Day Seven: Lengthening Shadows
Hello and welcome to day seven of 100 days of tonalism.
Painted after - Lengthening Shadows by Alden Weir, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x5, Oil on wood panel
Today's study is 'Lengthening Shadows' by Alden Weir.
Ok, I don't know much about Weir. Now that that's off my chest, I'll say I really like this painting by him. It's one of the first ones that came to mind, as I discussed in the video. Alden worked in the late 1800's and early 1900's. He was not purely a tonalist, as he would do Impressionist paintings also when it suited him.
BTW, here's a link to a great article by
"What is Tonalism"
David is a great writer. He does tend to intellectualize a bit but he is an art writer and much of what art writers seem to do is to try to break down things that are. by nature intuitive into a structure that non artists can appreciate.
Todays video... I get points for uploading, I was not quite ready as this study is the second version I painted of this scene. I'd forgotten to photograph it yesterday and that's why we had the George Inness study instead of Alden. pay no attention to the man behind the curtain folks it's all done with smoke and mirrors...
I'm starting to realize how much work these next 93 days will entail. No worries though, I'm determined to post every day. If you want to have some fun, watch and wait to see if I make it...
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
A bit about 'Lengthening Shadows' by Alden Weir. Looks good eh? I'm happy with it. Definately a study in greens. Alden took a fairly boring scene and made an interesting painting from it. I 've gained a lot of insight by making this study.
There's quite a bit of scenery here in New Zealand that looks like this. One day I'm going to make a painting of the side of a hill.
Maybe.
To see more of my work, visit my site
Original Painting,Lengthening Shadows by Alden Weir
Day Six: Sunrise by George Inness
Hello and welcome to day six of 100 days of tonalism.
Painted after - Sunrise by George Inness, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel
Today's study is 'Sunrise' by George Inness
Three Inness' in six days! I warned you I'd be leaning heavily on Inness, after all he is my favorite painter ever. This painting is late period Inness and is highly characteristic of that period in that there is a near total absence of detail.
This painting also strongly evidences inness' unique approach to composition. Nobody else has composed landscapes like this, then or now. In fact I have have a book called
"George Inness and the science of landscape"
that tries very hard to decipher his method. I confess, I've not finished reading it but the author does have some good ideas. Personally I think his process was highly intuitive, though he may have justified that intuition with some half-baked mystical geometry after the fact.
Still getting the hang of the audio portion of the videos. I know they could be better if I spent more time on them. I'm afraid that will not be happening any time soon though so, you'll just have to bear with my off the cuff ad libbing. I reckon it's better than complete silence.
Speaking of silence, all the background music on these videos is written and performed by yours truly. If you'd like to hear more of my music you can go to my site
. There's lots to see and hear there.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
A bit about 'Sunrise' by George Inness. Like I said on the video, I accidently painted this twice. I wish I could blame this on my assistant but, I don't have an assistant. Well, my wife helps out here and there (she's my proof reader for one), but mostly I had to get this project organized on my own and I must have lost the plot the day I was sorting my reference images out.
I am pretty happy with this study. I took quite a few liberties but, as I've stated before, the point of this exercise is not 100% accurate copies of the source paintings but rather an attempt to capture the essence of each scene as I see it. Every aspect of the painting process is done by hand with no tracing or image projecting being utilized.
I have toyed with both of those processes with my own work in the past. Using an opaque projector to trace my drawings onto my painting surface or alternatively using a grid system. These days I prefer to draw free hand with my brush. I feel this makes better paintings. It's best to let the paintings breath, if you work too tightly at the start, its harder to accomplish a successful finish.
To see more of my work, visit my site
Original painting, Sunrise by George Inness
Day Five: River Landscape by Charles Warren Eaton
Welcome to day five of 100 days of tonalism.
Painted after - River Landscape by Charles Warren Eaton, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel
Today's study is 'River Landscape' by Charles Warren Eaton,
Ah, a green and pleasant land indeed. I'm not sure where Charles saw this scene, there is not much information on it and it's not typical of what he's famous for. I liked it though and it was fun to paint.
Charles Warren Eaton was an important tonalist from 1880 or so, to 1910. he was quite popular in his day and was well regarded as a painter. One of the few painters that George Inness admired. Charles shared a studio space with George Inness in New York for a time in the 1880's.
Heres a link to a good overview of Eaton's work and heres a link to the page where I found the original image that I created a study of.
Todays video has a slightly better audio commentary. Unfortunately, my video editor won't let me play the video while recording audio. Something to do with the visuals being sped up by 12 times I'll wager. No great loss really as 5 minutes goes by fast as
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
A bit about River Landscape by Charles Warren Eaton.
This was fun to do and fell together quickly. I did a second color pass on this that increased the contrast and chroma. I utilized a fairly thin wash of a mixed green over my sienna under painting and then went over that with some bolder greens. This is a pretty cool technique that I developed while painting this series; one of the techniques that I've brought to my own work recently.
Like I have in the previous studies, I stripped out a lot of yellow tinting that was in the reference image. I modulated a bit of blue at the top too using my trusty artistic licence.
To see more of my work, visit my site
Original painting - River landscape by Charles Warren Eaton
Day Four: Stormy Day by George Inness
Welcome to day four of 100 days of tonalism.
Painted after - Stormy Day by George Inness, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel
Today's study is 'Stormy Day' by George Inness.
I discuss this in the video but George does something in this painting that I rarely do and that is; paint a strong diagonal. I tend to prefer things relatively flat, although this study has given me some insight into ways I could approach hillsides in the future.
We've got another George Inness today folks. A second tier work by George but still handsome in my view. I appreciate the chances that George Inness takes in his work. He is not afraid to fail and is always very earnest about his painting. For my part, I always strive for authenticity but I think my background as a commercial illustrator for 15 years has forced me to take fewer chances than a painter like Inness.
In a way, this 100 days of tonalism project has meant that I have painted lots of scenes in ways that were odd or semi-uncomfortable for me. Not too uncomfortable mind you, after all, I did choose these 100 images from thousands of potential paintings
Sorry the audio is not super inspiring folks. I'm basically doing it as I go, no real time to polish it. Hopefully you will enjoy my candour and quick on the fly narration.
Cheers
M Francis McCarthy
A bit about 'Stormy Day' by George Inness. This is the first study in the series that I painted pretty roughly. The second color pass really helped pull it together. I only did a second color pass on about sixty of the series. As it stood I was really becoming conscious of how much time this project was biting out of my own work.
Two things I like about this painting are; The colors and the unique patterning of the dark shapes. Overall I'm pretty happy with it. Like several previous paintings it appears I sucked a lot of yellow out. This is largely intuitive on my part but also with the awareness that many oil paintings will go yellow over the years mostly due to varnishing. This can also occur when a painting has been in a very dark space for a while.
To see more of my work visit my site
Original painting - Stormy Day by George Inness
Day Three: Trees in a Field by Homer Dodge Martin
Welcome to day three of 100 days of tonalism.
Painted after - Trees in a Field by Homer Dodge Martin , Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel
Today's study is 'Trees in a Field' by Homer Dodge Martin.
This one went quickly as you'll see from the shorter video. It's a very simple subject as I talked about in the video. Homer Dodge Martin was a first generation tonalist. I've see some of his actual paintings at the De Young Museum in San Francisco and his work is awesome. There is one other painting by Martin in the 100 day series that I painted, though we won't be seeing that for awhile.
Video setup ig going pretty sweet now. I spent a part of today setting up Twitter and Tumblr accounts although I'm not sure if I'm going to link this blog up with Pinterest. Still thinking about Instagram too. Keeping up with all these social networks is a job in itself but it's worth it to spread the word about tonalism. Impressionism had it's resurgence, now it's time for magic and mystery to make a comeback in the painting world.
I was torn about releasing my videos free of charge but if they help spread awareness of tonalism I reckon it's worth it to share my years of hard won knowledge with all of you. I'm not saying mine is the only way to make a tonalist painting. In fact
has a lot of videos on Youtube that are fantastic. I got a lot from watching many of them.
Cheers
M Francis McCarthy
A bit about 'Trees in a Field' by Homer Dodge Martin.
Initially I wasn't going to do this one. I'm adverse to silhouetted trees against skys in general. I boosted the local contrast of my reference prior to doing my study. As it turns out the original painting is not as silhouetted.I mentioned in the video thats theres a reproduction of the painting in my copy of '
A History of American Tonalism' by David Cleveland
. Looks like that book is out of print but there are copies around. I highly recommend it.
This painting went quickly and overall I'm really happy with it. I feel I captured the essence of Mr. Martins painting. One thing that he's done here that I usually do not do is portrayed a cloudless sky. Now that I am posting the original reference, I can see that I removed a bit of yellow tint.
To see more of my work visit my site
Original painting - Trees in a Field by Homer Dodge Martin
Day Two: Arthur Frank Mathews Summertime
Hey all, welcome to day two of 100 days of tonalism.
Painted after - Summertime by Arthur Frank Mathews , Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x5, Oil on wood panel
Arthur Frank Mathews "Summertime" was fun to do. I really like the 5x5 inch format. It's big enough to paint with a #4 brush but too small to get fussy about things. There's more than a few paintings in this series that I sort of forced into the square format. Fortunately, I possess an "Artistic Licence" that permits this sort of activity.
So, we're settling in now folks. Getting the video thing sorted. All videos will feature me chatting about the painting I've done a study of and other assorted text and subtext. These videos are not long most will be no longer than seven minutes or less.
They are radically sped up versions of my original composite videos. In some ways they're better as they require less patience to view than a video of me painting for an hour and a half. Mind you those composite videos are at double speed due to the videos awesome ability to eat up available hard drive space.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
A bit about this painting, I've got audio on the video now so I may phase out this aspect of the blog post but for now I will keep adding a few comments about each study at the bottom of each post as well as an image of my original reference.
I was pretty happy with this after the first color pass but decided a second go around would be wise. I strive to keep all of my paintings fresh so if all is well with one pass I leave things alone. This painting really perked up with the second pass as you will see in the video. I bumped up the colors and also the intensity of the lights. Looks like I de-yellowed the chroma as well.
To see more of my work visit my site
Summertime by Arthur Frank Mathews
Day One: Inness Summer Montclair by George Inness
Ah, at last the promised day one!
Painted after - Summer Montclair by George Inness, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel
This is the first in the series; 'Summer Montclair' by George Inness.
This project has consumed more than three months of my work schedule. All these paintings were on display at the
, New Zealand in June and will also be on display at some time in the near future in the USA. Stay tuned to this blog for details as they become available.
On to our painting for today.
The original painting by George Inness is probably my favorite painting, ever! That is the reason why it is first in the series. The things I love about this painting are:
The feeling.
The rich coloration.
The awesome and totally unique composition.
The painting's implication of the spiritual reality just below the surface of our perceived reality.
I am including a video of my painting process here.
I have videotaped the painting of each of the one hundred paintings in this series. The video's I am posting on this blog are speeded up by roughly twelve times. They are also a lower resolution version of the full composite videos of my painting process. At some point in the future I aim to make the higher resolution/longer version videos of each painting accessible to interested people.
I hope you enjoy seeing me in action and my painting process. Comments and questions are always welcome.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
A bit about 'Summer Montclair' by George Inness, Over all I'm happy with is study it has a nice feeling to it.
This painting took longer than I thought it would and I know my drawing is a bit off from the original. Thats okay, as I'm most interested in getting the feeling and quality across of each of these studies. The point is not to make an exact duplicate of George's painting in miniature, but to get my to get my impression of his painting across.
To see more of my work visit my site
Original painting -
Summer Montclair by George Inness
Tonalism Revived
Hello,
I am a landscape painter, my name is M Francis McCarthy. I've been painting for about six years. Before that I worked professionaly as a graphic artist and illustrator. I have written about my experiences in those years on another blog
.
Drawing for "Summer Montclair" by M Francis McCarthy painted after George Inness, size 5 x 7"
Sometime last year a friend of mine got involved in a project whereby they composed 100 songs in 100 days. I found this idea quite interesting and I was trying to think of ways that I too could do something in this vein. I do create
, but for me a project involving 100 days would require too much of my time,
Upon thinking about what I wanted to do, the idea struck me that it might be very interesting to paint studies of 100 of my favorite tonalist paintings. This would accomplish quite a few goals and ideas I've had for my painting career. It could also help to expand the modern public's appreciation and understanding of what tonalism is and used to be when it was the preeminent style of landscape painting in America.
Some of the things that I'm hoping that this project will accomplish are:
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 am currently working on this series of paintings. I'm not exactly taking a painting a day approach in the creation of these studies. In many cases I will be doing layers that require a dry on dry approach. In addition, I may be doing some glazing as well.
I'm committed to seeing this project through to its conclusion, and that entails not just creating a study but for each study that has been created, writing a blog post. I'm going to feel my way through these posts as I go so prepare for exciting changes as we go along!
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Today, I am including a photo of my preliminary drawing for Summer Montclair by George Inness. For this project, I have chosen to create my drawings on a ground of light burnt sienna. I'm using burnt sienna paint and pthalo green to delineate the major shapes and composition of each painting. This is one of my favorite modes of working and this is the first time I have shown or shared this aspect of my process online.
Summer Montclair by George Inness is, I would say my favorite painting of all time and for that reason is the first in the series. I will be doing a full blog post on this particular painting, but I thought it would be fun and illuminating to share this study now.