people. Instead I endeavor to use the tools that Tonalism has provided to me as a living artist and as a man expressing himself in his own time.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about Untitled by William King Amsden; I really like the colors in this painting and the very loose fractured brushwork that William has used.
My reference image was quite lo-res but that is okay, it allowed me more self-expression than many of the other studies in the series. Because the forms are so vaporous and not very well defined it leaves a lot of room for color to convey emotion.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Untitled by William King Amsden, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
William King Amsden is not very well known these days and I've hada bit of a problem finding much biographical information about him on the Internet. I did find one page with some information which I will be reading on today's video narration so please check that out.
In today's blog post I'd like to talk about why I chose to become a Tonalist painter. I knew and I felt that I was going to become a landscape painter in the second half of my life, but I was not aware of Tonalism until about six or seven years ago. After becoming familiar with this artistic movement I knew that I had to find a way to bring what was good and magical about it into my own work as a modern painter.
I was reading a book today called a History of American Tonalism. Those of you that have been following this blog will be very familiar with this book by now as I have been reading sections of it for the video narration of several of the artists that we've covered in this series 100 days of Tonalism.
In his introduction the author David A Cleveland is remarking how it is almost criminal that Tonalism has been forgotten by many Art Historians to a large degree. The roots of modern art are buried within this movement and not in the early part of the 20th century as almost any book on art history will tell you.
I've been known to rant about modern art. The truth of the matter is that I actually like some modern art, though the overwhelming majority of it has no real reason to exist other than to stroke the egos and enrich the bank accounts of artists that have pursued this paper chimera.
The reasons we do art are more important than the substrates we paint on or the materials we use or even the artists that have influenced us. The reason that you paint is the foundation of what you create.
If you are creating work for the good strokes of your fellow artists or validation from the 'art community you essentially have feet of clay and it's hard to believe that the work you create will have any lasting historical significance.
The thing that is powerful about Tonalism and Tonalist paintings is that they are pregnant with emotion and strongly convey what it is to be a human being perceiving nature. This is an innovation that came about after painting movements like the Hudson River school where nature was faithfully copyed in every detail. Those artist strove to objectively depict nature.
While I admire many paintings from the Hudson River school and the Luminists, their work falls flat in comparison to the Tonalist school that came after. The reason for this I think is that Tonalism embraces subjectivity. The landscapes produced by Tonalist painters are brimming with emotion and a sense of being. It is so easy to connect with these paintings that it almost seems like a bit of a conspiracy the way that these artists have been shunted by art history and relegated to the auction houses.
Sometimes that which is moving, subtle and beautiful requires a similar state in the consciousness of the viewer in order to be appreciated. With the advent of modern art, these sorts of ideas have become unpopular and what we are given instead of moving beauty is cleverness disguised as intellectual authenticity.
When I am in nature and I am experiencing the beauty of a sunset or a storm, I am moved very deeply and as an artist I wish to convey that feeling to the best of my ability. This is why when I came across Tonalism I felt like I had found my family artistically.
I do not attempt to make paintings that look old or function as antiques although my work is sometimes perceived that way by people. Instead I endeavor to use the tools that Tonalism has provided to me as a living artist and as a man expressing himself in his own time.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about Untitled by William King Amsden; I really like the colors in this painting and the very loose fractured brushwork that William has used.
My reference image was quite lo-res but that is okay, it allowed me more self-expression than many of the other studies in the series. Because the forms are so vaporous and not very well defined it leaves a lot of room for color to convey emotion.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Untitled by William King Amsden |
Day Ninety: Evening Distant Tower by Camille Corot
Hello and welcome to Day 90 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is 'Evening Distant Tower' by Camille Corot.
We've done several studies after Camille in the series and though he was not actually a Tonalist painter he was extremely influential on Tonalism. For that reason I've included him in this series. Today's video features a track from my album The Lost Horizon, so please check that out.
We've been talking recently about my history as a artist and evolution to becoming a Tonalist landscape painter. I'm thinking that we may have covered most of the pertinent aspects of my journey. So today I'd like to discuss why I became attracted to doing actual physical oil paintings as opposed to working exclusively with digital media.
Digital media has taken over a lot of the artistic space that used to be dedicated to physical media. Much of this is in the form of movies and video games, but also in print media you see extensive manipulation of photographs and even hybrid artworks that are a combination of photography and painting.
As I've mentioned on this blog in the past I was very much into working with digital media and from 1995 to 2008 all the art that I did was created using a computer. I did do a lot of pen and ink work that was then scanned into the computer and colored, but ultimately all the finished artwork came out of an inkjet printer at the end of the day. There's absolutely nothing wrong with creating art this way but there are some major differences that people immersed in digital media to the exclusion of physical media may not be aware of.
One of the main differences, although it is subtle, is that artwork created with digital media has an ephemeral quality. This is because, for digital artwork to actually be displayed in the three dimensional physical world it must be printed on either paper or canvas. There is a lot of progress that's being made as far as printers being able to replicate the 3-D structure of actual paintings. It will be impossible to do this with two-dimensional art produced within the computer because, by its nature, it is always going to be flat.
Another difference that is even more subtle, has to do with consciousness and how consciousness inter-penetrates with physical media like oil paintings. This applies not just to good art but to all art created in physical 3-D reality. Every painting that you see reflects the consciousness of the artist which has been recorded stroke by stroke in paint. Even parts of the painting that have been completely covered have an affect on the consciousness level of the artwork.
This is not to say that artwork created with a computer is lacking in consciousness, just that the rendering of that work on to a piece of paper or canvas is not the same thing as an actual surface that has been lovingly painted and imprinted by the artists mind and hand.
When we look at a painting by one of the Masters, such as any of the paintings that I've done studies of in this series, we are connecting with that artist through time and space. This occurs even with the flat representation of their artwork on the computer screen or book, but far more so if you are fortunate enough to interact with their work in a museum or gallery setting.
For example, the post I made yesterday about values; it wasn't until going to the Louvre in Paris that I noticed some things about masterful oil painting that had never occurred to me when looking at these works in books or on a computer screen. There is really no way to compare human perception of a physical painting with the interaction that goes on with a facsimile via print or screen.There's a deeper level of perception and enjoyment beyond digital printouts.
As I stated above, the differences can be subtle, but so much of what makes art great rather than merely good is subtle. At the end of the day I feel the true purpose of art is to move the viewer emotionally and there's no question that a physical painting can do that far more than any reproduction.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Evening Distant Tower' by Camille Corot; I really enjoyed doing this study after Camille's painting. This seems to be a bit more sepia toned than much of his other work I've seen, which tends to have more of a silvery gray quality.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Evening Distant Tower by Camille Corot , Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x5, Oil on wood panel |
Today's study is 'Evening Distant Tower' by Camille Corot.
We've done several studies after Camille in the series and though he was not actually a Tonalist painter he was extremely influential on Tonalism. For that reason I've included him in this series. Today's video features a track from my album The Lost Horizon, so please check that out.
We've been talking recently about my history as a artist and evolution to becoming a Tonalist landscape painter. I'm thinking that we may have covered most of the pertinent aspects of my journey. So today I'd like to discuss why I became attracted to doing actual physical oil paintings as opposed to working exclusively with digital media.
Digital media has taken over a lot of the artistic space that used to be dedicated to physical media. Much of this is in the form of movies and video games, but also in print media you see extensive manipulation of photographs and even hybrid artworks that are a combination of photography and painting.
As I've mentioned on this blog in the past I was very much into working with digital media and from 1995 to 2008 all the art that I did was created using a computer. I did do a lot of pen and ink work that was then scanned into the computer and colored, but ultimately all the finished artwork came out of an inkjet printer at the end of the day. There's absolutely nothing wrong with creating art this way but there are some major differences that people immersed in digital media to the exclusion of physical media may not be aware of.
One of the main differences, although it is subtle, is that artwork created with digital media has an ephemeral quality. This is because, for digital artwork to actually be displayed in the three dimensional physical world it must be printed on either paper or canvas. There is a lot of progress that's being made as far as printers being able to replicate the 3-D structure of actual paintings. It will be impossible to do this with two-dimensional art produced within the computer because, by its nature, it is always going to be flat.
Another difference that is even more subtle, has to do with consciousness and how consciousness inter-penetrates with physical media like oil paintings. This applies not just to good art but to all art created in physical 3-D reality. Every painting that you see reflects the consciousness of the artist which has been recorded stroke by stroke in paint. Even parts of the painting that have been completely covered have an affect on the consciousness level of the artwork.
This is not to say that artwork created with a computer is lacking in consciousness, just that the rendering of that work on to a piece of paper or canvas is not the same thing as an actual surface that has been lovingly painted and imprinted by the artists mind and hand.
When we look at a painting by one of the Masters, such as any of the paintings that I've done studies of in this series, we are connecting with that artist through time and space. This occurs even with the flat representation of their artwork on the computer screen or book, but far more so if you are fortunate enough to interact with their work in a museum or gallery setting.
For example, the post I made yesterday about values; it wasn't until going to the Louvre in Paris that I noticed some things about masterful oil painting that had never occurred to me when looking at these works in books or on a computer screen. There is really no way to compare human perception of a physical painting with the interaction that goes on with a facsimile via print or screen.There's a deeper level of perception and enjoyment beyond digital printouts.
As I stated above, the differences can be subtle, but so much of what makes art great rather than merely good is subtle. At the end of the day I feel the true purpose of art is to move the viewer emotionally and there's no question that a physical painting can do that far more than any reproduction.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Evening Distant Tower' by Camille Corot; I really enjoyed doing this study after Camille's painting. This seems to be a bit more sepia toned than much of his other work I've seen, which tends to have more of a silvery gray quality.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Evening Distant Tower by Camille Corot |
Day Eighty Nine: Evening by John Francis Murphy
Hello and welcome to Day 89 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is 'Evening' by John Francis Murphy.
Those of you that have been following this blog will be well aware of John Francis Murphy by this point. We've done several studies after his paintings and he was one of the greatest Tonalist painters that ever picked up a brush. In today's video narration, I've read some biographical information about Murphy from the book, A History of American Tonalism 1882 to 1920 by David A Cleveland, so please check out the video.
Yesterday we were talking about my history as an artist and Tonalist landscape painter. Specifically, we were talking about color and how my approach to color has evolved as my sensitivity has expanded and experience been gained. Today I like to talk about how my approach to values has evolved.
My history as a pen and ink artist and later as a commercial artist involved in creating illustrations for various projects, really honed my understanding and approach to values in my art. Especially the work I did for screen printing reproduction, as in many cases I had very few colors to work with, so values would have to tell the story much more than color. Strong attention to values has informed my approach as a landscape painter from the very beginning.
When I first started doing landscape paintings I would mostly duplicate the value structure in my photographic reference, making small modifications aesthetically as I saw fit. After being introduced to Tonalism and really wanting to modify what I was doing into that artistic language I began by clipping the value range of my paintings. If you were to visualize a gray scale from 1 to 10, one being the darkest and ten the lightest, I would have moved from a scale like that to a scale more like 1 to 7 with seven being the lightest.
This removed quite a lot of contrast from my work that was present previously, One of the hallmarks of Tonalism is that a lot of Tonalist paintings eschew strong contrasts. Many of them are scenes of very early in the morning, overcast days, twilight and dusk scenes or nocturnes. Although I got some good results in my earliest attempts at painting in the tonal manner, I think I went a little too far with the lack of contrast. If you compare the work I was doing about five years ago with what I'm doing now, this is one of the main things that would stand out.
These days I tend to want to accentuate at least a few points in the painting with stronger light values. Normally this will be in the sky and quite often I will put the focus up against a dark vertical tree area.
I was very much influenced in this regard by my trip to the Louvre in Paris in 2012. I noticed when I was there that many of the landscape paintings were quite dark overall. However, another thing I noticed was that even if a painting was almost completely dark, was that the Masters would almost always put an area of extreme brightness in their paintings.
Having an area of strong contrasting light creates a lot more interest and excitement in the picture. After learning this firsthand by viewing the works of Master painters I incorporated that knowledge into my own painting.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Evening' by John Francis Murphy; this is one of my favorite studies out of all of the hundred days. I love the subdued olive toned greens that contrast with subtle violets, mauve tones and pearlescent grays. I'm very happy with the way my study turned out and I learned a lot by making a study after John Francis Murphy's awesome painting.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Evening by John Francis Murphy , Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
Today's study is 'Evening' by John Francis Murphy.
Those of you that have been following this blog will be well aware of John Francis Murphy by this point. We've done several studies after his paintings and he was one of the greatest Tonalist painters that ever picked up a brush. In today's video narration, I've read some biographical information about Murphy from the book, A History of American Tonalism 1882 to 1920 by David A Cleveland, so please check out the video.
Yesterday we were talking about my history as an artist and Tonalist landscape painter. Specifically, we were talking about color and how my approach to color has evolved as my sensitivity has expanded and experience been gained. Today I like to talk about how my approach to values has evolved.
My history as a pen and ink artist and later as a commercial artist involved in creating illustrations for various projects, really honed my understanding and approach to values in my art. Especially the work I did for screen printing reproduction, as in many cases I had very few colors to work with, so values would have to tell the story much more than color. Strong attention to values has informed my approach as a landscape painter from the very beginning.
When I first started doing landscape paintings I would mostly duplicate the value structure in my photographic reference, making small modifications aesthetically as I saw fit. After being introduced to Tonalism and really wanting to modify what I was doing into that artistic language I began by clipping the value range of my paintings. If you were to visualize a gray scale from 1 to 10, one being the darkest and ten the lightest, I would have moved from a scale like that to a scale more like 1 to 7 with seven being the lightest.
This removed quite a lot of contrast from my work that was present previously, One of the hallmarks of Tonalism is that a lot of Tonalist paintings eschew strong contrasts. Many of them are scenes of very early in the morning, overcast days, twilight and dusk scenes or nocturnes. Although I got some good results in my earliest attempts at painting in the tonal manner, I think I went a little too far with the lack of contrast. If you compare the work I was doing about five years ago with what I'm doing now, this is one of the main things that would stand out.
These days I tend to want to accentuate at least a few points in the painting with stronger light values. Normally this will be in the sky and quite often I will put the focus up against a dark vertical tree area.
I was very much influenced in this regard by my trip to the Louvre in Paris in 2012. I noticed when I was there that many of the landscape paintings were quite dark overall. However, another thing I noticed was that even if a painting was almost completely dark, was that the Masters would almost always put an area of extreme brightness in their paintings.
Having an area of strong contrasting light creates a lot more interest and excitement in the picture. After learning this firsthand by viewing the works of Master painters I incorporated that knowledge into my own painting.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Evening' by John Francis Murphy; this is one of my favorite studies out of all of the hundred days. I love the subdued olive toned greens that contrast with subtle violets, mauve tones and pearlescent grays. I'm very happy with the way my study turned out and I learned a lot by making a study after John Francis Murphy's awesome painting.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Evening by John Francis Murphy |
Day Eighty Eight: The Golden Hour by Charles Warren Eaton
Hello and welcome to Day 88 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is 'The Golden Hour' by Charles Warren Eaton.
I seem to have exhausted most of my sources of biographical information for Charles Warren Eaton. It's too bad that I haven't received the book by David A Cleveland I just ordered. I'm really excited to be getting this book as it is out of print, it is an exhaustive study of Eaton's body of work and history, I'm very much looking forward to reading it. Today's video features a track from my album, The Lost Horizon, so please check it out.
Over the last several weeks we've been talking about my history as an artist and my progression to becoming a landscape painter and then a Tonalist landscape painter. As promised in yesterday's post, today I'm going to talk a bit about the evolution of my understanding of color, especially as it pertains to Tonalism.
My first exposure to working with color was at the job that I held at a picture frame manufacturing company that provided custom art and framing to the hospitality industry. This was back in the 80's and 90's. Very often hotels would provide us with swatches of their carpets and drapes and other fixtures. The reason for this was so that we could do our best to match these colors with map board and in the case of moldings we would do custom stains and finishes. This, at times, could be an exceedingly difficult task because the colors had to match very closely and the boss that I worked for was a perfectionist. Ultimately though, it was good experience and good exposure to mixing and matching colors. Experience that I use everyday in my own work.
When I first started doing landscape painting I would do my best to match the colors in my photographic reference using my limited palette of pigments. If something in my photographic reference was bright, I would paint it bright and when something was muted I would paint it that way. I have a good color sense and so my paintings were always balanced, but I was not as focused in the early stages of my painting career as I am today on using color to evoke an emotive response.
This is something that Tonalism excels at, I can think of no other school of painting that uses color so powerfully to evoke emotions in the viewer. This is one of the major divergences that it made from Impressionism. Whereas Impressionism is focused on duplicating certain light effects that are found in nature using primary and secondary colors, Tonalism is more concerned with achieving tonal harmony and vibrance through manipulation of color.
In my initial attempts at Tonalist painting, I would start off by limiting the amount of highlights in my work so that whole painting moved into a lower key, as if the painting had been exposed to smoke. Sometimes I would do this with glazing, but mostly I just kept myself from pushing my highlights too far. As I continued to practice this mode of painting, it became apparent to me that stronger value contrasts would make my work more effective.
I experimented with adding a certain amount of the same color to each of my mixtures, this is a technique that quite a few Tonalist painters would use, primarily Whistler. For example, I might mix a little bit of burnt sienna into all of my green colors and allow it to peek through the blues of the sky or the grays, this would give everything a tonal vibration of sienna. You could do this with any color though. I soon abandoned this approach, it was unsatisfactory as it was too contrived.
These days I achieve tonal harmony in my work because I know my palette intimately and I know how to run my colors. It's very much a state of mind in my case, and though I follow some of the techniques I listed above, Mostly I just mix my colors intuitively and get harmony that way. I believe it also helps to work on a gray pallet. My palette is made out of metal and is quite neutral.
Another way that I achieve tonal harmony in my work is through the use of glazing, either by glazing with earth yellow or black, this has a way of subduing more intense colors although I will go into the light areas and generally paint them a few shades lighter and brighter after I've done my glazing.
Tomorrow will talk about values and contrasts so stay tuned for that.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'The Golden Hour' by Charles Warren Eaton; this is another one of Eaton's later, more simplified paintings. It is very tonal in approach and the predominant tone would be yellow. I enjoyed painting this and I got some nice textual effects in my study, especially in the sky.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - The Golden Hour by Charles Warren Eaton, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
I seem to have exhausted most of my sources of biographical information for Charles Warren Eaton. It's too bad that I haven't received the book by David A Cleveland I just ordered. I'm really excited to be getting this book as it is out of print, it is an exhaustive study of Eaton's body of work and history, I'm very much looking forward to reading it. Today's video features a track from my album, The Lost Horizon, so please check it out.
Over the last several weeks we've been talking about my history as an artist and my progression to becoming a landscape painter and then a Tonalist landscape painter. As promised in yesterday's post, today I'm going to talk a bit about the evolution of my understanding of color, especially as it pertains to Tonalism.
My first exposure to working with color was at the job that I held at a picture frame manufacturing company that provided custom art and framing to the hospitality industry. This was back in the 80's and 90's. Very often hotels would provide us with swatches of their carpets and drapes and other fixtures. The reason for this was so that we could do our best to match these colors with map board and in the case of moldings we would do custom stains and finishes. This, at times, could be an exceedingly difficult task because the colors had to match very closely and the boss that I worked for was a perfectionist. Ultimately though, it was good experience and good exposure to mixing and matching colors. Experience that I use everyday in my own work.
When I first started doing landscape painting I would do my best to match the colors in my photographic reference using my limited palette of pigments. If something in my photographic reference was bright, I would paint it bright and when something was muted I would paint it that way. I have a good color sense and so my paintings were always balanced, but I was not as focused in the early stages of my painting career as I am today on using color to evoke an emotive response.
This is something that Tonalism excels at, I can think of no other school of painting that uses color so powerfully to evoke emotions in the viewer. This is one of the major divergences that it made from Impressionism. Whereas Impressionism is focused on duplicating certain light effects that are found in nature using primary and secondary colors, Tonalism is more concerned with achieving tonal harmony and vibrance through manipulation of color.
In my initial attempts at Tonalist painting, I would start off by limiting the amount of highlights in my work so that whole painting moved into a lower key, as if the painting had been exposed to smoke. Sometimes I would do this with glazing, but mostly I just kept myself from pushing my highlights too far. As I continued to practice this mode of painting, it became apparent to me that stronger value contrasts would make my work more effective.
I experimented with adding a certain amount of the same color to each of my mixtures, this is a technique that quite a few Tonalist painters would use, primarily Whistler. For example, I might mix a little bit of burnt sienna into all of my green colors and allow it to peek through the blues of the sky or the grays, this would give everything a tonal vibration of sienna. You could do this with any color though. I soon abandoned this approach, it was unsatisfactory as it was too contrived.
These days I achieve tonal harmony in my work because I know my palette intimately and I know how to run my colors. It's very much a state of mind in my case, and though I follow some of the techniques I listed above, Mostly I just mix my colors intuitively and get harmony that way. I believe it also helps to work on a gray pallet. My palette is made out of metal and is quite neutral.
Another way that I achieve tonal harmony in my work is through the use of glazing, either by glazing with earth yellow or black, this has a way of subduing more intense colors although I will go into the light areas and generally paint them a few shades lighter and brighter after I've done my glazing.
Tomorrow will talk about values and contrasts so stay tuned for that.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'The Golden Hour' by Charles Warren Eaton; this is another one of Eaton's later, more simplified paintings. It is very tonal in approach and the predominant tone would be yellow. I enjoyed painting this and I got some nice textual effects in my study, especially in the sky.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, The Golden Hour by Charles Warren Eaton |
Day Eighty Seven: After a Rainy Day by Thomas Burton
Hello and welcome to day 87 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today study is of 'After a Rainy Day' by Thomas Burton.
Thomas Burton was an English artist and not actually a Tonalist however I felt that this particular scene evidenced many qualities of Tonalism and that why I included it in this series. I will be reading some biographical information about Thomas Burton in today's video narration, so please check that out.
We been talking over the last several weeks about my progression as a Tonalist landscape painter. We've talked about proportions and surface quality. Today I like to talk about about edges. We had one post in this series already where I was speaking about edges but I thought it would be good to maybe talk today about my struggle to get to the sort of fracture and diffused edges that are most apparent in the work of George Inness but also other Tonalist painters.
Someday I may try to incorporate all of this information that I've shared on this blog into a book on how to paint in a Tonalist way. No guarantees on that, but it's an idea that has crossed my mind. One of the reasons is that it would be cool, is that you would be able to look at photos of paintings from my earliest attempts at Tonalism to go along with the text. For now you will have to use your imagination.
One of the main differences between Tonalist paintings and the way that I was working prior to that, are the softer more diffused edges that are essentially a part of the Tonalist style. My earliest attempts at working in this mode, I think I got my edges too soft. I would paint by building up the edges very gradually with quite small brushes. This is the way that I believe Camille Corot worked. I got some okay results working this way, however I was not satisfied.
After moving to New Zealand, my work became even softer to the point where almost no brushstrokes were actually in evidence. This was a result of doing multiple layers of oil paint with semi translucent amounts of pigment applied with small brushes. Eventually I abandoned that approach and started working with much larger brushes in a looser, more fractured way. We talked already about how I paint edges in one or two blog posts in this series, so I won't get too much into the mechanics here.
Today, I am interested in talking about nailing the mental/internal approach to edges which is not just affected by the brushes you use, it's actually controlled more by how you see. It's been several years since I've been here New Zealand working at this everyday and I feel that the edges that I get in my paintings now are quite good. Doing these small paintings has helped me even more with edges, in that it has given me the opportunity to study at the feet of the Masters directly by making studies from their paintings.
Having the right approach to edges is one of the most crucial aspects of getting a Tonalist effect. There are other major factors such as color which we will talk a bit more about tomorrow.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'After a Rainy Day' by Thomas Burton; this is one of the few nighttime scenes that I took on in this series. In the current paintings that I'm doing I am painting a couple of night scenes. It is a challenge to paint this type of scene.
It's very easy to take the way things look at night for granted, photographs do very poor job of capturing this look, There have been some painters that have absolutely nailed it though and I hope to one day be in that category.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - After a Rainy Day by Thomas Burton, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
Thomas Burton was an English artist and not actually a Tonalist however I felt that this particular scene evidenced many qualities of Tonalism and that why I included it in this series. I will be reading some biographical information about Thomas Burton in today's video narration, so please check that out.
We been talking over the last several weeks about my progression as a Tonalist landscape painter. We've talked about proportions and surface quality. Today I like to talk about about edges. We had one post in this series already where I was speaking about edges but I thought it would be good to maybe talk today about my struggle to get to the sort of fracture and diffused edges that are most apparent in the work of George Inness but also other Tonalist painters.
Someday I may try to incorporate all of this information that I've shared on this blog into a book on how to paint in a Tonalist way. No guarantees on that, but it's an idea that has crossed my mind. One of the reasons is that it would be cool, is that you would be able to look at photos of paintings from my earliest attempts at Tonalism to go along with the text. For now you will have to use your imagination.
One of the main differences between Tonalist paintings and the way that I was working prior to that, are the softer more diffused edges that are essentially a part of the Tonalist style. My earliest attempts at working in this mode, I think I got my edges too soft. I would paint by building up the edges very gradually with quite small brushes. This is the way that I believe Camille Corot worked. I got some okay results working this way, however I was not satisfied.
After moving to New Zealand, my work became even softer to the point where almost no brushstrokes were actually in evidence. This was a result of doing multiple layers of oil paint with semi translucent amounts of pigment applied with small brushes. Eventually I abandoned that approach and started working with much larger brushes in a looser, more fractured way. We talked already about how I paint edges in one or two blog posts in this series, so I won't get too much into the mechanics here.
Today, I am interested in talking about nailing the mental/internal approach to edges which is not just affected by the brushes you use, it's actually controlled more by how you see. It's been several years since I've been here New Zealand working at this everyday and I feel that the edges that I get in my paintings now are quite good. Doing these small paintings has helped me even more with edges, in that it has given me the opportunity to study at the feet of the Masters directly by making studies from their paintings.
Having the right approach to edges is one of the most crucial aspects of getting a Tonalist effect. There are other major factors such as color which we will talk a bit more about tomorrow.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'After a Rainy Day' by Thomas Burton; this is one of the few nighttime scenes that I took on in this series. In the current paintings that I'm doing I am painting a couple of night scenes. It is a challenge to paint this type of scene.
It's very easy to take the way things look at night for granted, photographs do very poor job of capturing this look, There have been some painters that have absolutely nailed it though and I hope to one day be in that category.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, After a Rainy Day by Thomas Burton |
Day Eighty Six: Autumn Gold by George Inness
Hello and welcome to day 86 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today study is 'Autumn Gold' by George Inness.
We've done quite a lot of studies after Inness paintings on this blog and we have several more to go. I will be reading from the book George Inness by Nicolai Cikovsky on today's video narration, so please check that out.
Over the last week or so, we've been talking about my history as a landscape painter and some of the challenges I've run into in my pursuit of a more Tonalist approach. Today I'd like to talk a bit more about texture and surface quality. This is a subject I've broached a few times in this blog, but I thought it would be good to expand a little bit more on it since this is one of the things that I wrangled with as I was trying to get my painting into a more Tonalist framework.
I began initially doing paintings on canvas and then I progressed to working on different types of wood. I really like having a bit of wood grain coming through and interacting with the texture of the brushstrokes. But I was also intrigued by the idea of working on a more heavily textured surface.
My initial experiments were with regular white acrylic gesso. I tried applying this in many different ways. I tried a sort of spackle approach, I also tried putting a bunch of gesso on the board and then just pushing it against a flat surface like a table and then pulling up. I did several paintings with these heavily textured boards.
There was a problem with the white gesso in that if I had to pick at the painting in any way I would be rewarded with a white spot. At one point I attempted mixing in an under color with the white gesso but the effect was too pastel for me.
I sort of liked the paintings with the texture but in some cases I found it to be too distracting. I really hadn't arrived at the proper textural approach, and so sometime around when I moved to New Zealand I decided to abandon texturising my boards. This was about the same time that I decided to work in a larger size of 8x12. At that time, I was not doing studies for the larger versions of my paintings I was just doing the 8x12 paintings.
The way I was approaching the surface of the boards was to apply several coats of transparent acrylic sanding sealer with a tint of burnt sienna added to it. This worked okay but I was challenged with some of my earliest attempts in that the brush that I used to apply the sealer would leave long stroke marks on my board that could be seen in the final painting.
I eventually found a way to apply the tinted sanding sealer so that the wood panel was completely smooth leaving only the subtle texture of the wood grain coming up through the painting. I worked like this for a good while. Until one day, I decided that it would be good to do a small study or small version of each motif that I was planning on painting. This is when I decided to get back into texturising. I wanted the boards at the small sizes that I was working with to have some texture to help pull the paint off of the brush.
The technique that I eventually arrived at for applying texture was to use a transparent acrylic gesso with some burnt sienna acrylic paint added to it. I would apply this with the side of a big flat brush using a sort of smacking gesture. This technique works very well, especially if you go over the texture a few times with the side of a clean brush so that the texture is subtle and not too intense. This is the technique that I use now on all my boards both the studies and my larger paintings.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Autumn Gold'; this is a late middle period George Inness painting. I like the composition quite a lot and his use of the pond in the center is very effective. I enjoyed painting the warm golden tones and I am happy with the way my study turned out.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Autumn Gold by George Inness, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
We've done quite a lot of studies after Inness paintings on this blog and we have several more to go. I will be reading from the book George Inness by Nicolai Cikovsky on today's video narration, so please check that out.
Over the last week or so, we've been talking about my history as a landscape painter and some of the challenges I've run into in my pursuit of a more Tonalist approach. Today I'd like to talk a bit more about texture and surface quality. This is a subject I've broached a few times in this blog, but I thought it would be good to expand a little bit more on it since this is one of the things that I wrangled with as I was trying to get my painting into a more Tonalist framework.
I began initially doing paintings on canvas and then I progressed to working on different types of wood. I really like having a bit of wood grain coming through and interacting with the texture of the brushstrokes. But I was also intrigued by the idea of working on a more heavily textured surface.
My initial experiments were with regular white acrylic gesso. I tried applying this in many different ways. I tried a sort of spackle approach, I also tried putting a bunch of gesso on the board and then just pushing it against a flat surface like a table and then pulling up. I did several paintings with these heavily textured boards.
There was a problem with the white gesso in that if I had to pick at the painting in any way I would be rewarded with a white spot. At one point I attempted mixing in an under color with the white gesso but the effect was too pastel for me.
I sort of liked the paintings with the texture but in some cases I found it to be too distracting. I really hadn't arrived at the proper textural approach, and so sometime around when I moved to New Zealand I decided to abandon texturising my boards. This was about the same time that I decided to work in a larger size of 8x12. At that time, I was not doing studies for the larger versions of my paintings I was just doing the 8x12 paintings.
The way I was approaching the surface of the boards was to apply several coats of transparent acrylic sanding sealer with a tint of burnt sienna added to it. This worked okay but I was challenged with some of my earliest attempts in that the brush that I used to apply the sealer would leave long stroke marks on my board that could be seen in the final painting.
I eventually found a way to apply the tinted sanding sealer so that the wood panel was completely smooth leaving only the subtle texture of the wood grain coming up through the painting. I worked like this for a good while. Until one day, I decided that it would be good to do a small study or small version of each motif that I was planning on painting. This is when I decided to get back into texturising. I wanted the boards at the small sizes that I was working with to have some texture to help pull the paint off of the brush.
The technique that I eventually arrived at for applying texture was to use a transparent acrylic gesso with some burnt sienna acrylic paint added to it. I would apply this with the side of a big flat brush using a sort of smacking gesture. This technique works very well, especially if you go over the texture a few times with the side of a clean brush so that the texture is subtle and not too intense. This is the technique that I use now on all my boards both the studies and my larger paintings.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Autumn Gold'; this is a late middle period George Inness painting. I like the composition quite a lot and his use of the pond in the center is very effective. I enjoyed painting the warm golden tones and I am happy with the way my study turned out.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Autumn Gold by George Inness |
Day Eighty Five: Bruges Moonlight by Charles Warren Eaton
Hello and welcome to Day 85 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is 'Bruges Moonlight' by Charles Warren Eaton.
Most of you following this blog will be aware of Charles Warren Eaton by now. He's in the top three Tonalists that have ever painted. I've been reading from the book a history of American Tonalism by David Cleveland for our last several Eaton studies, and I will continue on with that today in the video narration, so please check that out.
Continuing on with our conversation about my history as a landscape painter; yesterday we were talking about my initial exposure to Tonalism and some of the ways that I was trying to move my art into this mode of expression. As I said yesterday, the discovery of lead white was major as far as achieving some of the buttery tones and effects of the Tonalist Masters. Another thing that I noticed especially in the work of George Inness was a clever use of proportion in their paintings.
It's very easy to take something like the proportions of a rectangle that a painting is done with for granted. It's easy to do this because we often bypass the actual shape of the painting and just perceive the landscape within. The proportions that a painter uses has a very great effect on the art. Different proportions will give different results perceptually. After having discovered this, I began to work with a proportion that is essentially the golden ratio. Since I was painting quite small, the size that I was working with was 6x9. Previous to that I'd been working with 6x8 as a predominant size for the paintings that I was doing.
6x8 is far more standard than 6x9. You can purchase ready-made frames in the size of 6x8 whereas that is impossible with a 6x9, it's not until you get up to larger sizes like 24x36 that you actually have any sort of ready-made frames in the golden ratio proportion. The golden ratio proportion is quite panoramic and I noticed a change in my art immediately. I was quite enamored with this proportion to the point where that's the only proportion I was painting with. When I moved to New Zealand in 2010 I decided that I needed to start working larger so I began doing paintings in a size of 8x12. Which is not really a standard size although it is possible at times to find ready-made frames in this proportion.
The reason I keep bringing up framing is that it is far cheaper if you can find an attractive ready-made frame to put on your painting than to do custom framing. For that reason I eventually abandoned 8x12, but not before I produced many paintings in that size, as well as12x18 (also golden ratio). Most of the paintings I did for my first one-man show were these two sizes plus a few 12x12's which is a square format.
I got into the square format after doing some paintings for a group show here in New Zealand. I had asked the owner of the gallery what sizes they were looking for and they had given me a piece of mat board that was cut approximately 8x8. If it had not been for this I don't know if I ever would've stumbled upon working in the square proportion. As it stands, I do about one third of my paintings these days in a square format.
What I enjoy about the square format is how it allows me to put more of an emphasis on the sky. Another size that I do a lot of these days is 8x10. 8x10 is not one of my favorite proportions to work with but it seems to be such a standard for frames that for a time I was doing only 8x10 and 8x8 paintings. I believe 8x10 is so popular because it was a standard photographic paper size for a long time. It took me a while to wrap my head around working in this proportion, a lot of times I just sort of treat it as an elongated square and that seems to help.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Bruges Moonlight' by Charles Warren Eaton; this painting is super famous and is one that comes up readily in any search of Eaton's paintings. I really enjoyed doing the study. I did feel somewhat constrained by the small size in this particular instance.
His painting is so simplified and designed that I feel a lot of its success relies upon a certain finessing of various angles of the trees. I did my best and I am relatively happy with the way my study turned out. I could see at some point in the future getting my own painting to a level of simplification and design that is in evidence in 'Bruges Moonlight'.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Bruges Moonlight by Charles Warren Eaton, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x5, Oil on wood panel |
Most of you following this blog will be aware of Charles Warren Eaton by now. He's in the top three Tonalists that have ever painted. I've been reading from the book a history of American Tonalism by David Cleveland for our last several Eaton studies, and I will continue on with that today in the video narration, so please check that out.
Continuing on with our conversation about my history as a landscape painter; yesterday we were talking about my initial exposure to Tonalism and some of the ways that I was trying to move my art into this mode of expression. As I said yesterday, the discovery of lead white was major as far as achieving some of the buttery tones and effects of the Tonalist Masters. Another thing that I noticed especially in the work of George Inness was a clever use of proportion in their paintings.
It's very easy to take something like the proportions of a rectangle that a painting is done with for granted. It's easy to do this because we often bypass the actual shape of the painting and just perceive the landscape within. The proportions that a painter uses has a very great effect on the art. Different proportions will give different results perceptually. After having discovered this, I began to work with a proportion that is essentially the golden ratio. Since I was painting quite small, the size that I was working with was 6x9. Previous to that I'd been working with 6x8 as a predominant size for the paintings that I was doing.
6x8 is far more standard than 6x9. You can purchase ready-made frames in the size of 6x8 whereas that is impossible with a 6x9, it's not until you get up to larger sizes like 24x36 that you actually have any sort of ready-made frames in the golden ratio proportion. The golden ratio proportion is quite panoramic and I noticed a change in my art immediately. I was quite enamored with this proportion to the point where that's the only proportion I was painting with. When I moved to New Zealand in 2010 I decided that I needed to start working larger so I began doing paintings in a size of 8x12. Which is not really a standard size although it is possible at times to find ready-made frames in this proportion.
The reason I keep bringing up framing is that it is far cheaper if you can find an attractive ready-made frame to put on your painting than to do custom framing. For that reason I eventually abandoned 8x12, but not before I produced many paintings in that size, as well as12x18 (also golden ratio). Most of the paintings I did for my first one-man show were these two sizes plus a few 12x12's which is a square format.
I got into the square format after doing some paintings for a group show here in New Zealand. I had asked the owner of the gallery what sizes they were looking for and they had given me a piece of mat board that was cut approximately 8x8. If it had not been for this I don't know if I ever would've stumbled upon working in the square proportion. As it stands, I do about one third of my paintings these days in a square format.
What I enjoy about the square format is how it allows me to put more of an emphasis on the sky. Another size that I do a lot of these days is 8x10. 8x10 is not one of my favorite proportions to work with but it seems to be such a standard for frames that for a time I was doing only 8x10 and 8x8 paintings. I believe 8x10 is so popular because it was a standard photographic paper size for a long time. It took me a while to wrap my head around working in this proportion, a lot of times I just sort of treat it as an elongated square and that seems to help.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Bruges Moonlight' by Charles Warren Eaton; this painting is super famous and is one that comes up readily in any search of Eaton's paintings. I really enjoyed doing the study. I did feel somewhat constrained by the small size in this particular instance.
His painting is so simplified and designed that I feel a lot of its success relies upon a certain finessing of various angles of the trees. I did my best and I am relatively happy with the way my study turned out. I could see at some point in the future getting my own painting to a level of simplification and design that is in evidence in 'Bruges Moonlight'.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Bruges Moonlight by Charles Warren Eaton |
Day Eighty Four: Remembrance of Lake Garda by Camille Corot
Hello and welcome to day eighty four of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is 'Remembrance of Lake Garda' by Camille Corot.
As I've written in previous blog posts where we featured paintings by Camille, he is not actually a Tonalist painter. He is a member of the Barbizon school. He is in this series because his influence on Tonalism was extensive and also because I wanted to learn more about how he put paintings together. Today's video features a track off my album The Light in Darkness.
Continuing on with our current discussion regarding my personal history as a Tonalist landscape painter; as I was saying in our last blog post it was in 2009 that I had become inspired by exposure to actual Tonalist paintings that I saw at the de Young Museum.
From this point forward I started digging into what Tonalism was and how I could manage to do paintings in this manner. I was off to a good start by using wood panels. They already gave my paintings a more interesting surface finish than a standard canvas board would.
The next discovery that I made was lead white paint. On the surface it might seem that white is white but the reality is that there are three white pigments currently in use by artists. These are lead white, titanium white and zinc white.
Lead white has been in use by human beings to make art since before time was measured. As a matter of fact, on the scale that is used to assign codes to pigments, lead white is PB1. In other words, lead white is the first pigment that is named. Lead has fallen out of favor in recent times for two reasons. The first being that it was a common ingredient in house paints for many years and when lead white starts peeling off of a house, the chips taste sweet. Unfortunately children will often eat these lead chips and as we all know it's not very good for human consumption in any way.
The second reason that lead white has fallen out of favor was the invention of titanium white. Titanium white is a very opaque and cool white. This is the primary pigment that you will get in any tube of white paint that is not labeled in any way. The third white that is used these days is zinc white. Zinc white is far more transparent and translucent than titanium white and for this reason it is often mixed with titanium white (it is in many tubes of paint that are labeled as just titanium white). There is a huge problem with zinc white though, and that it is very prone to cracking. I try to use it not at all in my work.
The reason why lead white is important to our discussion of Tonalism and Tonalist landscape painting is that lead white has properties that are very unique especially in comparison to the now more popular titanium white. Where titanium white is cool lead white is warm. Where titanium white mixed with other colors will give a chalky feeling, lead white is far more friendly and easy to use. Lead white has many unique properties and I highly recommend that if you are a painter that you try out the tube.
Personally, I like to mix my lead white with titanium white. This way I get the best of both worlds. I get the coverage of titanium white and the warm, yielding on chalkiness of lead white. I came up with the idea to mix them together several years ago, when it occurred to me that I would have to use quite a lot of lead white paint to get coverage in certain areas of my painting. If I had to choose between the two, I would choose lead white every time. It's just more giving and cooperative than titanium white.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Remembrance of Lake Garda'; I'm very pleased with the way the study turned out, my actual reference image was very lo rez (see below) and for that reason I could make out almost no detail. I really enjoy Corot's composition here and I was glad that I was able to pull off a good study from the limited reference that I had to hand.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Remembrance of Lake Garda by Camille Corot, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
As I've written in previous blog posts where we featured paintings by Camille, he is not actually a Tonalist painter. He is a member of the Barbizon school. He is in this series because his influence on Tonalism was extensive and also because I wanted to learn more about how he put paintings together. Today's video features a track off my album The Light in Darkness.
Continuing on with our current discussion regarding my personal history as a Tonalist landscape painter; as I was saying in our last blog post it was in 2009 that I had become inspired by exposure to actual Tonalist paintings that I saw at the de Young Museum.
From this point forward I started digging into what Tonalism was and how I could manage to do paintings in this manner. I was off to a good start by using wood panels. They already gave my paintings a more interesting surface finish than a standard canvas board would.
The next discovery that I made was lead white paint. On the surface it might seem that white is white but the reality is that there are three white pigments currently in use by artists. These are lead white, titanium white and zinc white.
Lead white has been in use by human beings to make art since before time was measured. As a matter of fact, on the scale that is used to assign codes to pigments, lead white is PB1. In other words, lead white is the first pigment that is named. Lead has fallen out of favor in recent times for two reasons. The first being that it was a common ingredient in house paints for many years and when lead white starts peeling off of a house, the chips taste sweet. Unfortunately children will often eat these lead chips and as we all know it's not very good for human consumption in any way.
The second reason that lead white has fallen out of favor was the invention of titanium white. Titanium white is a very opaque and cool white. This is the primary pigment that you will get in any tube of white paint that is not labeled in any way. The third white that is used these days is zinc white. Zinc white is far more transparent and translucent than titanium white and for this reason it is often mixed with titanium white (it is in many tubes of paint that are labeled as just titanium white). There is a huge problem with zinc white though, and that it is very prone to cracking. I try to use it not at all in my work.
The reason why lead white is important to our discussion of Tonalism and Tonalist landscape painting is that lead white has properties that are very unique especially in comparison to the now more popular titanium white. Where titanium white is cool lead white is warm. Where titanium white mixed with other colors will give a chalky feeling, lead white is far more friendly and easy to use. Lead white has many unique properties and I highly recommend that if you are a painter that you try out the tube.
Personally, I like to mix my lead white with titanium white. This way I get the best of both worlds. I get the coverage of titanium white and the warm, yielding on chalkiness of lead white. I came up with the idea to mix them together several years ago, when it occurred to me that I would have to use quite a lot of lead white paint to get coverage in certain areas of my painting. If I had to choose between the two, I would choose lead white every time. It's just more giving and cooperative than titanium white.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Remembrance of Lake Garda by Camille Corot |
Day Eighty Three: Landscape near Perugia by George Inness
Hello and welcome to Day 83 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is of 'Landscape near Perugia' by George Inness.
Today's study is a mid period George Inness. For the last several George Inness studies that we've done, we have been reading from the book 'George Inness' by Nikolai Cikovsky on our video narration for that day. Today we're going to keep that going so please check the video out.
Continuing on with our discussion of my history as a landscape painter. As I stated in the previous blog post I started out working in a more Impressionist mode. I think that many landscape painters these days are working in an Impressionist manner whether they are aware of it or not. I can't say I was all that aware of it myself until through my research and study of the history of oil painting, I gradually became familiar of many modes of landscape painting that were popular in the United States that had been pretty much forgotten.
Sometime in 2008 my (now) wife came out to visit me in California from New Zealand. Though I lived in San Jose which is only about 60 miles away from San Francisco, I very infrequently would go up to the city. But, because I wanted to show her the sites we made a trip not just to San Francisco but also to Oakland.
At that time I was very deep into oil painting, doing a lot of paintings and reading a lot about the history of landscape painting online. I'm not exactly sure where and when I first became aware of George Inness. I was going to say it was the blog of Stapleton Kearns but I now recall that I probably discovered his blog in the process of researching George Inness.
Either way I was aware that there were a few paintings of his at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. They have a fantastic wing of American landscape paintings. Many are from the Hudson River school era but there are quite a few Luminist and Tonalist works there as well.
I was completely blown away by the mastery that I saw that day at the Museum. These guys had done paintings that positively glowed, not to mention the exquisite surface quality of their work. I believe I've talked a bit about surface quality in this blog. All I will say today is that, I think many modern artists are almost completely unaware of this aspect of their work, to the detriment of their paintings.
I left the Museum that day totally infused with a desire to improve the quality of my own paintings and with a really good idea of the direction that I wanted to move in artistically. I wasn't exactly sure why this era of landscape painting had been subsumed by Impressionism but I knew then that I wanted to become a Tonalist painter.
Tomorrow we'll talk a bit more about Tonalism.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Landscape near Perugia' by George Inness; this painting has a very unique sky in it and I almost didn't want to do a study because of that. It is however a very strong mid period George Inness painting so I included it in this series.
I really like the way that Inness has modulated from greens in the foreground to mauves and grays in the background and I'm quite happy with my study from his painting.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Landscape near Perugia by George Inness, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
Today's study is a mid period George Inness. For the last several George Inness studies that we've done, we have been reading from the book 'George Inness' by Nikolai Cikovsky on our video narration for that day. Today we're going to keep that going so please check the video out.
Continuing on with our discussion of my history as a landscape painter. As I stated in the previous blog post I started out working in a more Impressionist mode. I think that many landscape painters these days are working in an Impressionist manner whether they are aware of it or not. I can't say I was all that aware of it myself until through my research and study of the history of oil painting, I gradually became familiar of many modes of landscape painting that were popular in the United States that had been pretty much forgotten.
Sometime in 2008 my (now) wife came out to visit me in California from New Zealand. Though I lived in San Jose which is only about 60 miles away from San Francisco, I very infrequently would go up to the city. But, because I wanted to show her the sites we made a trip not just to San Francisco but also to Oakland.
At that time I was very deep into oil painting, doing a lot of paintings and reading a lot about the history of landscape painting online. I'm not exactly sure where and when I first became aware of George Inness. I was going to say it was the blog of Stapleton Kearns but I now recall that I probably discovered his blog in the process of researching George Inness.
Either way I was aware that there were a few paintings of his at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. They have a fantastic wing of American landscape paintings. Many are from the Hudson River school era but there are quite a few Luminist and Tonalist works there as well.
I was completely blown away by the mastery that I saw that day at the Museum. These guys had done paintings that positively glowed, not to mention the exquisite surface quality of their work. I believe I've talked a bit about surface quality in this blog. All I will say today is that, I think many modern artists are almost completely unaware of this aspect of their work, to the detriment of their paintings.
I left the Museum that day totally infused with a desire to improve the quality of my own paintings and with a really good idea of the direction that I wanted to move in artistically. I wasn't exactly sure why this era of landscape painting had been subsumed by Impressionism but I knew then that I wanted to become a Tonalist painter.
Tomorrow we'll talk a bit more about Tonalism.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Landscape near Perugia' by George Inness; this painting has a very unique sky in it and I almost didn't want to do a study because of that. It is however a very strong mid period George Inness painting so I included it in this series.
I really like the way that Inness has modulated from greens in the foreground to mauves and grays in the background and I'm quite happy with my study from his painting.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
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| Original painting, Landscape near Perugia by George Inness |
Day Eighty Two: Evening by John Francis Murphy
Hello and welcome to day 82 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today study is Evening by John Francis Murphy.
Those of you that have followed this blog for a while will be well aware of Francis Murphy by now. We've done many studies of some of his best paintings. In today's video narration I will be discussing some biographical information about John Francis Murphy from the book a History of American Tonalism by David Cleveland so check that out.
We've been talking for the last week about my progression as an artist into becoming a landscape painter and about my earliest days of painting. We're going to continue on with that discussion today. I was working along in my sort of Impressionist style quite happily in those early days. I had discovered painting on wood panels as opposed to canvas and I was also experimenting with different types of painting mediums.
One of the mediums that I tried early on was Galkyd by Gamblin. This medium is quite a bit thinner than Liquin and also produced a glossier finish. I am not a fan of the glossy finish, also there were a few paintings I did with this medium where upon close inspection there were tiny bubbles in my painting. Definitely not an effect size I found desirable. Others, I guess, have better results with Galkyd .
I eventually settled on using Liquin as my primary medium. These days I use a medium made by Archival called Odorless Lean. I'm not sure if this medium is available in the US or not as it is made in Australia. This is a very liquid type of medium that gives me good paint movement and is also very fast drying period, it also has the big advantage of being far cheaper than Liquin.
While I was in the process of doing all these early paintings I was researching books and also online. There is a site called Wet Canvas. They have a forum with a good range of artists there from absolute amateurs to those with a lot of experience. I did learn some things from reading their forum. I was surprised to seet how involved people were with their materials especially their painting mediums.
A lot of amateur artists believe that the right materials are somehow magically going to help them create professional quality work. While it's true that using crappy paint or shoddy mediums on inferior substrates will make it a struggle to create a good painting, it is still possible. The opposite is not true however, you can have the most expensive paint, the finest mediums and be working on the priciest linen is still produce terrible amateurish work. As with anything else difficult to accomplish the way to improve your painting is to create a lot of paintings. There is no real shortcuts.
Tomorrow I'm going to talk a bit about my transition from a semi Impressionist into a Tonalist painter so stay tuned for that.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about Evening by John Francis Murphy; this painting is a great example of Tonalism in its purest form. There are many different paintings that can fit into the category of Tonalism but I would put this particular work right in the center of that range.
I really enjoyed doing this study. As I have enjoyed doing studies of all of the John Francis Murphy paintings in this series. Of all the painters that we have covered in the series I would have to say that I resonate the most as an artist with John Francis Murphy.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Evening by John Francis Murphy, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
Those of you that have followed this blog for a while will be well aware of Francis Murphy by now. We've done many studies of some of his best paintings. In today's video narration I will be discussing some biographical information about John Francis Murphy from the book a History of American Tonalism by David Cleveland so check that out.
We've been talking for the last week about my progression as an artist into becoming a landscape painter and about my earliest days of painting. We're going to continue on with that discussion today. I was working along in my sort of Impressionist style quite happily in those early days. I had discovered painting on wood panels as opposed to canvas and I was also experimenting with different types of painting mediums.
One of the mediums that I tried early on was Galkyd by Gamblin. This medium is quite a bit thinner than Liquin and also produced a glossier finish. I am not a fan of the glossy finish, also there were a few paintings I did with this medium where upon close inspection there were tiny bubbles in my painting. Definitely not an effect size I found desirable. Others, I guess, have better results with Galkyd .
I eventually settled on using Liquin as my primary medium. These days I use a medium made by Archival called Odorless Lean. I'm not sure if this medium is available in the US or not as it is made in Australia. This is a very liquid type of medium that gives me good paint movement and is also very fast drying period, it also has the big advantage of being far cheaper than Liquin.
While I was in the process of doing all these early paintings I was researching books and also online. There is a site called Wet Canvas. They have a forum with a good range of artists there from absolute amateurs to those with a lot of experience. I did learn some things from reading their forum. I was surprised to seet how involved people were with their materials especially their painting mediums.
A lot of amateur artists believe that the right materials are somehow magically going to help them create professional quality work. While it's true that using crappy paint or shoddy mediums on inferior substrates will make it a struggle to create a good painting, it is still possible. The opposite is not true however, you can have the most expensive paint, the finest mediums and be working on the priciest linen is still produce terrible amateurish work. As with anything else difficult to accomplish the way to improve your painting is to create a lot of paintings. There is no real shortcuts.
Tomorrow I'm going to talk a bit about my transition from a semi Impressionist into a Tonalist painter so stay tuned for that.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about Evening by John Francis Murphy; this painting is a great example of Tonalism in its purest form. There are many different paintings that can fit into the category of Tonalism but I would put this particular work right in the center of that range.
I really enjoyed doing this study. As I have enjoyed doing studies of all of the John Francis Murphy paintings in this series. Of all the painters that we have covered in the series I would have to say that I resonate the most as an artist with John Francis Murphy.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Evening by John Francis Murphy |
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 |