Day Sixty Seven: An Autumn Landscape by John Francis Murphy
Hello and welcome to day 67 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today study is of 'An Autumn Landscape' by John Francis Murphy.
This is a very interesting picture by Murphy and different from most of his that I've seen. The reference image that I have is very tiny. I was unable to find a larger version of this painting online. The nice thing about my digital photo frame set up, is that when I use it as my painting reference it works fine with very lo-res images. Not to mention that at the small-scale that I'm painting in this series, I'm not able to do a lot of detail anyway.
I will be reading some great information about John Francis Murphy from the book A History of American Tonalism on today's video so please check that out.
Over the last two days we been discussing my Tonalist painting process in regards to a paintings first color pass. We've covered the sky and yesterday we talked about trees, today were going to discuss everything else. Namely, what I've been referring to as the ground plane. This would be assorted roads, bushes, hills and whatnot.
To tell you the truth I tend to start painting a lot of these elements as I am working on the trees. If there is a color in another part of the landscape that corresponds to the paint color that I've mixed for an area in the trees then I will start working that in. I do focus on getting the trees (knocked in where they overlap the sky) done as soon as possible.
One thing I didn't mention about trees yesterday was how I like to mix a color for the actual edges of the trees that is really a combination of the sky color and the lightest tree color.This is basically giving me a soft edge without blending.
Continuing on with my first color pass; if there is a road in the painting, many times I will paint this at the same time as I paint the sky. The colors of the road usually correspond to the colors in the sky, although I may have to mix in more yellows and earth colors.
Finishing up, I will do the lightest grasses and lightest areas in any bushes as well as painting rocks and other earth type formations. If there are hills in the scene I will definitely paint them in a way so that they merge with the sky. I think it's important to establish a sense of aerial perspective by lightening and obfuscating forms in the distance.
I've been trying to break down my painting process as much as possible so I can relate it to you in a serial manner.Tomorrow I will be discussing edges in painting. This is a topic that deserves its own blog post as it is often times one of the big differences between a professional and amateur painter.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'An Autumn Landscape' by John Francis Murphy; this painting has some very interesting shapes in the trees. It took me until the second color pass to get them down.
I'm pretty happy with the way the study turned out. The panel in this particular painting showed a bit bit more wood grain than my panels usually have. Sometimes this can detract but in the case of this study I think it works well.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Autumn Landscape by John Francis Murphy , Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
This is a very interesting picture by Murphy and different from most of his that I've seen. The reference image that I have is very tiny. I was unable to find a larger version of this painting online. The nice thing about my digital photo frame set up, is that when I use it as my painting reference it works fine with very lo-res images. Not to mention that at the small-scale that I'm painting in this series, I'm not able to do a lot of detail anyway.
I will be reading some great information about John Francis Murphy from the book A History of American Tonalism on today's video so please check that out.
Over the last two days we been discussing my Tonalist painting process in regards to a paintings first color pass. We've covered the sky and yesterday we talked about trees, today were going to discuss everything else. Namely, what I've been referring to as the ground plane. This would be assorted roads, bushes, hills and whatnot.
To tell you the truth I tend to start painting a lot of these elements as I am working on the trees. If there is a color in another part of the landscape that corresponds to the paint color that I've mixed for an area in the trees then I will start working that in. I do focus on getting the trees (knocked in where they overlap the sky) done as soon as possible.
One thing I didn't mention about trees yesterday was how I like to mix a color for the actual edges of the trees that is really a combination of the sky color and the lightest tree color.This is basically giving me a soft edge without blending.
Continuing on with my first color pass; if there is a road in the painting, many times I will paint this at the same time as I paint the sky. The colors of the road usually correspond to the colors in the sky, although I may have to mix in more yellows and earth colors.
Finishing up, I will do the lightest grasses and lightest areas in any bushes as well as painting rocks and other earth type formations. If there are hills in the scene I will definitely paint them in a way so that they merge with the sky. I think it's important to establish a sense of aerial perspective by lightening and obfuscating forms in the distance.
I've been trying to break down my painting process as much as possible so I can relate it to you in a serial manner.Tomorrow I will be discussing edges in painting. This is a topic that deserves its own blog post as it is often times one of the big differences between a professional and amateur painter.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'An Autumn Landscape' by John Francis Murphy; this painting has some very interesting shapes in the trees. It took me until the second color pass to get them down.
I'm pretty happy with the way the study turned out. The panel in this particular painting showed a bit bit more wood grain than my panels usually have. Sometimes this can detract but in the case of this study I think it works well.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, An Autumn Landscape by John Francis Murphy |
Day Sixty Six: Evening in Connecticut by Charles Warren Eaton
Hello and welcome to day 66 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today study is 'Evening in Connecticut' by Charles Warren Eaton.
This painting is very representative of quite a lot of Charles' work. He was famous for painting white pines and was also famous for painting sunsets and twilight scenes. A nice audio track on todays video, it is called 'Indeep'. This is a track I did in 2004 and never put on a record, so sorry no link.
On with our current assay regarding my Tonalist painting process; today I would like to continue on with our discussion of my first color pass. Yesterday we discussed how I approach painting the sky. Today we will talk about trees. Trees are one of the most challenging things to paint well. I've been at it eight years or so, and though it's gotten easier there are always challenges.
I heard on the radio the other day that there were over 3 trillion trees on this planet. That's a lot of trees! In a landscape painting, trees act as the figures. Because of their vertical emphasis (in what is otherwise a horizontal space), they tend to call more attention to themselves than most other elements of the painting.
As I stated in previous blogs I start with a drawing that is going to be underneath my first color pass. I've already started wrangling with the tree forms and the values in my drawing by the time I'm ready to come in with color. My approach is to to paint the sky first and then when I'm ready,do my trees I will go in with my darkest tree colors. My logic being, that dark recedes while light comes forward. Note: this applies to the ground plane, it does not apply to the sky, since the sky is generally the brightest part of any painting.
I like to do the dark colors in my tree shapes with a mixture of Alizarin Crimson and Phthalo Green. This creates a very dark color that is still transparent. This color also has a bit of a purplish characteristic which is very advantageous, in that most shadows on the ground in nature tend to have a purplish cast to them.
I've never painted my darkest areas with just ivory black. The reason for this is that ivory black is a very cold color. It's lacking in life and since I'm painting things that are alive it's far better to work with the chromatic black that I am mixing from Alizarin Crimson and Phthalo Green.
One thing I've learned to do after several years of experiences is to keep the dark colors in my vertical forms much darker than the dark colors in the horizontal forms. For example, you might have a clump of dark trees behind the main trees you are painting. It's almost always a good idea to make the darkest color (especially of more distant objects) less dark than any of your main vertical areas.
After placing my darks in I will then work with the variety of green and brown tones that are next darkest in value to my darkest color. This essentially gives us a bit of an overlap process and is logical in that we've progressed from dark to light.
After that, I will go in with my medium green tones or russet type colors and lastly, I will paint the lightest brown, green and tan areas. I generally hold off from doing the very lightest colors that will be in my painting until I come in later to do more work in my second color pass.I need to leave some room in the value scale for the stuff that is coming.
Tomorrow we will continue with discussing painting the ground plane in the first colour pass.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Evening in Connecticut' by Charles Warren Eaton; this painting is very simple, almost abstract in its approach. It is also quite dark.
I enjoyed painting the yellows and ochres in the sky and the study went pretty quickly due to the great amount of simplification that Charles has done already in his painting.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Evening Connecticut by Charles Warren Eaton , Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
Today study is 'Evening in Connecticut' by Charles Warren Eaton.
This painting is very representative of quite a lot of Charles' work. He was famous for painting white pines and was also famous for painting sunsets and twilight scenes. A nice audio track on todays video, it is called 'Indeep'. This is a track I did in 2004 and never put on a record, so sorry no link.
On with our current assay regarding my Tonalist painting process; today I would like to continue on with our discussion of my first color pass. Yesterday we discussed how I approach painting the sky. Today we will talk about trees. Trees are one of the most challenging things to paint well. I've been at it eight years or so, and though it's gotten easier there are always challenges.
I heard on the radio the other day that there were over 3 trillion trees on this planet. That's a lot of trees! In a landscape painting, trees act as the figures. Because of their vertical emphasis (in what is otherwise a horizontal space), they tend to call more attention to themselves than most other elements of the painting.
As I stated in previous blogs I start with a drawing that is going to be underneath my first color pass. I've already started wrangling with the tree forms and the values in my drawing by the time I'm ready to come in with color. My approach is to to paint the sky first and then when I'm ready,do my trees I will go in with my darkest tree colors. My logic being, that dark recedes while light comes forward. Note: this applies to the ground plane, it does not apply to the sky, since the sky is generally the brightest part of any painting.
I like to do the dark colors in my tree shapes with a mixture of Alizarin Crimson and Phthalo Green. This creates a very dark color that is still transparent. This color also has a bit of a purplish characteristic which is very advantageous, in that most shadows on the ground in nature tend to have a purplish cast to them.
I've never painted my darkest areas with just ivory black. The reason for this is that ivory black is a very cold color. It's lacking in life and since I'm painting things that are alive it's far better to work with the chromatic black that I am mixing from Alizarin Crimson and Phthalo Green.
One thing I've learned to do after several years of experiences is to keep the dark colors in my vertical forms much darker than the dark colors in the horizontal forms. For example, you might have a clump of dark trees behind the main trees you are painting. It's almost always a good idea to make the darkest color (especially of more distant objects) less dark than any of your main vertical areas.
After placing my darks in I will then work with the variety of green and brown tones that are next darkest in value to my darkest color. This essentially gives us a bit of an overlap process and is logical in that we've progressed from dark to light.
After that, I will go in with my medium green tones or russet type colors and lastly, I will paint the lightest brown, green and tan areas. I generally hold off from doing the very lightest colors that will be in my painting until I come in later to do more work in my second color pass.I need to leave some room in the value scale for the stuff that is coming.
Tomorrow we will continue with discussing painting the ground plane in the first colour pass.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Evening in Connecticut' by Charles Warren Eaton; this painting is very simple, almost abstract in its approach. It is also quite dark.
I enjoyed painting the yellows and ochres in the sky and the study went pretty quickly due to the great amount of simplification that Charles has done already in his painting.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Evening in Connecticut by Charles Warren Eaton |
Day Sixty Five: Altweibersommer by George Inness
Hello and welcome to day 65 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today study is of 'Altweibersommer' by George Inness.
Another day, another Georgian Inness. We have a music track today instead of narration, the song is Today from my album, The Light in Darkness.
Continuing on with our recent assay regarding my Tonalist painting process; today I'd like to discuss my initial color stage. I could at this juncture make a distinction between my 5x7 studies and the larger paintings, the process by which I paint each is almost identical, except for time taken and brush sizes used. I work harder on the larger pieces, more painting, glazing and scumbling, not to mention just more picking.
Today's information applies equally to my studies and my larger work since my approach on the first color pass is basically the same for each.
As I stated in previous posts, I like to work on about 14 or more different subjects at a time. I refer to this as a series but only because they are being done during the same time period in sequence through all of my stages. The paintings that I do in a series really have no other relation to each other. After I have completed all my drawings and they are dry, I will start on my first color pass for each painting.
I almost always premix the eight or so major colors from the scene I am doing prior to actually painting. Many times I will do that in the morning with the intention of doing my painting in the afternoon.Once I actually sit down and start doing the painting, I also like to have the selection of brushes that I'm going to use at hand.
Finally, before I begin I set up my video camera. I began videotaping my paintings about a year and a half ago. I use a Sony Handycam on a tripod. It's not a super expensive camera but it does do reasonably high definition video. This is the way that I have captured all of the videos that are showing in this series of 100 days of Tonalism.
Just as an aside, I do a composite video that is at double speed and then for this series I've increased that speed by a factor of 10, effectively making it 12 times faster than I actually am painting. Hopefully those of you following the blog are getting something from these videos.
Perhaps it's just a habit that has carried over from my many years of drawing, but I like to start in the uppermost left-hand corner of the panel when I begin my painting. I always paint the sky first. Because the sky is behind everything else in the scene it is helpful to have a progression from back to front. This really assists in creating a sense of depth in the landscape.I will also paint the sky holes in my trees at this point. When I was learning painting many of the people that I was studying from would go back and forth from sky to tree to sky. This can give your painting sort of a flat feeling, it's best to have the sky holes in there first so that the darks of the tree can overlap them.
Moving down from the uppermost left-hand corner I will put my blues in next. The same logic applies here, the blue of the sky would be the furthest thing back any painting so best to have other colors overlap it. Then I will do the grays for the clouds. I like to contrast cool grays against warm grays in my skies and make sure that there's some interest there. Also, I will inject colors like purple or alizarin crimson into the grays to give them some extra depth and contrast. Once in a while, I will use a simple straightforward 50% gray made from ivory black and white as well. But it's important to keep the colors interesting and moving around.
When and how to add little bits of color to your grey mixture is an intuitive process, as I discussed in a previous blog post. You need to be open to an internal impetus to change things up or to modify things. As you open yourself up ideas, inspirations and even direction will be there to utilize.
I'm going to continue on tomorrow with the first color pass breakdown so stay tuned for that.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Altweibersommer' by George Inness; This is a mid period Inness and definitely shows the influence of the Barbizon school. I enjoyed painting the orange trees and the green offset in the ground plane.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Altweibersommer by George Inness , Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
Today study is of 'Altweibersommer' by George Inness.
Another day, another Georgian Inness. We have a music track today instead of narration, the song is Today from my album, The Light in Darkness.
Continuing on with our recent assay regarding my Tonalist painting process; today I'd like to discuss my initial color stage. I could at this juncture make a distinction between my 5x7 studies and the larger paintings, the process by which I paint each is almost identical, except for time taken and brush sizes used. I work harder on the larger pieces, more painting, glazing and scumbling, not to mention just more picking.
Today's information applies equally to my studies and my larger work since my approach on the first color pass is basically the same for each.
As I stated in previous posts, I like to work on about 14 or more different subjects at a time. I refer to this as a series but only because they are being done during the same time period in sequence through all of my stages. The paintings that I do in a series really have no other relation to each other. After I have completed all my drawings and they are dry, I will start on my first color pass for each painting.
I almost always premix the eight or so major colors from the scene I am doing prior to actually painting. Many times I will do that in the morning with the intention of doing my painting in the afternoon.Once I actually sit down and start doing the painting, I also like to have the selection of brushes that I'm going to use at hand.
Finally, before I begin I set up my video camera. I began videotaping my paintings about a year and a half ago. I use a Sony Handycam on a tripod. It's not a super expensive camera but it does do reasonably high definition video. This is the way that I have captured all of the videos that are showing in this series of 100 days of Tonalism.
Just as an aside, I do a composite video that is at double speed and then for this series I've increased that speed by a factor of 10, effectively making it 12 times faster than I actually am painting. Hopefully those of you following the blog are getting something from these videos.
Perhaps it's just a habit that has carried over from my many years of drawing, but I like to start in the uppermost left-hand corner of the panel when I begin my painting. I always paint the sky first. Because the sky is behind everything else in the scene it is helpful to have a progression from back to front. This really assists in creating a sense of depth in the landscape.I will also paint the sky holes in my trees at this point. When I was learning painting many of the people that I was studying from would go back and forth from sky to tree to sky. This can give your painting sort of a flat feeling, it's best to have the sky holes in there first so that the darks of the tree can overlap them.
Moving down from the uppermost left-hand corner I will put my blues in next. The same logic applies here, the blue of the sky would be the furthest thing back any painting so best to have other colors overlap it. Then I will do the grays for the clouds. I like to contrast cool grays against warm grays in my skies and make sure that there's some interest there. Also, I will inject colors like purple or alizarin crimson into the grays to give them some extra depth and contrast. Once in a while, I will use a simple straightforward 50% gray made from ivory black and white as well. But it's important to keep the colors interesting and moving around.
When and how to add little bits of color to your grey mixture is an intuitive process, as I discussed in a previous blog post. You need to be open to an internal impetus to change things up or to modify things. As you open yourself up ideas, inspirations and even direction will be there to utilize.
I'm going to continue on tomorrow with the first color pass breakdown so stay tuned for that.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Altweibersommer' by George Inness; This is a mid period Inness and definitely shows the influence of the Barbizon school. I enjoyed painting the orange trees and the green offset in the ground plane.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Altweibersommer by George Inness |
Day Sixty Four: Hidden Moon by Lowell Birge Harrison
Hello and welcome to day 64 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is 'Hidden Moon' by Lowell Birge Harrison.
We've done a few studies after Harrison. As I stated in this previous blog posts he is well known for being an excellent landscape artist. Harrison is also a teacher. He wrote a book about landscape painting that is very good and has quite a lot of information about Tonalism and how to make Tonalist paintings. We have a music track today instead of narration, the song is 24th from my album The Light in Darkness.
Today, I would like to talk little bit about art philosophy. I think a lot about art, which might be a good thing since I spend most of my working life doing it. A lady came into my studio the other day who was also an artist. Her interest lay mainly in creating art that had a strong political message. This got me to thinking about how art/painting can basically serve one of two masters. Your work can serve beauty or your art can serve a message of some kind.
I don't claim for this to be a universally true law, but I do believe it is true for the most part. If your desire is for your art to serve beauty, then you have to open yourself up to many different aspects of painting. For example, it would be very beneficial to have some knowledge of the history of painting and of the beautiful works that have come before. Without this sort of knowledge you would be forced to reinvent the wheel and that could take a while. If creating beauty is the goal of your art, it's also important to know the essential rules of composition, color theory and, also to have a good working knowledge of your materials and what they can do.
Conversely, if your art is serving some sort of message you need not concern yourself with any of the above. As a matter of fact, it may serve your message far more to ignore the ideals of art theory and instead shock your audience with cleverness. For example you could put your own excrement in a can and label it "shit". Er, I think that's been done, and there is a message there, I'm just not sure what it is.
What I'm not saying is, that art that conveys a message cannot be beautiful. That is very possible. In the case of modern painting however, it's best to serve beauty or a message but not both.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Hidden Moon' by Lowell Birge Harrison ; This painting is almost an abstract. It's very mysterious and I like how he's made a painting thats almost completely sky. In fact, it's very hard to tell where the sky ends and the land begins.
I thought it would be fun to take a crack at doing a study. I did my study in two painting passes and I did quite a lot of glazing as well.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Hidden Moon by Lowell Birge Harrison , Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
Today's study is 'Hidden Moon' by Lowell Birge Harrison.
We've done a few studies after Harrison. As I stated in this previous blog posts he is well known for being an excellent landscape artist. Harrison is also a teacher. He wrote a book about landscape painting that is very good and has quite a lot of information about Tonalism and how to make Tonalist paintings. We have a music track today instead of narration, the song is 24th from my album The Light in Darkness.
Today, I would like to talk little bit about art philosophy. I think a lot about art, which might be a good thing since I spend most of my working life doing it. A lady came into my studio the other day who was also an artist. Her interest lay mainly in creating art that had a strong political message. This got me to thinking about how art/painting can basically serve one of two masters. Your work can serve beauty or your art can serve a message of some kind.
I don't claim for this to be a universally true law, but I do believe it is true for the most part. If your desire is for your art to serve beauty, then you have to open yourself up to many different aspects of painting. For example, it would be very beneficial to have some knowledge of the history of painting and of the beautiful works that have come before. Without this sort of knowledge you would be forced to reinvent the wheel and that could take a while. If creating beauty is the goal of your art, it's also important to know the essential rules of composition, color theory and, also to have a good working knowledge of your materials and what they can do.
Conversely, if your art is serving some sort of message you need not concern yourself with any of the above. As a matter of fact, it may serve your message far more to ignore the ideals of art theory and instead shock your audience with cleverness. For example you could put your own excrement in a can and label it "shit". Er, I think that's been done, and there is a message there, I'm just not sure what it is.
 |
| Piero Manzoni, shit |
What I'm not saying is, that art that conveys a message cannot be beautiful. That is very possible. In the case of modern painting however, it's best to serve beauty or a message but not both.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Hidden Moon' by Lowell Birge Harrison ; This painting is almost an abstract. It's very mysterious and I like how he's made a painting thats almost completely sky. In fact, it's very hard to tell where the sky ends and the land begins.
I thought it would be fun to take a crack at doing a study. I did my study in two painting passes and I did quite a lot of glazing as well.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Hidden Moon by Lowell Birge Harrison |
Day Sixty Three: Afternoon Light by John Francis Murphy
Hello and welcome to day 63 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today study is 'Afternoon Light' by John Francis Murphy.
An awesome painting by John Francis Murphy today. Seems like we've had quite a lot of Murphy lately. That's okay, because he's amazing. I will be reading some biographical information about John Francis Murphy in today's video narration from the book A History of American Tonalism 1880 to 1920.
Continuing on with our current assay regarding my Tonalist painting process; today I would like to discuss brush technique. As I indicated yesterday it is desirable to use a brush slightly larger than what is comfortable to casually paint with, bigger is better. This gives you more expressive brush strokes. The word 'brushstrokes' is actually somewhat misleading, since there are so many ways you can apply paint to your surface. You can blop it, streak it, daub it, rub it on with a paper towel and, of course you can brush it on with a brush.
It's important to use your brush to accomplish all of these different ways of getting paint onto the panel not just using the brush as a brush. One good way to achieve this is by alternating the way that you are holding your brush regularly while doing your painting. This is a process that is highly intuitive,actually this process could be the most intuitive aspect of painting. Good brush manipulation starts with the desire to be open to using your brush in different ways. Once that is accomplished you need to listen for that interior voice while working and to follow its impetus.
I know I've mentioned the intuitive approach before, but I cannot stress enough how important the intuition is to doing a good painting. Paintings that are done strictly from the intellect tend to be very stiff and lacking in emotion. The primary way to get emotion into your work is through brushwork, and the primary way to have interesting and varied brushwork is by using your intuition to know when to change up the brush.
Intuition is active and vital to so many parts of the painting process. For example: modifying colors, changing the sizing of your brush, direction of your brush strokes and knowing when to stop working, are predominantly functions of the intuition.
It's easy to fly, but to fly well you need to earn your wings and the same is very true of utilizing intuition in the painting process. You must work and practice your art often for that intuition to have an apt vehicle of expression. Waiting for a bolt of inspiration to strike you and suddenly produce a masterpiece is generally not a good idea.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Afternoon Light' by John Francis Murphy; this painting is so moody and evocative. I really love it.
One of the things that I enjoyed the most about doing this study was painting the red in the trees. Also John Francis Murphy is a Master of getting an interesting ground plane in all of his work. The interaction between the greens over the reds is what makes his painting so rich.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Afternoon Light by John Francis Murphy, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
An awesome painting by John Francis Murphy today. Seems like we've had quite a lot of Murphy lately. That's okay, because he's amazing. I will be reading some biographical information about John Francis Murphy in today's video narration from the book A History of American Tonalism 1880 to 1920.
Continuing on with our current assay regarding my Tonalist painting process; today I would like to discuss brush technique. As I indicated yesterday it is desirable to use a brush slightly larger than what is comfortable to casually paint with, bigger is better. This gives you more expressive brush strokes. The word 'brushstrokes' is actually somewhat misleading, since there are so many ways you can apply paint to your surface. You can blop it, streak it, daub it, rub it on with a paper towel and, of course you can brush it on with a brush.
It's important to use your brush to accomplish all of these different ways of getting paint onto the panel not just using the brush as a brush. One good way to achieve this is by alternating the way that you are holding your brush regularly while doing your painting. This is a process that is highly intuitive,actually this process could be the most intuitive aspect of painting. Good brush manipulation starts with the desire to be open to using your brush in different ways. Once that is accomplished you need to listen for that interior voice while working and to follow its impetus.
I know I've mentioned the intuitive approach before, but I cannot stress enough how important the intuition is to doing a good painting. Paintings that are done strictly from the intellect tend to be very stiff and lacking in emotion. The primary way to get emotion into your work is through brushwork, and the primary way to have interesting and varied brushwork is by using your intuition to know when to change up the brush.
Intuition is active and vital to so many parts of the painting process. For example: modifying colors, changing the sizing of your brush, direction of your brush strokes and knowing when to stop working, are predominantly functions of the intuition.
It's easy to fly, but to fly well you need to earn your wings and the same is very true of utilizing intuition in the painting process. You must work and practice your art often for that intuition to have an apt vehicle of expression. Waiting for a bolt of inspiration to strike you and suddenly produce a masterpiece is generally not a good idea.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Afternoon Light' by John Francis Murphy; this painting is so moody and evocative. I really love it.
One of the things that I enjoyed the most about doing this study was painting the red in the trees. Also John Francis Murphy is a Master of getting an interesting ground plane in all of his work. The interaction between the greens over the reds is what makes his painting so rich.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Afternoon Light by John Francis Murphy |
Day Sixty Two: Near the Village by George Inness
Hello and welcome to day 62 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today study is 'Near the Village' by George Inness.
This is one of my favorite paintings by George Inness and it utilizes his two tree compositional strategy with one light tree and one dark tree, a technique that he utilized quite a lot. I will be reading some great information about George Inness in today's video narration so please check that out.
Continuing on with our current assay of my Tonalist painting process; today I'd like to discuss brushes. I've tried many different types of brushes since I first started oil painting back in 2008. I've tried synthetics, sable and hogs hair. Of these three I prefer to use hogs hair brushes.
There are also many different shapes and sizes of brushes. Very small pointy ones to quite large squared off or rounded brushes. Even brushes designed for jobs around the house can be utilized to make oil paintings. Of all these I prefer flats.
The brand that I use is Signet Robert Simmons. I was put on to this particular brush by Jim at Takapuna Art Supply. Previous to this I was using Silver Grand Prix brushes which are also a good brand. I prefer the Robert Simmons, the length of the brushes is longer and I find that useful because I wear my brushes down quite a lot with use.
The sizes that I like to use are from number two to number eight. I have occasionally used the ten but that is infrequent. As I've stated before on this blog, I always endeavor to use a brush slightly larger than what is comfortable for the size I am painting. I get more artistic paintings as a consequence of using a large brush. I tend to wear out the corners of my brushes, as the brush becomes shorter and the corners wear out, I have to replace them with new ones.
If I were more wealthy I would love to start each day with a brand-new set of brushes. There is nothing for me that works better than a brand-new fresh brush. I tend to donate my used brushes to other artists here at the Quarry Arts Center in Whangarei. They still have quite a lot of life left in them at the point in time that I have to abandon their use. By life, I mean snap. The brush needs to have a good amount of snap to it. A floppy brush is no good for the type of painting I do.
Tomorrow I will speak a bit about brush technique so stay tuned for that.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Near the Village' by George Inness; as I stated above this is one of my favorite George Inness paintings, there are so many things that love about it. I love the composition. I think it's about as great a composition as can be achieved with landscape painting. There are entire books written about George Inness' science of landscape composition. I'm mystified by a lot of his suppositions however, there is no denying that they work for him.
It's important for every artist to develop their own language and their own science regarding their painting. While it's fine to borrow elements from other artists (especially when first starting out), even advantageous to do so, eventually, you must find your own way, your own logic and your own direction in art.
I really enjoyed doing this study and though there were deviations made from George Inness' painting, I feel that the study is very successful. I learned a lot and I'm happy with it
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Near the Village by George Inness, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
Today study is 'Near the Village' by George Inness.
This is one of my favorite paintings by George Inness and it utilizes his two tree compositional strategy with one light tree and one dark tree, a technique that he utilized quite a lot. I will be reading some great information about George Inness in today's video narration so please check that out.
Continuing on with our current assay of my Tonalist painting process; today I'd like to discuss brushes. I've tried many different types of brushes since I first started oil painting back in 2008. I've tried synthetics, sable and hogs hair. Of these three I prefer to use hogs hair brushes.
There are also many different shapes and sizes of brushes. Very small pointy ones to quite large squared off or rounded brushes. Even brushes designed for jobs around the house can be utilized to make oil paintings. Of all these I prefer flats.
The brand that I use is Signet Robert Simmons. I was put on to this particular brush by Jim at Takapuna Art Supply. Previous to this I was using Silver Grand Prix brushes which are also a good brand. I prefer the Robert Simmons, the length of the brushes is longer and I find that useful because I wear my brushes down quite a lot with use.
The sizes that I like to use are from number two to number eight. I have occasionally used the ten but that is infrequent. As I've stated before on this blog, I always endeavor to use a brush slightly larger than what is comfortable for the size I am painting. I get more artistic paintings as a consequence of using a large brush. I tend to wear out the corners of my brushes, as the brush becomes shorter and the corners wear out, I have to replace them with new ones.
If I were more wealthy I would love to start each day with a brand-new set of brushes. There is nothing for me that works better than a brand-new fresh brush. I tend to donate my used brushes to other artists here at the Quarry Arts Center in Whangarei. They still have quite a lot of life left in them at the point in time that I have to abandon their use. By life, I mean snap. The brush needs to have a good amount of snap to it. A floppy brush is no good for the type of painting I do.
Tomorrow I will speak a bit about brush technique so stay tuned for that.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Near the Village' by George Inness; as I stated above this is one of my favorite George Inness paintings, there are so many things that love about it. I love the composition. I think it's about as great a composition as can be achieved with landscape painting. There are entire books written about George Inness' science of landscape composition. I'm mystified by a lot of his suppositions however, there is no denying that they work for him.
It's important for every artist to develop their own language and their own science regarding their painting. While it's fine to borrow elements from other artists (especially when first starting out), even advantageous to do so, eventually, you must find your own way, your own logic and your own direction in art.
I really enjoyed doing this study and though there were deviations made from George Inness' painting, I feel that the study is very successful. I learned a lot and I'm happy with it
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Near the Village by George Inness |
Day Sixty One: Leaning Tree Trunk by Camille Corot
Hello and welcome to day 61 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today study is the 'Leaning Tree Trunk' by Camille Corot.
As I've indicated 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 All is One.
Getting back to our current assay of my Tonalist painting process; today I'd like to discuss scraping down oil paint peaks. Many painters use canvas quite happily without much concern in regards to the surface quality of their work. This seems to be the rule these days. After visiting several excellent museums that featured Tonalist and Hudson River school paintings. I began my quest to have a more museum like surface in my work. There are several things that I do in my process to contribute to an interesting surface quality.
Creating a beautiful surface quality starts with the grain of the wood panel I am using. The gesso texture I add also contributes quite a lot. Lastly, the way I apply my paint is perhaps the greatest factor in how the surface of my painting will look. If I lay my paint on very thinly, there will not be much deviation from the texture of the panel. Conversely, if I apply my paint very thickly, there will be a lot of peaks and valleys in the paint. My preference is for something between these two extremes. I like some variation of the surface but I do not like intense peaks that catch the light and therefore are distracting.
About a year and a half ago I began using a small palette knife to scrape away these peaks. I first scrape the peaks away from my dried drawing stage, removing excess paint from the thicker areas. After that, I will scrape the peaks off of my dried first color pass.
This is fairly easy to do and also quite easy to mess up. I have to be extremely conscious and careful while doing this scraping. If I momentarily lose control of the knife it will gouge into the paint surface and sometimes all the way down to the panel itself. While this is not something that I cannot fix, I don't like it. I find that it's all about the angle that I'm holding the knife and also about not trying to take off too much paint all in one go, direction is also a factor in avoiding those gouges.
I keep a paper towel on my work surface and I wipe off the scraped paint onto it as I work. This is important to do, sometimes there will be small amounts of wet paint inside of the peaks that will smear onto other areas if I'm not careful.
"Scraping down," as I call it actually takes me a while to do, but I feel that it adds quite a lot to the painting. Not having the peaks that catch the light really makes it easier to look at and enjoy the painting.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Leaning Tree Trunk' by Camille Corot; I'm told that Corot favored the square format but I've not seen many other landscape painters use it.
I enjoyed rendering the atmospheric edges of Corot's trees. He was the Master of getting atmospheric quality into a landscape painting. I learned a lot by doing this study.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 | |
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As I've indicated 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 All is One.
Getting back to our current assay of my Tonalist painting process; today I'd like to discuss scraping down oil paint peaks. Many painters use canvas quite happily without much concern in regards to the surface quality of their work. This seems to be the rule these days. After visiting several excellent museums that featured Tonalist and Hudson River school paintings. I began my quest to have a more museum like surface in my work. There are several things that I do in my process to contribute to an interesting surface quality.
Creating a beautiful surface quality starts with the grain of the wood panel I am using. The gesso texture I add also contributes quite a lot. Lastly, the way I apply my paint is perhaps the greatest factor in how the surface of my painting will look. If I lay my paint on very thinly, there will not be much deviation from the texture of the panel. Conversely, if I apply my paint very thickly, there will be a lot of peaks and valleys in the paint. My preference is for something between these two extremes. I like some variation of the surface but I do not like intense peaks that catch the light and therefore are distracting.
About a year and a half ago I began using a small palette knife to scrape away these peaks. I first scrape the peaks away from my dried drawing stage, removing excess paint from the thicker areas. After that, I will scrape the peaks off of my dried first color pass.
This is fairly easy to do and also quite easy to mess up. I have to be extremely conscious and careful while doing this scraping. If I momentarily lose control of the knife it will gouge into the paint surface and sometimes all the way down to the panel itself. While this is not something that I cannot fix, I don't like it. I find that it's all about the angle that I'm holding the knife and also about not trying to take off too much paint all in one go, direction is also a factor in avoiding those gouges.
I keep a paper towel on my work surface and I wipe off the scraped paint onto it as I work. This is important to do, sometimes there will be small amounts of wet paint inside of the peaks that will smear onto other areas if I'm not careful.
"Scraping down," as I call it actually takes me a while to do, but I feel that it adds quite a lot to the painting. Not having the peaks that catch the light really makes it easier to look at and enjoy the painting.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Leaning Tree Trunk' by Camille Corot; I'm told that Corot favored the square format but I've not seen many other landscape painters use it.
I enjoyed rendering the atmospheric edges of Corot's trees. He was the Master of getting atmospheric quality into a landscape painting. I learned a lot by doing this study.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Leaning Tree Trunk by Camille Corot |
Day Sixty: Late Autumn Afternoon by John Francis Murphy
Hello and welcome to day 60 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is 'Late Autumn Afternoon' by John Francis Murphy.
It's not often we have the same artist two days in a row here. The reason for this, today, is that I had accidentally duplicated a painting by George Inness called 'Sunrise' that we covered earlier in this series. It was actually yesterday's painting 'Landscape' by John Francis Murphy that was the substitution I had been planning on doing a study of this painting from the start.
Yesterday we were reading some good stuff about Murphy from the book American Tonalism 1880 1920 David Cleveland. For today's video narration I will continue where I left off yesterday, as we were already discussing John Francis Murphy. So be sure to check out the video.
Continuing on with our current assay regarding my Tonalist painting process; we've spent the last three days talking about the colors on my palette. I had not intended to spend so long on pigments, but this blog being an organic process, it seems to me like time well spent. After all, without paint you really can't do much painting!
Today I'd like to discuss pre-mixing colors prior to starting a painting. For the first color pass, I like to premix the major colors for the painting I am getting ready to do. This is not absolutely necessary, I could just mix as I go but I feel that premixing has several advantages:
Having the major colors premixed is an extension of my philosophy of allowing parts of the painting process to carry you along, while allowing intuition more free reign. It's very important that painting be a nearly equal process between conscious and unconscious decisions, between thinking and feeling.
There's no question that while premixing I'm primarily thinking. However many times while using these mixtures while actually doing the painting, I will amend and adjust the premixed colors intuitively. This is all part of the back-and-forth, and give and take of my workflow.
The amount of color that I premix is definitely influenced by the size of the painting I'm doing. If I'm doing a 5x7 I need far less paint than when doing a 12x16.
Some contemporary artists do premixing, though I think these days most prefer to mix their colors as they go. The mix as you go method is definitely more Impressionistic. One of the main influencers of the Tonalist painting movement was James McNeill Whistler. He not only had his colors premixed but he had extended strings of each color from dark to light value. This is totally in keeping with a more classical approach to oil painting.
Tomorrow I'm going to discuss scraping down peaks on my paintings at various stages during the paintings progression. So be sure to come back and check that out.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Late Autumn Afternoon' by John Francis Murphy; while this painting is classic John Francis Murphy I feel that it shows a strong influence of George Inness, especially in the composition. This type of composition is called a seesaw because you have two opposing elements one on the left and one on the right. Generally speaking, it's advantageous to have one element larger than the other. If both elements are the same size the painting will be too static and it will not have a clear point of interest.
I enjoyed painting the warm sky and the deep reds and greens of the ground for this study. John Francis Murphy was very good at capturing an emotional quality in his work and that is a trait of his that I endeavor to emulate in my own.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 | |
|
It's not often we have the same artist two days in a row here. The reason for this, today, is that I had accidentally duplicated a painting by George Inness called 'Sunrise' that we covered earlier in this series. It was actually yesterday's painting 'Landscape' by John Francis Murphy that was the substitution I had been planning on doing a study of this painting from the start.
Yesterday we were reading some good stuff about Murphy from the book American Tonalism 1880 1920 David Cleveland. For today's video narration I will continue where I left off yesterday, as we were already discussing John Francis Murphy. So be sure to check out the video.
Continuing on with our current assay regarding my Tonalist painting process; we've spent the last three days talking about the colors on my palette. I had not intended to spend so long on pigments, but this blog being an organic process, it seems to me like time well spent. After all, without paint you really can't do much painting!
Today I'd like to discuss pre-mixing colors prior to starting a painting. For the first color pass, I like to premix the major colors for the painting I am getting ready to do. This is not absolutely necessary, I could just mix as I go but I feel that premixing has several advantages:
- With my colors premixed on my palette before I go to lunch, I'm more likely to come back to the studio after lunch and complete that painting or risk wasting the mixtures sitting on my palette.
- Premixing my colors gives me an opportunity to get an overview of the major colors in the painting prior to actually jumping in with my brush.
- Having the major colors premixed, gives me a certain amount of momentum while painting (sort of like, set them up and knock them down).
Having the major colors premixed is an extension of my philosophy of allowing parts of the painting process to carry you along, while allowing intuition more free reign. It's very important that painting be a nearly equal process between conscious and unconscious decisions, between thinking and feeling.
There's no question that while premixing I'm primarily thinking. However many times while using these mixtures while actually doing the painting, I will amend and adjust the premixed colors intuitively. This is all part of the back-and-forth, and give and take of my workflow.
The amount of color that I premix is definitely influenced by the size of the painting I'm doing. If I'm doing a 5x7 I need far less paint than when doing a 12x16.
Some contemporary artists do premixing, though I think these days most prefer to mix their colors as they go. The mix as you go method is definitely more Impressionistic. One of the main influencers of the Tonalist painting movement was James McNeill Whistler. He not only had his colors premixed but he had extended strings of each color from dark to light value. This is totally in keeping with a more classical approach to oil painting.
Tomorrow I'm going to discuss scraping down peaks on my paintings at various stages during the paintings progression. So be sure to come back and check that out.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Late Autumn Afternoon' by John Francis Murphy; while this painting is classic John Francis Murphy I feel that it shows a strong influence of George Inness, especially in the composition. This type of composition is called a seesaw because you have two opposing elements one on the left and one on the right. Generally speaking, it's advantageous to have one element larger than the other. If both elements are the same size the painting will be too static and it will not have a clear point of interest.
I enjoyed painting the warm sky and the deep reds and greens of the ground for this study. John Francis Murphy was very good at capturing an emotional quality in his work and that is a trait of his that I endeavor to emulate in my own.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Late Autumn Afternoon by John Francis Murphy |
Day Fifty Nine: Landscape by John Francis Murphy
Hello and welcome to day 59 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is 'Landscape' by John Francis Murphy.
Those of you that have been following this blog will be no stranger to John Francis Murphy by now. He is one of my favorite all-time painters and a pre-eminent Tonalist. I will be reading some biographical information about Murphy from my copy of A History of American Tonalism on today's video narration so please check that out.
Continuing on with our current assay regarding my own Tonalist painting process; for the last several days we've been discussing my color palette and it's progression since I started painting. Today I'd like to discuss the secondary colors that I've added through the years to supplement my core palette.
Working from right to left, the first color that I'll mention is, transparent earth yellow by Gamblin. This is an very flexible color that is basically like yellow ocher but is completely non-opaque. It has a decent amount of tinting strength and I really like using it for glazing.
Continuing towards the left side of my palette, next is raw umber. Raw umber is a color that I've added quite recently and like the ivory black that I was talking about yesterday, I use it as a color killer. In the case of raw umber it tends to knock the intense chroma off of colors, but is far more warm than ivory black which is very cool in nature.
The next color working towards the left side is green gold. This is a color that I got a tube of several months ago and it is produced by Gamblin. Is very similar to a green that I mix using cadmium yellow (hue) and black.The tube version is far less opaque and has less covering power than my own mixed version. I do not have green gold on my palette at the moment because I tried a replacement tube from another paint manufacturer and found it to be so weak in strength that I had to throw in away. For the moment I am mixing my own in a fairly decent quantity and putting that on my palette in green golds place.
Moving to the left, next is cadmium orange (hue). I added cadmium orange (hue) about a year and a half ago and I find it very useful especially for mixing with blue to get warm complementary grays in the sky.
Right next to to cadmium orange (hue) is cadmium red (hue). This is a color that I use infrequently but I will use it to dull down a strong green or to move a green color towards a more complimentary feeling. It is so bright, and so red that I seldom use it on its own in a painting.
The next secondary color that I'd like to discuss is permanent green light. This is a very bright and light green color that I use infrequently. I find it useful for pushing other colors that I have already mixed into subtle green tones. It is quite weak in tinting strength, but this is actually a factor that makes it easier to use. It's not a color that I would ever use straight up. On its own I would describe it as a poison looking green.
Continuing to the left, the next color is cobalt violet (hue). This is a color I use infrequently but it is very handy for injecting a bit of purple into a sky or into shadow areas of the landscape. Cobalt violet (hue) is not very strong. This is actually not a bad thing since I'm generally using it for subtle applications.
Continuing on to the left, our next secondary color is cerulean blue. I added this color about six months ago. I can get by without this color very easily by just using cobalt blue with a touch of black and white. However it has some interesting differences in that it is less strong and more chalky than cobalt blue. I don't mind a bit of chalkiness in the sky. Another thing that makes cerulean so useful is that it is very close to a straight up sky-blue. It is a color that I tend to grab and use while painting the sky as opposed to using in the pre-mixtures that I do prior to a painting session.
The next secondary color is phthalo blue. Phthalo blue has very strong tinting strength and is also quite transparent. It has the added benefit of being a very reasonable pigment. I phthalo blue because it is a cool blue and contrasts with cobalt blue which is more of a warm blue. With these two blues and black I can do almost any blue tone that I would ever need.
The last color on our list all the way on the left of my palette is torrit gray. As I discussed in our first blog post regarding my color palette, this is a Gamblin color that is manufactured from all of the pigments collected from their filtration system. It is a different gray every year. This is not a color that can actually be purchased. It is generally given to you by the art store when you buy several tubes of other Gamblin pigments. I got a tube a month or two ago, and I find it very useful because it is quite close to a 50% gray. When I run out I will probably just makes a little pile of gray in its place.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about "Landscape' by John Francis Murphy; I really love doing studies of Murphy's paintings. Of all of the Tonalist painters he is probably the one I relate to the most. I may love George Inness better but his painting is more esoteric.
What I enjoyed most about this study was painting the warm yellows and grays in the sky and then doing the ground with greens washed over my burnt sienna underpainting. This is a technique that I've utilize quite a lot in this series to good effect.
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Those of you that have been following this blog will be no stranger to John Francis Murphy by now. He is one of my favorite all-time painters and a pre-eminent Tonalist. I will be reading some biographical information about Murphy from my copy of A History of American Tonalism on today's video narration so please check that out.
Continuing on with our current assay regarding my own Tonalist painting process; for the last several days we've been discussing my color palette and it's progression since I started painting. Today I'd like to discuss the secondary colors that I've added through the years to supplement my core palette.
Working from right to left, the first color that I'll mention is, transparent earth yellow by Gamblin. This is an very flexible color that is basically like yellow ocher but is completely non-opaque. It has a decent amount of tinting strength and I really like using it for glazing.
Continuing towards the left side of my palette, next is raw umber. Raw umber is a color that I've added quite recently and like the ivory black that I was talking about yesterday, I use it as a color killer. In the case of raw umber it tends to knock the intense chroma off of colors, but is far more warm than ivory black which is very cool in nature.
The next color working towards the left side is green gold. This is a color that I got a tube of several months ago and it is produced by Gamblin. Is very similar to a green that I mix using cadmium yellow (hue) and black.The tube version is far less opaque and has less covering power than my own mixed version. I do not have green gold on my palette at the moment because I tried a replacement tube from another paint manufacturer and found it to be so weak in strength that I had to throw in away. For the moment I am mixing my own in a fairly decent quantity and putting that on my palette in green golds place.
Moving to the left, next is cadmium orange (hue). I added cadmium orange (hue) about a year and a half ago and I find it very useful especially for mixing with blue to get warm complementary grays in the sky.
Right next to to cadmium orange (hue) is cadmium red (hue). This is a color that I use infrequently but I will use it to dull down a strong green or to move a green color towards a more complimentary feeling. It is so bright, and so red that I seldom use it on its own in a painting.
The next secondary color that I'd like to discuss is permanent green light. This is a very bright and light green color that I use infrequently. I find it useful for pushing other colors that I have already mixed into subtle green tones. It is quite weak in tinting strength, but this is actually a factor that makes it easier to use. It's not a color that I would ever use straight up. On its own I would describe it as a poison looking green.
Continuing to the left, the next color is cobalt violet (hue). This is a color I use infrequently but it is very handy for injecting a bit of purple into a sky or into shadow areas of the landscape. Cobalt violet (hue) is not very strong. This is actually not a bad thing since I'm generally using it for subtle applications.
Continuing on to the left, our next secondary color is cerulean blue. I added this color about six months ago. I can get by without this color very easily by just using cobalt blue with a touch of black and white. However it has some interesting differences in that it is less strong and more chalky than cobalt blue. I don't mind a bit of chalkiness in the sky. Another thing that makes cerulean so useful is that it is very close to a straight up sky-blue. It is a color that I tend to grab and use while painting the sky as opposed to using in the pre-mixtures that I do prior to a painting session.
The next secondary color is phthalo blue. Phthalo blue has very strong tinting strength and is also quite transparent. It has the added benefit of being a very reasonable pigment. I phthalo blue because it is a cool blue and contrasts with cobalt blue which is more of a warm blue. With these two blues and black I can do almost any blue tone that I would ever need.
The last color on our list all the way on the left of my palette is torrit gray. As I discussed in our first blog post regarding my color palette, this is a Gamblin color that is manufactured from all of the pigments collected from their filtration system. It is a different gray every year. This is not a color that can actually be purchased. It is generally given to you by the art store when you buy several tubes of other Gamblin pigments. I got a tube a month or two ago, and I find it very useful because it is quite close to a 50% gray. When I run out I will probably just makes a little pile of gray in its place.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about "Landscape' by John Francis Murphy; I really love doing studies of Murphy's paintings. Of all of the Tonalist painters he is probably the one I relate to the most. I may love George Inness better but his painting is more esoteric.
What I enjoyed most about this study was painting the warm yellows and grays in the sky and then doing the ground with greens washed over my burnt sienna underpainting. This is a technique that I've utilize quite a lot in this series to good effect.
Day Fifty Eight: Moonlight over a Pond by Lowell Birge Harrison
Hello and welcome to day 58 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is of 'Moonlight over a Pond' by Lowell Birge Harrison.
Lowell Birge Harrison was a popular painter in his day and was also well known as a teacher. He wrote a book that is still in print about landscape painting. I personally found this book highly informative and helpful in regards to understanding the Tonal painting approach. I found some great information about Lowell Birge Harrison in my copy of A History of American Tonalism by David Cleveland and I've read it on today's videos narration so please check that out.
Continuing on with our current assay regarding my Tonalist painting process; today, we're going to discuss the progression of my color palette since I began painting, especially what I consider to be the essential colors.
As I stated in my previous blog post, I started out with a very limited color palette, consisting of cadmium yellow, alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue and titanium white. I started out with this limited color palette because it seemed to me to be the best way to learn what I could do with oil paints. By trying to mix my colors from as few pigments as possible.
This sort of logic comes easily to me because of my experience working for screen printing as an illustrator. Quite often in screenprinting you are severely limited as to how many colors can be used to print a design. This tends to force you to get the maximum use out of every color you have available to you.
After this minimal start, one of the first colors that I added to my pallet was yellow ocher. Yellow ocher is a very flexible and an appropriate color for painting landscapes. I found it useful if not absolutely vital. The next color I added would be burnt sienna, another earth color. After that I added viridian green. Viridian green is a very deep, somewhat dark green, I have since replaced viridian with Phthalo green. Phthalo green is more transparent, has a much stronger tinting strength, and also is darker than viridian. While I enjoyed using viridian for quite a while, I feel that it is a bit chalky so I do not miss it.
Moving on, I replaced ultramarine on my pallet with cobalt blue. To be honest I do not care for the ultramarine very much. Is quite popular because it has good tinting strength and is also a fairly cheap pigment. It has a bit of a purplish cast and a underlying murkiness that I find less than pleasant. Many painters love ultramarine but I was happy to see it go.
Most of the instruction materials that I engaged with while learning to paint, discouraged the use of black. The logic behind this is that new students of painting will try to use black to darken their colors or for painting their shadows instead of mixing new colors. This tends to give a cold and unpleasant effect to landscape paintings. A superior dark color can be easily obtained by mixing phthalo green with alizarin crimson. This give a chromatic black and is the method that I have used for a long time now for my dark areas.
I use black mostly as a color killer, to dampen colors that have an excess of chroma and also to make expedient greys. For this job its hard to beat and in my opinion, it is an absolutely essential color for Tonalist painting.
My core pallet consists of the following colors: white, cadmium yellow, yellow ocher, burnt sienna, alizarin crimson, phthalo green, cobalt blue, and black. I could accomplish pretty much every painting that I do with this pallet if I had to, though I would certainly miss many of my secondary pigments very much.
I will discuss with you tomorrow, the colors I've added to this basic group of pigments and the reasons that I have included them on my current painting pallet.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about Moonlight over a Pond' by Lowell Birge Harrison; this is one of the paintings in this series of 100 days of Tonalism that I had to paint in a slightly different manner than the others.
First of all, I had to re tint my under drawing to a tealish tone, though a bit of the burnt sienna undertone was still peeking through. Then I built up my forms with several passes of transparent pigment. Only at the final stage of the painting did I use any opaque mixtures of paint.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Moonlight over a Pond by Lowell Birge Harrison, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
Today's study is of 'Moonlight over a Pond' by Lowell Birge Harrison.
Lowell Birge Harrison was a popular painter in his day and was also well known as a teacher. He wrote a book that is still in print about landscape painting. I personally found this book highly informative and helpful in regards to understanding the Tonal painting approach. I found some great information about Lowell Birge Harrison in my copy of A History of American Tonalism by David Cleveland and I've read it on today's videos narration so please check that out.
Continuing on with our current assay regarding my Tonalist painting process; today, we're going to discuss the progression of my color palette since I began painting, especially what I consider to be the essential colors.
As I stated in my previous blog post, I started out with a very limited color palette, consisting of cadmium yellow, alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue and titanium white. I started out with this limited color palette because it seemed to me to be the best way to learn what I could do with oil paints. By trying to mix my colors from as few pigments as possible.
This sort of logic comes easily to me because of my experience working for screen printing as an illustrator. Quite often in screenprinting you are severely limited as to how many colors can be used to print a design. This tends to force you to get the maximum use out of every color you have available to you.
After this minimal start, one of the first colors that I added to my pallet was yellow ocher. Yellow ocher is a very flexible and an appropriate color for painting landscapes. I found it useful if not absolutely vital. The next color I added would be burnt sienna, another earth color. After that I added viridian green. Viridian green is a very deep, somewhat dark green, I have since replaced viridian with Phthalo green. Phthalo green is more transparent, has a much stronger tinting strength, and also is darker than viridian. While I enjoyed using viridian for quite a while, I feel that it is a bit chalky so I do not miss it.
Moving on, I replaced ultramarine on my pallet with cobalt blue. To be honest I do not care for the ultramarine very much. Is quite popular because it has good tinting strength and is also a fairly cheap pigment. It has a bit of a purplish cast and a underlying murkiness that I find less than pleasant. Many painters love ultramarine but I was happy to see it go.
Most of the instruction materials that I engaged with while learning to paint, discouraged the use of black. The logic behind this is that new students of painting will try to use black to darken their colors or for painting their shadows instead of mixing new colors. This tends to give a cold and unpleasant effect to landscape paintings. A superior dark color can be easily obtained by mixing phthalo green with alizarin crimson. This give a chromatic black and is the method that I have used for a long time now for my dark areas.
I use black mostly as a color killer, to dampen colors that have an excess of chroma and also to make expedient greys. For this job its hard to beat and in my opinion, it is an absolutely essential color for Tonalist painting.
My core pallet consists of the following colors: white, cadmium yellow, yellow ocher, burnt sienna, alizarin crimson, phthalo green, cobalt blue, and black. I could accomplish pretty much every painting that I do with this pallet if I had to, though I would certainly miss many of my secondary pigments very much.
I will discuss with you tomorrow, the colors I've added to this basic group of pigments and the reasons that I have included them on my current painting pallet.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about Moonlight over a Pond' by Lowell Birge Harrison; this is one of the paintings in this series of 100 days of Tonalism that I had to paint in a slightly different manner than the others.
First of all, I had to re tint my under drawing to a tealish tone, though a bit of the burnt sienna undertone was still peeking through. Then I built up my forms with several passes of transparent pigment. Only at the final stage of the painting did I use any opaque mixtures of paint.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Moonlight over a Pond by Lowell Birge Harrison |
Day Fifty Seven: Woodland Landscape by Charles Warren Eaton
Hello and welcome to day 57 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is 'Woodland Landscape' by Charles Warren Eaton.
Charles Warren Eaton has been steadily gaining popularity. Many books about him have been written recently calling attention to his excellent paintings. Today's video ended up shorter due to technical difficulties while filming the first color stage. so just a bit of a chat in the narration today.
Continuing on with our assay regarding my Tonalist painting process; today I will give you a list of the paints I currently use in the order that they are arranged on my pallet from left to right. I could try to give you the list based on relative value of the colors or chroma but, I think the actual way that I lay them on the palate will probably be most useful for people interested in my process.
When I first started learning oil painting, I was influenced by several painters to start with a minimal palette of colors. My first color palette was Titanium White, Cadmium Yellow, Alizarin Crimson and Ultramarine Blue. Now I use approximately 17 colors.
There are some colors in this list that I could probably get by without as they are easily mixed. However for ease of painting, I keep them on my pallet. Here is the list as follows from left to right:
At some point in our progression on this blog I will discuss more of these colors and their various uses in my process. Today, I will just cover a few key colors.
In my previous blog I wrote about my pallet at that time and my love of the color Lead White. These days I use a 50-50 mix of lead white and titanium white. I find that this gives me the most flexibility for the types of paintings I like to do. Lead White is a very warm and semi-transparent color while titanium white is cool and extremely opaque. I like to add the titanium white to my lead white to take advantage of that opaque quality. When I use just Lead White alone, I find that I have to use quite a lot more paint to get good coverage.
I should note at this juncture; that's the reason I use (Hue) versions of the cadmium red, orange and yellow are due to cadmiums incompatibility with lead white. All of the true cadmium colors are modern pigments and when mixed with lead white (an ancient pigment) they can produce some nasty oxidation over time. Something good to be aware of if you are interested in using lead white.
Another color on the list is the Torrit Grey. This is a color that is put out by Gamblin and is different every year. Basically it is all the pigments that comes from their filtration system and they mix it into paint. The Torrit Gray that I've been using is very close to a 50% gray. This is a color I can easily mix or do without altogether, but I found this color that is very useful to have handy. It's a color on my pallet that can be easily modified in whatever direction I need quickly.
As I stated above in our progression up to day 100, I will take a few blog posts to discuss other pigment colors, so stay tuned. Also, I will discuss tomorrow about why my colors are laid out the way they are and a bit about the history of the additions of various colors to my pallet.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Woodland Landscape' by Charles Warren Eaton; this is a painting that I've done twice. The first version I traded with a local artist here in Northland New Zealand, for some of their work. I have since done a second version and that is the one we are discussing today.
This painting is quite similar to the last Charles Warren Eaton painting that we did a study of. It is a very simple woodland scene. I'm attempting in my current series of Tonalist paintings to do a woodland scene that has been somewhat inspired by his approach.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Woodland Landscape by Charles Warren Eaton, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
Charles Warren Eaton has been steadily gaining popularity. Many books about him have been written recently calling attention to his excellent paintings. Today's video ended up shorter due to technical difficulties while filming the first color stage. so just a bit of a chat in the narration today.
Continuing on with our assay regarding my Tonalist painting process; today I will give you a list of the paints I currently use in the order that they are arranged on my pallet from left to right. I could try to give you the list based on relative value of the colors or chroma but, I think the actual way that I lay them on the palate will probably be most useful for people interested in my process.
When I first started learning oil painting, I was influenced by several painters to start with a minimal palette of colors. My first color palette was Titanium White, Cadmium Yellow, Alizarin Crimson and Ultramarine Blue. Now I use approximately 17 colors.
There are some colors in this list that I could probably get by without as they are easily mixed. However for ease of painting, I keep them on my pallet. Here is the list as follows from left to right:
- Torrit Gray
- Ivory Black
- Phthalo Blue
- Cobalt Blue
- Cerulean Blue
- Cobalt Violet (Hue)
- Permanent Green Light
- Phthalo Green
- Alizarin Crimson
- Burnt Sienna
- Cadmium Red (Hue)
- Cadmium Orange (Hue)
- Green Gold
- Raw Umber
- Transparent Earth Yellow
- Yellow Ocher
- Cadmium Yellow
- White (50/50 Lead and Titanium)
At some point in our progression on this blog I will discuss more of these colors and their various uses in my process. Today, I will just cover a few key colors.
In my previous blog I wrote about my pallet at that time and my love of the color Lead White. These days I use a 50-50 mix of lead white and titanium white. I find that this gives me the most flexibility for the types of paintings I like to do. Lead White is a very warm and semi-transparent color while titanium white is cool and extremely opaque. I like to add the titanium white to my lead white to take advantage of that opaque quality. When I use just Lead White alone, I find that I have to use quite a lot more paint to get good coverage.
I should note at this juncture; that's the reason I use (Hue) versions of the cadmium red, orange and yellow are due to cadmiums incompatibility with lead white. All of the true cadmium colors are modern pigments and when mixed with lead white (an ancient pigment) they can produce some nasty oxidation over time. Something good to be aware of if you are interested in using lead white.
Another color on the list is the Torrit Grey. This is a color that is put out by Gamblin and is different every year. Basically it is all the pigments that comes from their filtration system and they mix it into paint. The Torrit Gray that I've been using is very close to a 50% gray. This is a color I can easily mix or do without altogether, but I found this color that is very useful to have handy. It's a color on my pallet that can be easily modified in whatever direction I need quickly.
As I stated above in our progression up to day 100, I will take a few blog posts to discuss other pigment colors, so stay tuned. Also, I will discuss tomorrow about why my colors are laid out the way they are and a bit about the history of the additions of various colors to my pallet.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Woodland Landscape' by Charles Warren Eaton; this is a painting that I've done twice. The first version I traded with a local artist here in Northland New Zealand, for some of their work. I have since done a second version and that is the one we are discussing today.
This painting is quite similar to the last Charles Warren Eaton painting that we did a study of. It is a very simple woodland scene. I'm attempting in my current series of Tonalist paintings to do a woodland scene that has been somewhat inspired by his approach.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original Painting, Woodland Landscape by Charles Warren Eaton |
Day Fifty Six: In the Pasture by George Inness
Hello and welcome to day 56 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is 'In the Pasture' by George Inness.
Those of you that have been following this series are by now well aware of George Inness. For the last couple studies that we've done of Inness' paintings, I have been reading from a very good book about him. Tonight we will resume with this reading so please check out the video in today's blog post.
Continuing on with our recent assay regarding my Tonalist painting process; yesterday we were discussing weeding out paintings that are going nowhere also known as "duds". As I promised, today I would like to discuss the intuitive or conscious and unconscious processes involved in my painting workflow.
One of the reasons that I like to work in a methodical step-by-step manner is that I feel it gives me more free reign to allow unconscious elements into my work that will interact with the conscious elements. Many of the decisions that I make while working on a series of paintings are actually quite arbitrary. Some of these arbitrary decisions can be:
With all decisions, it's important to work in a timely manner. There is a constant interplay in each of our lives between conscious and unconscious, directed and arbitrary thoughts feelings and actions. When it comes to actually doing the paintings themselves, it is always an interplay between directed/conscious brushwork and indirect/unconscious brushwork. I notice many times while working that I will feel an intuitive push or pull to do things, like add a color that is not in my reference or hold my brush in a different way than I had been.
There is a multitude of small decisions that go into any given painting, starting with some of the bigger ones like what size or format to make it and going from there to deciding to glaze or not. Bit by bit each small decision adds up to the finished painting. Most people are unaware of the thousands of decisions that go into creating a landscape painting. It would be very difficult to make every one of these decisions in a conscious manner, and that is where intuition comes in.
The best way to develop your intuition as an artist is to use it. When you feel an inner prompting however small, or quiet that prompting maybe, you should act on it. This is the only way that I know of how to build the intuition up into a vital powerhouse. By trusting in, and using your intuition it becomes like a muscle in your body, with use, it develops.
I've heard many musicians in interviews refer to how they are essentially channeling their music while playing. What is sometimes not well known is that the ability to channel music or art in a way that is beautiful and appropriate only comes after many hours of dedication and practice.
One of the affectations of some modern artists is the belief that training the eye and hand to produce art is actually an impediment to creating inspired artwork. In reality it is the opposite that is true without some training and practice, what you will be able to express with your art will be extremely limited, no matter how powerful your intuitive process.
To sum up, landscape painting is a magical process when done well. And to do it well you must engage both conscious thought with direct action and unconscious intuition/inspiration.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'In the Pasture' by George Inness; My reference image for this study is incredibly small. One of the great things about using a digital photo frame for my painting reference is that this is not too big of an impediment anymore.
In actual fact, having very small references not often a real problem when it comes to creating paintings, unless what you are trying to do is extremely detailed work.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - In the Pasture by George Inness, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
Today's study is 'In the Pasture' by George Inness.
Those of you that have been following this series are by now well aware of George Inness. For the last couple studies that we've done of Inness' paintings, I have been reading from a very good book about him. Tonight we will resume with this reading so please check out the video in today's blog post.
Continuing on with our recent assay regarding my Tonalist painting process; yesterday we were discussing weeding out paintings that are going nowhere also known as "duds". As I promised, today I would like to discuss the intuitive or conscious and unconscious processes involved in my painting workflow.
One of the reasons that I like to work in a methodical step-by-step manner is that I feel it gives me more free reign to allow unconscious elements into my work that will interact with the conscious elements. Many of the decisions that I make while working on a series of paintings are actually quite arbitrary. Some of these arbitrary decisions can be:
- Should I paint the scene big or small?
- Square or rectangle?
- What order should I paint the scenes in a series?
With all decisions, it's important to work in a timely manner. There is a constant interplay in each of our lives between conscious and unconscious, directed and arbitrary thoughts feelings and actions. When it comes to actually doing the paintings themselves, it is always an interplay between directed/conscious brushwork and indirect/unconscious brushwork. I notice many times while working that I will feel an intuitive push or pull to do things, like add a color that is not in my reference or hold my brush in a different way than I had been.
There is a multitude of small decisions that go into any given painting, starting with some of the bigger ones like what size or format to make it and going from there to deciding to glaze or not. Bit by bit each small decision adds up to the finished painting. Most people are unaware of the thousands of decisions that go into creating a landscape painting. It would be very difficult to make every one of these decisions in a conscious manner, and that is where intuition comes in.
The best way to develop your intuition as an artist is to use it. When you feel an inner prompting however small, or quiet that prompting maybe, you should act on it. This is the only way that I know of how to build the intuition up into a vital powerhouse. By trusting in, and using your intuition it becomes like a muscle in your body, with use, it develops.
I've heard many musicians in interviews refer to how they are essentially channeling their music while playing. What is sometimes not well known is that the ability to channel music or art in a way that is beautiful and appropriate only comes after many hours of dedication and practice.
One of the affectations of some modern artists is the belief that training the eye and hand to produce art is actually an impediment to creating inspired artwork. In reality it is the opposite that is true without some training and practice, what you will be able to express with your art will be extremely limited, no matter how powerful your intuitive process.
To sum up, landscape painting is a magical process when done well. And to do it well you must engage both conscious thought with direct action and unconscious intuition/inspiration.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'In the Pasture' by George Inness; My reference image for this study is incredibly small. One of the great things about using a digital photo frame for my painting reference is that this is not too big of an impediment anymore.
In actual fact, having very small references not often a real problem when it comes to creating paintings, unless what you are trying to do is extremely detailed work.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, In the Pasture by George Inness |
Day Fifty Five: Towards a Clearing Dusk by Charles Warren Eaton
Hello and welcome to Day 55 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is 'Towards a Clearing Dusk' by Charles Warren Eaton.
This is the sort of scene that Charles makes look quite nice even though it is so simple. I draw some inspiration from the several paintings like this of Charles Warren Eaton that I have done in this series. In my latest series of my own Tonalist paintings I've taken on a few Woodland scenes. I've covered Eaton at length so today I'm using a song from my album Love and Death instead of narration.
Continuing on with our assay regarding my Tonalist painting process; today I would like to discuss weeding out the dud paintings. One of the reasons that I like to do a 5x7 study prior to painting a motif larger, is that the study will enable me quickly to see how well my photographic reference translates into an actual painting.
You would be surprised to learn that of 14 scenes/motifs that I've selected for a series that I am painting, usually at least two or three do not make it into larger paintings and I have to make substitutions for those scenes. This number seems to go higher with each year that I paint. I am learning more all the time what will work for me as a painter and what will not.
In many cases I can spot the duds after doing my initial drawing on a 5x7 panel. One of my hallmarks as an artist is my inner belief that I can conquer any subject or motif if only I apply myself diligently and repeatedly. The actual truth is that this is just not always possible. Some scenes just will not make good paintings no matter how hard you work on them or how great your belief that you can make a silk purse from a sow's ear.
This is all part of the self editing process that any mature artist must go through with their work. In many ways writers have it easier in that, their field of endeavor allows them to use editors. When you're a landscape painter you must be your own editor. There is a fine line between confidence and foolhardiness. I think as artists, it is often times more easy to deceive yourself than you might believe. It's important to always be on guard against self-deception and be working for quality in every aspect of your art at all times.
There are times that I do not end up deciding against a given scene until I have completed the 5x7 color study. Usually I have spent some time looking at the study prior to stating a larger version. This is one reason I like to work on a series of paintings, bringing them all along through each stage. It gives me time to see, think, and visualize the larger paintings.
There are occasions that some scenes work well small but will not scale up, or will not be worth the effort of doing larger. Many times I will give these paintings as gifts to friends. They can be quite nice as studies even though they didn't make it for use in a larger context.
This leads us to the topic of conscious versus unconscious working methods and the use of intuition in regards to creating landscape paintings. I believe I will talk a bit more about this aspect of my painting process tomorrow. Come back if you are interested in hearing about it.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Towards a Clearing Dusk' by Charles Warren Eaton; Eaton was quite good at this type of landscape painting and I feel that his painting here is remarkable in its simplicity. As I stated above I have taken his lead and am producing a few paintings in this sort of vein in my recent own work.
I enjoyed doing this study after Eaton. One of the things I like best about it is the almost duotone nature of this painting or perhaps, it would be more accurate to call it tritone, in that it is essentially just yellow, green, and red with a range in values from very dark to somewhat light.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Clearing Dusk by Charles Warren Eaton, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
This is the sort of scene that Charles makes look quite nice even though it is so simple. I draw some inspiration from the several paintings like this of Charles Warren Eaton that I have done in this series. In my latest series of my own Tonalist paintings I've taken on a few Woodland scenes. I've covered Eaton at length so today I'm using a song from my album Love and Death instead of narration.
Continuing on with our assay regarding my Tonalist painting process; today I would like to discuss weeding out the dud paintings. One of the reasons that I like to do a 5x7 study prior to painting a motif larger, is that the study will enable me quickly to see how well my photographic reference translates into an actual painting.
You would be surprised to learn that of 14 scenes/motifs that I've selected for a series that I am painting, usually at least two or three do not make it into larger paintings and I have to make substitutions for those scenes. This number seems to go higher with each year that I paint. I am learning more all the time what will work for me as a painter and what will not.
In many cases I can spot the duds after doing my initial drawing on a 5x7 panel. One of my hallmarks as an artist is my inner belief that I can conquer any subject or motif if only I apply myself diligently and repeatedly. The actual truth is that this is just not always possible. Some scenes just will not make good paintings no matter how hard you work on them or how great your belief that you can make a silk purse from a sow's ear.
This is all part of the self editing process that any mature artist must go through with their work. In many ways writers have it easier in that, their field of endeavor allows them to use editors. When you're a landscape painter you must be your own editor. There is a fine line between confidence and foolhardiness. I think as artists, it is often times more easy to deceive yourself than you might believe. It's important to always be on guard against self-deception and be working for quality in every aspect of your art at all times.
There are times that I do not end up deciding against a given scene until I have completed the 5x7 color study. Usually I have spent some time looking at the study prior to stating a larger version. This is one reason I like to work on a series of paintings, bringing them all along through each stage. It gives me time to see, think, and visualize the larger paintings.
There are occasions that some scenes work well small but will not scale up, or will not be worth the effort of doing larger. Many times I will give these paintings as gifts to friends. They can be quite nice as studies even though they didn't make it for use in a larger context.
This leads us to the topic of conscious versus unconscious working methods and the use of intuition in regards to creating landscape paintings. I believe I will talk a bit more about this aspect of my painting process tomorrow. Come back if you are interested in hearing about it.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Towards a Clearing Dusk' by Charles Warren Eaton; Eaton was quite good at this type of landscape painting and I feel that his painting here is remarkable in its simplicity. As I stated above I have taken his lead and am producing a few paintings in this sort of vein in my recent own work.
I enjoyed doing this study after Eaton. One of the things I like best about it is the almost duotone nature of this painting or perhaps, it would be more accurate to call it tritone, in that it is essentially just yellow, green, and red with a range in values from very dark to somewhat light.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Clearing Dusk by Charles Warren Eaton |
Day Fifty Four: Wooded River Landscape by John Francis Murphy
Hello and welcome to day 54 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is of 'Wooded River Landscape' by John Francis Murphy.
Those of you that have been following this series are well aware of John Francis Murphy as he is one of my all-time favorite painters and after George Inness. is the preeminent Tonalist. I will be discussing some biographical information about John Francis Murphy in today's video narration, so please check that out.
Continuing on with our assay regarding my Tonalist painting process, today I would like to talk a bit about small studies. Sometime in 2011, I came across a video, or perhaps it was a blog post of a very good figure painter. One of the things that was unique about his process, was that he would do a very small color study of the figure that he was painting prior to starting the larger work. These studies of his were about 5x5, 5x7 in size and were lacking in any sort of detail including any distinct features of the person sitting for the portrait.
This got me thinking that doing studies for my landscape paintings might be a really cool idea. I had at that time been doing some plein air painting but I found that to be quite frustrating due to the very changeable weather here in Northland, New Zealand. I thought that having a study might serve the same sort of purpose as a plein air painting would, in that it would give me a chance to execute the motif quickly and with less detail than my larger painting, keeping things fresh, gestural and small.
From that time I did a small study for every painting that I did. My initial studies, were far less detailed and rendered than what I do these days. The reasons for this are many, but I suppose the main reason is that I sell a fair amount of my small studies. So, I like to take the same amount of care that I expand on my larger works. This is not to say that they take me the same amount of time as my larger works. The larger paintings take me quite a bit longer and, are generally speaking more involved .
I really enjoy doing studies at small sizes. The limitation of the small size means that I am more restricted as far as actual detail which leads to more expressive freedom. Also, I tend to use brushes that are quite large for the sizes I'm working. This definitely keeps me from overdoing things as there is only so much detail you can accomplish with a large brush on a small painting.
I do my small studies from the same photographic reference that I use for the larger works. One of the main uses of the studies in my process, is that when I am finishing my larger version of the motif,
I will refer to the study only, leaving the photograph aside (something I started doing about a year and a half ago and it works very well). This is one of my many strategies for avoiding the pitfalls of working with photographic reference. It is easier to avoid over detailing and over rendering my larger work when using only the study as my primary reference as I finish a painting.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Wooded River Landscape' by John Francis Murphy; this painting is classic Murphy. It also reminds me very much of the work of Dennis Sheehan who I know for a fact is very inspired and influenced by John Francis Murphy.
I enjoyed painting the warm inviting sky and I also utilized my patented green over burnt sienna wash technique successfully in this study.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Wooded River Landscape by J Francis Murphy, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
Today's study is of 'Wooded River Landscape' by John Francis Murphy.
Those of you that have been following this series are well aware of John Francis Murphy as he is one of my all-time favorite painters and after George Inness. is the preeminent Tonalist. I will be discussing some biographical information about John Francis Murphy in today's video narration, so please check that out.
Continuing on with our assay regarding my Tonalist painting process, today I would like to talk a bit about small studies. Sometime in 2011, I came across a video, or perhaps it was a blog post of a very good figure painter. One of the things that was unique about his process, was that he would do a very small color study of the figure that he was painting prior to starting the larger work. These studies of his were about 5x5, 5x7 in size and were lacking in any sort of detail including any distinct features of the person sitting for the portrait.
This got me thinking that doing studies for my landscape paintings might be a really cool idea. I had at that time been doing some plein air painting but I found that to be quite frustrating due to the very changeable weather here in Northland, New Zealand. I thought that having a study might serve the same sort of purpose as a plein air painting would, in that it would give me a chance to execute the motif quickly and with less detail than my larger painting, keeping things fresh, gestural and small.
From that time I did a small study for every painting that I did. My initial studies, were far less detailed and rendered than what I do these days. The reasons for this are many, but I suppose the main reason is that I sell a fair amount of my small studies. So, I like to take the same amount of care that I expand on my larger works. This is not to say that they take me the same amount of time as my larger works. The larger paintings take me quite a bit longer and, are generally speaking more involved .
I really enjoy doing studies at small sizes. The limitation of the small size means that I am more restricted as far as actual detail which leads to more expressive freedom. Also, I tend to use brushes that are quite large for the sizes I'm working. This definitely keeps me from overdoing things as there is only so much detail you can accomplish with a large brush on a small painting.
I do my small studies from the same photographic reference that I use for the larger works. One of the main uses of the studies in my process, is that when I am finishing my larger version of the motif,
I will refer to the study only, leaving the photograph aside (something I started doing about a year and a half ago and it works very well). This is one of my many strategies for avoiding the pitfalls of working with photographic reference. It is easier to avoid over detailing and over rendering my larger work when using only the study as my primary reference as I finish a painting.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Wooded River Landscape' by John Francis Murphy; this painting is classic Murphy. It also reminds me very much of the work of Dennis Sheehan who I know for a fact is very inspired and influenced by John Francis Murphy.
I enjoyed painting the warm inviting sky and I also utilized my patented green over burnt sienna wash technique successfully in this study.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Wooded River Landscape by John Francis Murphy |
Day Fifty Three: Roman Campagna by George Inness
Hello and welcome to day 53 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is of 'Roman Campagna' by George Inness.
Per our recent studies of paintings by George Inness, I will be reading some from the book George Inness by Nikolai Cikovsky on the narration for today's video so please check that out.
Continuing on with our current assay of my painting process; today I would like to discuss mass drawing. As I referenced in the recent post about direct versus indirect painting, I like to do a duo-toned mass drawing on my prepared board prior to going in with color. The reason I like to have a drawing done first, (even though I could just go in immediately with blocked in color) is that, dividing the painting process into distinct stages has many advantages for the type of paintings I like to do.
The primary advantage for me in having a drawing done is that I have:
I find that breaking my painting process into stages, allows me to come to the painting in a manner that is always fresh and also allows for a good interplay between conscious and unconscious brush strokes being applied.
I start by affixing my boards to a vertically oriented easel. I use blue tack to temporarily attach my board to the easel. I've had mostly good experiences with blue tack and if you're thinking of using this same technique to hold up your boards, just be sure that you use enough blue tack. Small pieces of blue tack will cause your painting to fall off of the easel while you are painting and this can be very messy.
I like to do the mass drawing on my panels with a brush and two colors; burnt sienna and phthalo green. This gives me a limited range of values. As you can see in my videos the lightest value will be the color of the panel itself the next darkest value is generally just the alkaloid medium painted directly onto the board. After that I have a range of values of about four steps, which I use to render the scene. By mixing the phthalo green and the burnt sienna together I get a color that is quite dark but not nearly as dark as my later dark mixture for the color painting stage which is alizarin crimson and phthalo green.
Having a dark that is not too dark is quite handy, in that it allows me to push the painting much further in the color stage, while having some lesser darks underneath in certain areas allows me to build up nice transparent shadows.
I tend to start with a brush that is dipped in medium with just the slightest amount of pigment and I start drawing with my brush directly onto my board. I do not use charcoal or pencil.
As an aside here, I should let those of you know that wish to do an under drawing for their painting, that pencil is a very inappropriate method to start an oil painting. The reason for this is that graphite basically lays in little slats on top of itself that are very slick . The slick graphite slats resist oil paints and many times the drawing will come up through quite a few more layers of paint than you would imagine possible. For this reason, it is best to do drawings for oil paintings using charcoal or the method that I use which is just drawing with a brush and paint.
After working up a very light version of the scene with lightly tinted medium, I will go over each areas of the painting again with successively stronger amounts of pigment on my brush. I generally use just the burnt sienna at first and I will again draw almost the entire scene this way, refining as I go along.
After I have worked with the burnt sienna color I will go in with my burnt sienna and phthalo green mix for the darkest shadow areas. There have been times in the pass where I did not actually utilize phthalo green at all. Sometimes I would just use burnt sienna alone. For quite a while I was using a combination of burnt sienna and ivory black. The reason I stopped using the ivory black is that I feel it adds a sort of cool and dusty sort of effect to the painting and I'm more interested in retaining vibrancy. Phthalo green while being a dark color is actually very transparent, black is far less so.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Roman Campagna' by George Inness; this is mid period Inness. The thing I've always appreciated about this painting is the way that George Inness stacks values all the way back to the horizon and then again in the sky. He has definitely managed to capture the sort of close in feeling that one gets on a stormy day.
I am quite happy with the way the study turned out and this is a case where I did some additional work with glazing and dry brushing to approximate the feeling of texture that Inness captured in his original painting.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Roman Campagna by George Inness, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
Today's study is of 'Roman Campagna' by George Inness.
Per our recent studies of paintings by George Inness, I will be reading some from the book George Inness by Nikolai Cikovsky on the narration for today's video so please check that out.
Continuing on with our current assay of my painting process; today I would like to discuss mass drawing. As I referenced in the recent post about direct versus indirect painting, I like to do a duo-toned mass drawing on my prepared board prior to going in with color. The reason I like to have a drawing done first, (even though I could just go in immediately with blocked in color) is that, dividing the painting process into distinct stages has many advantages for the type of paintings I like to do.
The primary advantage for me in having a drawing done is that I have:
- Worked out my composition thoroughly
- Got the predominant forms and their related values mapped out
- Been able, in the mass drawing, to concentrate on what is, in essence a simplified version of the painting.
I find that breaking my painting process into stages, allows me to come to the painting in a manner that is always fresh and also allows for a good interplay between conscious and unconscious brush strokes being applied.
I start by affixing my boards to a vertically oriented easel. I use blue tack to temporarily attach my board to the easel. I've had mostly good experiences with blue tack and if you're thinking of using this same technique to hold up your boards, just be sure that you use enough blue tack. Small pieces of blue tack will cause your painting to fall off of the easel while you are painting and this can be very messy.
I like to do the mass drawing on my panels with a brush and two colors; burnt sienna and phthalo green. This gives me a limited range of values. As you can see in my videos the lightest value will be the color of the panel itself the next darkest value is generally just the alkaloid medium painted directly onto the board. After that I have a range of values of about four steps, which I use to render the scene. By mixing the phthalo green and the burnt sienna together I get a color that is quite dark but not nearly as dark as my later dark mixture for the color painting stage which is alizarin crimson and phthalo green.
Having a dark that is not too dark is quite handy, in that it allows me to push the painting much further in the color stage, while having some lesser darks underneath in certain areas allows me to build up nice transparent shadows.
I tend to start with a brush that is dipped in medium with just the slightest amount of pigment and I start drawing with my brush directly onto my board. I do not use charcoal or pencil.
As an aside here, I should let those of you know that wish to do an under drawing for their painting, that pencil is a very inappropriate method to start an oil painting. The reason for this is that graphite basically lays in little slats on top of itself that are very slick . The slick graphite slats resist oil paints and many times the drawing will come up through quite a few more layers of paint than you would imagine possible. For this reason, it is best to do drawings for oil paintings using charcoal or the method that I use which is just drawing with a brush and paint.
After working up a very light version of the scene with lightly tinted medium, I will go over each areas of the painting again with successively stronger amounts of pigment on my brush. I generally use just the burnt sienna at first and I will again draw almost the entire scene this way, refining as I go along.
After I have worked with the burnt sienna color I will go in with my burnt sienna and phthalo green mix for the darkest shadow areas. There have been times in the pass where I did not actually utilize phthalo green at all. Sometimes I would just use burnt sienna alone. For quite a while I was using a combination of burnt sienna and ivory black. The reason I stopped using the ivory black is that I feel it adds a sort of cool and dusty sort of effect to the painting and I'm more interested in retaining vibrancy. Phthalo green while being a dark color is actually very transparent, black is far less so.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Roman Campagna' by George Inness; this is mid period Inness. The thing I've always appreciated about this painting is the way that George Inness stacks values all the way back to the horizon and then again in the sky. He has definitely managed to capture the sort of close in feeling that one gets on a stormy day.
I am quite happy with the way the study turned out and this is a case where I did some additional work with glazing and dry brushing to approximate the feeling of texture that Inness captured in his original painting.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Roman Campagna by George Inness |
Day Fifty Two: A Torrent in Romagna by Camille Corot
Hello and welcome to day 52 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is 'A Torrent in Romagna' by Camille Corot.
Camille Corot was not actually a Tonalist painter, he was a painter of the Barbizon school. However, I consider it his style to be so influential on the movement of Tonalism that I've included quite a few of his paintings in this series. I will be reading some information about Camille Corot in today's video narration so please check that out.
Getting back to our current assay of my painting process; today I'd like to discuss texturing of my substrates. As I wrote in our last blog post, I paint exclusively on wood panels. At the 5x7 size that I do my studies, I have been texturizing my panels for many years. For the larger sizes that I paint I have been predominantly using a sanding sealer tinted with burnt sienna to coat my boards, sanding in between each coat. I've been preparing my boards for my larger paintings in this way for quite a while.
Recently, I began texturizing the boards I use for my larger works as well. This is one of the changes in my working approach that came about because of my doing this series. The reason that I decided to texturize the substrate of my larger paintings is that I really enjoyed using the texture to pull off small bits of paint in the second color pass stages, while doing the studies for this series. So, it occurred to me that it would give me another arrow in my quiver in regards to painting my larger work.
I have experimented with different types of texturing applied in different ways to my boards, especially early on in my painting journey. For quite a while now I have settled on an approach whereby I use transparent acrylic gesso that has burnt sienna acrylic paint added to it. This mixture is fairly thick yet still viscous. After selecting and sanding my boards for a new series of works I will then apply this gesso mixture.
My preferred method for application is as follows: I place the board on a piece of newsprint, flat on my work surface. I then dip the tip of a 2 inch house painting type brush into my gesso mixture. Depending on the size of the board I will generally get about a half-inch of gesso on to the brush. I then began applying the gesso to my board covering it quickly with even strokes. Because I do not wish to have brush strokes in my texture, what I do next, is wipe the excess gesso off of the brush.
I then pick up the board and while holding it, I start using the flat side of the brush to smack the surface of the board. Working quickly in a circular motions I cover the entire board with this texture. I take great care at this stage to avoid any obvious directional patterns that may adversely affect my later painting. The point of applying texture is to give me a surface that is subtle, yet uniform that I can use to pull paint off the brush, generally at the later stages of my painting.
I learned a long time ago not to leave the little peaks of the gesso/paint mixture too high. I've tried many different approaches to even out these peaks. What I have settled on recently, is to let the board dry a little bit and then I will go over it again with the same brush that has been mostly wiped off. This breaks up the larger peaks into a far smaller and more manageable texture.
I will repeat this process with all 14 or 15 boards in the series that I am doing and then I will let them dry overnight. Acrylic gesso dries fairly rapidly, I'm sure that if I needed to I could probably begin painting right away, however I prefer to make sure that the gesso texture is 100% dry before working over the top of it in oils.
Generally before I do my drawings with oil paints on the freshly prepared boards, I will give them a very light sanding with sandpaper, to knock back the pointiest parts of the texture.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'A Torrent in Romagna' by Camille Corot; I quite like the composition of this painting by Camille. I did have to work a bit harder on this one, than on some of the others, because there is some very subtle areas in the painting especially around the the river and horizon.
Overall I'm very happy with the way the study turned out and I really appreciate getting the chance to absorb more of Camille Corot's amazing style. Hopefully I can incorporate the best aspects of what he did into my own work.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - A Torrent in Romagna by Camille Corot, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
Today's study is 'A Torrent in Romagna' by Camille Corot.
Camille Corot was not actually a Tonalist painter, he was a painter of the Barbizon school. However, I consider it his style to be so influential on the movement of Tonalism that I've included quite a few of his paintings in this series. I will be reading some information about Camille Corot in today's video narration so please check that out.
Getting back to our current assay of my painting process; today I'd like to discuss texturing of my substrates. As I wrote in our last blog post, I paint exclusively on wood panels. At the 5x7 size that I do my studies, I have been texturizing my panels for many years. For the larger sizes that I paint I have been predominantly using a sanding sealer tinted with burnt sienna to coat my boards, sanding in between each coat. I've been preparing my boards for my larger paintings in this way for quite a while.
Recently, I began texturizing the boards I use for my larger works as well. This is one of the changes in my working approach that came about because of my doing this series. The reason that I decided to texturize the substrate of my larger paintings is that I really enjoyed using the texture to pull off small bits of paint in the second color pass stages, while doing the studies for this series. So, it occurred to me that it would give me another arrow in my quiver in regards to painting my larger work.
I have experimented with different types of texturing applied in different ways to my boards, especially early on in my painting journey. For quite a while now I have settled on an approach whereby I use transparent acrylic gesso that has burnt sienna acrylic paint added to it. This mixture is fairly thick yet still viscous. After selecting and sanding my boards for a new series of works I will then apply this gesso mixture.
My preferred method for application is as follows: I place the board on a piece of newsprint, flat on my work surface. I then dip the tip of a 2 inch house painting type brush into my gesso mixture. Depending on the size of the board I will generally get about a half-inch of gesso on to the brush. I then began applying the gesso to my board covering it quickly with even strokes. Because I do not wish to have brush strokes in my texture, what I do next, is wipe the excess gesso off of the brush.
I then pick up the board and while holding it, I start using the flat side of the brush to smack the surface of the board. Working quickly in a circular motions I cover the entire board with this texture. I take great care at this stage to avoid any obvious directional patterns that may adversely affect my later painting. The point of applying texture is to give me a surface that is subtle, yet uniform that I can use to pull paint off the brush, generally at the later stages of my painting.
I learned a long time ago not to leave the little peaks of the gesso/paint mixture too high. I've tried many different approaches to even out these peaks. What I have settled on recently, is to let the board dry a little bit and then I will go over it again with the same brush that has been mostly wiped off. This breaks up the larger peaks into a far smaller and more manageable texture.
I will repeat this process with all 14 or 15 boards in the series that I am doing and then I will let them dry overnight. Acrylic gesso dries fairly rapidly, I'm sure that if I needed to I could probably begin painting right away, however I prefer to make sure that the gesso texture is 100% dry before working over the top of it in oils.
Generally before I do my drawings with oil paints on the freshly prepared boards, I will give them a very light sanding with sandpaper, to knock back the pointiest parts of the texture.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'A Torrent in Romagna' by Camille Corot; I quite like the composition of this painting by Camille. I did have to work a bit harder on this one, than on some of the others, because there is some very subtle areas in the painting especially around the the river and horizon.
Overall I'm very happy with the way the study turned out and I really appreciate getting the chance to absorb more of Camille Corot's amazing style. Hopefully I can incorporate the best aspects of what he did into my own work.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, A Torrent in Romagna by Camille Corot |
Day Fifty One: Evening Star by Birge Harrison
Hello and welcome to day 51 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today study is 'Evening Star' by Birge Harrison.
Birge Harrison is a second-generation Tonalist and he also wrote a book about landscape painting that was quite popular and is still in print. I will be getting into some biographical information about Birge in today's video so please check that out.
In our ongoing assay regarding my painting process, today I would like to discuss substrates that I have used and currently use. These days I strongly prefer painting on wood. However, when I started out I was painting on canvas boards like the ones you can find in pretty much any art supply store.
My rationale when I first started teaching myself landscape painting was that I could learn a lot more if I did many small paintings as opposed to only a few large ones. The problem with small canvas panels is that the rough/coarse canvas texture tends to dominate the painting. For this reason I started looking into painting on other types of substrates. Originally I went to Home Depot and purchased a type of panel called Luan that is typically used for doors. The Luan is about 1/8 of an inch thick and can exhibit a fair amount of grain.
Originally I would paint directly onto the wood. After some research though I discovered that without some sort of buffering, the wood would eventually absorb all of the oil from the paint and thus the painting would gradually disappear over time. My solution to this early on was to use grey house paint to coat the boards prior to executing my paintings on them.
Eventually, I started exploring other types of panel and while still in the US I was painting on very nice maple panels that I had cut to a size of 6 x 9. I brought a few of those panels over to New Zealand with me when I came over. Once the New Zealand, I started exploring various different types of wood panels here, some of which were native timbers to New Zealand like Rimu or Kauri. After a while I settled on pine panels at a size of 8 x 12. And I worked on those panels for quite a while.
It was actually in New Zealand, or just prior that I started preparing the surface of my wood panels with a burnt sienna tone, something I can thank Birge Harrison for after having read his book. I have experimented with applying various textures, but for the most part I would just use an acrylic sanding sealer that was colored with burnt sienna, sanding the board in between applications. I like pine but find it a bit soft.
Eventually I settled on painting with kauri wood panels which I purchased from a local supplier. Kauri is a very fine-grained wood that is also reasonably hard. I really enjoyed the subtle grain coming through and interacting with my brushstrokes. Unfortunately the Kauri panels had a downside in that they would have a tendency to be somewhat warped. This is not a problem when the painting is in a frame but I'd prefer the board flatter while painting.
My current solution that addresses this is to use laminated MDF. I have experimented with painting directly on prepared MDF boards and I cannot say that I care for it very much, I do not like the overall slickness. I even tried textured MDF but ultimately found that unsatisfying as well. My current solution is to paint on MDF board that is been laminated with Kauri. This provides me with an excellent, very stable and minimally warped painting surface that also provides me with a nice grain.
Tomorrow we are going to discuss texturing a bit, how I apply it, and how I have utilized textured substrates in my work in the past and currently.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Evening Star' by Birge Harrison; although Birge has written a book that imparts a lot of information about Tonalist painting and how to go about it, he is not technically a Tonalist painter.
I've been aware of this particular painting for quite a while and I was intrigued by the almost completely abstract nature of the painting. I'm pretty happy with the final result.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Evening Star by Birge Harrison, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x5' Oil on wood panel |
Today study is 'Evening Star' by Birge Harrison.
Birge Harrison is a second-generation Tonalist and he also wrote a book about landscape painting that was quite popular and is still in print. I will be getting into some biographical information about Birge in today's video so please check that out.
In our ongoing assay regarding my painting process, today I would like to discuss substrates that I have used and currently use. These days I strongly prefer painting on wood. However, when I started out I was painting on canvas boards like the ones you can find in pretty much any art supply store.
My rationale when I first started teaching myself landscape painting was that I could learn a lot more if I did many small paintings as opposed to only a few large ones. The problem with small canvas panels is that the rough/coarse canvas texture tends to dominate the painting. For this reason I started looking into painting on other types of substrates. Originally I went to Home Depot and purchased a type of panel called Luan that is typically used for doors. The Luan is about 1/8 of an inch thick and can exhibit a fair amount of grain.
Originally I would paint directly onto the wood. After some research though I discovered that without some sort of buffering, the wood would eventually absorb all of the oil from the paint and thus the painting would gradually disappear over time. My solution to this early on was to use grey house paint to coat the boards prior to executing my paintings on them.
Eventually, I started exploring other types of panel and while still in the US I was painting on very nice maple panels that I had cut to a size of 6 x 9. I brought a few of those panels over to New Zealand with me when I came over. Once the New Zealand, I started exploring various different types of wood panels here, some of which were native timbers to New Zealand like Rimu or Kauri. After a while I settled on pine panels at a size of 8 x 12. And I worked on those panels for quite a while.
It was actually in New Zealand, or just prior that I started preparing the surface of my wood panels with a burnt sienna tone, something I can thank Birge Harrison for after having read his book. I have experimented with applying various textures, but for the most part I would just use an acrylic sanding sealer that was colored with burnt sienna, sanding the board in between applications. I like pine but find it a bit soft.
Eventually I settled on painting with kauri wood panels which I purchased from a local supplier. Kauri is a very fine-grained wood that is also reasonably hard. I really enjoyed the subtle grain coming through and interacting with my brushstrokes. Unfortunately the Kauri panels had a downside in that they would have a tendency to be somewhat warped. This is not a problem when the painting is in a frame but I'd prefer the board flatter while painting.
My current solution that addresses this is to use laminated MDF. I have experimented with painting directly on prepared MDF boards and I cannot say that I care for it very much, I do not like the overall slickness. I even tried textured MDF but ultimately found that unsatisfying as well. My current solution is to paint on MDF board that is been laminated with Kauri. This provides me with an excellent, very stable and minimally warped painting surface that also provides me with a nice grain.
Tomorrow we are going to discuss texturing a bit, how I apply it, and how I have utilized textured substrates in my work in the past and currently.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Evening Star' by Birge Harrison; although Birge has written a book that imparts a lot of information about Tonalist painting and how to go about it, he is not technically a Tonalist painter.
I've been aware of this particular painting for quite a while and I was intrigued by the almost completely abstract nature of the painting. I'm pretty happy with the final result.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Evening Star by Birge Harrison |
Day Fifty: Early Autumn by Alexander Hellwig Wyant
Hello and welcome to day 50 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today study is of 'Early Autumn' by Alexander Hellwig Wyant.
I will be reading some biographical information about Hellwig in today's video narration so please check that out.
Continuing on with our discussion about my painting process, today I would like to discuss how I manipulate photography in Photoshop prior to using it as painting reference. In yesterday's post I spoke a bit about my history with photographic manipulation as it relates to my painting and, also the reasons why I began to more extensively manipulate photography for use in my work.
The first and easiest to miss manipulation for any photograph is how it is cropped. How a photograph is cropped will largely determine where the eye is directed in and through the photograph. The first thing I like to do after selecting an assortment of images for a series is to determine which will be rectangular, which will be vertical and which will be square formats.
The next area that I concentrate on is generally the insertion of a dramatic and appropriate sky for the scene that I am setting up. I strongly favor skies with good contrast and color. It is quite difficult to find a scene that has a good composition and also an appropriate sky. Over the years I have mastered many techniques for knocking out the existing sky from my photograph so that I may replace it with something better.
For my replacement skies I often scout around on the Internet or utilize my own extensive library of skies that I've photographed in the past. It's important to make sure that lighting in the skies corresponds to the lighting in the scene although there is often more latitude than you might think.
After compositing in a new sky, I will generally use the colors in the sky to adjust and rekey colors within the scene itself. After replacing the sky I will begin thinking about the approach I want to take to the color for that scene. I have many different strategies that I utilize, one of my favorites for example, would be a green/violet color scheme. Another approach I like to use occasionally is a golden or sepia toned color scheme and there have been times in the past where I have made all of the colors in the scene various shades of blue or cool green.
After designing my colors for a given scene I begin working on adjusting contrast both globally and locally. For the most part I prefer there to be more intense contrasts in the foreground that soften as the scene recedes into the picture plane. Once I have adjusted the overall contrast for the image, I will at times, go in and begin painting in stronger highlight areas or deeper shadow areas. I use this technique quite a lot depending on the particular scene. It's very important to establish where your strongest highlights and greatest contrasts are in a subject before painting it.
Often my next step will be to take my composited scene where it overlaps the sky and to soften and lighten these areas so as to avoid harsh silhouettes especially where the darker trees overlap the brighter sky. This can sometimes make the photograph itself appear somewhat synthetic, but as I stated in my previous post the purpose of my manipulated photography is not stand on its own but to serve as fodder for my landscape painting.
One of the last steps that I will undertake with my photo manipulation is to strategically darken certain areas of the scene to help direct the eye further to the points of interest that I've established. This means darkening the lower corners, or sometimes darkening the upper edges of the photograph.
All of my manipulation of the photograph are done with the express intention of getting the photo to look and feel as much like my initial inspiration and mental image when first coming upon the place in nature.
As we will be discussing in future posts regarding my painting process, this does not mean that I am always successful in this regard and many times it is not until I actually produce a painting using the manipulated photographic reference, that I can tell if it's going to make a good painting or not. This is one of the reasons why I do a study 5 x 7 or 5 x 5 of the motif prior to doing a larger painting.
Tomorrow we will be discussing how I prepare my boards and also a bit of history in regards to various painting substrates that I have experimented with and eventually settled on for doing my landscape paintings.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Early Autumn' by Alexander Hellwig Wyant; this is a painting I've been looking at for quite a while and I've always been very intrigued by Alexander's use of very strong dark areas offset against an intensely expressive sky.
I felt that he succeeded nicely in this painting and it is one of the ones that I was looking forward to painting from the start of this series. The aspect of this study that I enjoyed painting the most, was the intensely structured and textured sky.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Early Autumn by Alexander Hellwig Wyant, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
Today study is of 'Early Autumn' by Alexander Hellwig Wyant.
I will be reading some biographical information about Hellwig in today's video narration so please check that out.
Continuing on with our discussion about my painting process, today I would like to discuss how I manipulate photography in Photoshop prior to using it as painting reference. In yesterday's post I spoke a bit about my history with photographic manipulation as it relates to my painting and, also the reasons why I began to more extensively manipulate photography for use in my work.
The first and easiest to miss manipulation for any photograph is how it is cropped. How a photograph is cropped will largely determine where the eye is directed in and through the photograph. The first thing I like to do after selecting an assortment of images for a series is to determine which will be rectangular, which will be vertical and which will be square formats.
The next area that I concentrate on is generally the insertion of a dramatic and appropriate sky for the scene that I am setting up. I strongly favor skies with good contrast and color. It is quite difficult to find a scene that has a good composition and also an appropriate sky. Over the years I have mastered many techniques for knocking out the existing sky from my photograph so that I may replace it with something better.
For my replacement skies I often scout around on the Internet or utilize my own extensive library of skies that I've photographed in the past. It's important to make sure that lighting in the skies corresponds to the lighting in the scene although there is often more latitude than you might think.
After compositing in a new sky, I will generally use the colors in the sky to adjust and rekey colors within the scene itself. After replacing the sky I will begin thinking about the approach I want to take to the color for that scene. I have many different strategies that I utilize, one of my favorites for example, would be a green/violet color scheme. Another approach I like to use occasionally is a golden or sepia toned color scheme and there have been times in the past where I have made all of the colors in the scene various shades of blue or cool green.
After designing my colors for a given scene I begin working on adjusting contrast both globally and locally. For the most part I prefer there to be more intense contrasts in the foreground that soften as the scene recedes into the picture plane. Once I have adjusted the overall contrast for the image, I will at times, go in and begin painting in stronger highlight areas or deeper shadow areas. I use this technique quite a lot depending on the particular scene. It's very important to establish where your strongest highlights and greatest contrasts are in a subject before painting it.
Often my next step will be to take my composited scene where it overlaps the sky and to soften and lighten these areas so as to avoid harsh silhouettes especially where the darker trees overlap the brighter sky. This can sometimes make the photograph itself appear somewhat synthetic, but as I stated in my previous post the purpose of my manipulated photography is not stand on its own but to serve as fodder for my landscape painting.
One of the last steps that I will undertake with my photo manipulation is to strategically darken certain areas of the scene to help direct the eye further to the points of interest that I've established. This means darkening the lower corners, or sometimes darkening the upper edges of the photograph.
All of my manipulation of the photograph are done with the express intention of getting the photo to look and feel as much like my initial inspiration and mental image when first coming upon the place in nature.
As we will be discussing in future posts regarding my painting process, this does not mean that I am always successful in this regard and many times it is not until I actually produce a painting using the manipulated photographic reference, that I can tell if it's going to make a good painting or not. This is one of the reasons why I do a study 5 x 7 or 5 x 5 of the motif prior to doing a larger painting.
Tomorrow we will be discussing how I prepare my boards and also a bit of history in regards to various painting substrates that I have experimented with and eventually settled on for doing my landscape paintings.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Early Autumn' by Alexander Hellwig Wyant; this is a painting I've been looking at for quite a while and I've always been very intrigued by Alexander's use of very strong dark areas offset against an intensely expressive sky.
I felt that he succeeded nicely in this painting and it is one of the ones that I was looking forward to painting from the start of this series. The aspect of this study that I enjoyed painting the most, was the intensely structured and textured sky.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
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| Original painting, Early Autumn by Alexander Hellwig Wyant |
Day Forty Nine: Moonrise Tarpon Springs by George Inness
Hello and welcome to day 49 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is of 'Moonrise Tarpon Springs' by George Inness.
I will be getting into some biographical information about George Inness on today's video so please check it out.
Continuing on with our discussion regarding my painting process. Today, I'd like to discuss how I manipulate photography prior to using it as reference for my landscape paintings. When I first started out with landscape paintings I had a little Canon Powershot and I started using it for photography in parks that were close to my workplace at the time.
I knew that I would get superior photos if I did photography late in the afternoon so I would take my bike out and shoot pictures at different points of interest. These early photographs I tended not to manipulate very extensively prior to using for painting. Because I was doing my photography when the light was quite warm and inviting and also because the Canon Powershot had a tendency to oversaturate and pump up colors, this worked pretty well.
As I moved on, and into better cameras that gave me greater color fidelity and detail, I noticed that my paintings colors would often be flat. After becoming aware of Tonalism and the older American painting tradition, I started to warm up my photographs a bit prior to using as painting reference. There wasn't many other changes that were made. Instead I tried my best to refer to the reference while painting and, at the same time try to inject unique and original colors into my paintings from my imagination.
Sometimes this worked okay but a lot of times I felt like I was struggling. One day it occurred to me that rather than try and insert the sorts of colors that I wanted to paint into my painting while looking at something that was actually quite different, that it would be far easier if I could manipulate the photograph to look as much like what I wanted my paintings to be as possible. I'd say I really got into this sort of process in earnest around 2011.
Since 2011 I have been manipulating my photographic reference extensively to the point where the photos themselves may look a bit cartoonish and surreal. This is actually a good thing because I am not presenting manipulated photographs the world,I am executing landscape paintings. Photos serve as fuel for the fire, grist for the mill. not as an end in themselves. As an artist working in the modern world I find it very useful to use Photoshop and computers to assist me in getting my paintings to look away I feel they should look.
Tomorrow I'm going to talk about some of the manipulations that I find particularly useful in modifying photographs to create beautiful landscape paintings so stay tuned.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Moonrise Tarpon Springs' by George Inness; I've been familiar with this painting for quite a while and what I've always liked about it is the soft atmospheric quality. I found this fairly easy to execute and one thing I learned about Inness' work from this study, was how to apply varying degrees of pressure on the brush in different ways and angles to achieve textural variation.
Varying the textures is very important for a painting of this type because the forms have been flattened extensively and are quite simplified. It's imperative that some visual interest in these areas be created through texture. I have not actually seen George Inness' original but I'm sure it evidences quite a lot of glazing,picking and scratching.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Moonrise Tarpon Springs by George Inness, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
Today's study is of 'Moonrise Tarpon Springs' by George Inness.
I will be getting into some biographical information about George Inness on today's video so please check it out.
Continuing on with our discussion regarding my painting process. Today, I'd like to discuss how I manipulate photography prior to using it as reference for my landscape paintings. When I first started out with landscape paintings I had a little Canon Powershot and I started using it for photography in parks that were close to my workplace at the time.
I knew that I would get superior photos if I did photography late in the afternoon so I would take my bike out and shoot pictures at different points of interest. These early photographs I tended not to manipulate very extensively prior to using for painting. Because I was doing my photography when the light was quite warm and inviting and also because the Canon Powershot had a tendency to oversaturate and pump up colors, this worked pretty well.
As I moved on, and into better cameras that gave me greater color fidelity and detail, I noticed that my paintings colors would often be flat. After becoming aware of Tonalism and the older American painting tradition, I started to warm up my photographs a bit prior to using as painting reference. There wasn't many other changes that were made. Instead I tried my best to refer to the reference while painting and, at the same time try to inject unique and original colors into my paintings from my imagination.
Sometimes this worked okay but a lot of times I felt like I was struggling. One day it occurred to me that rather than try and insert the sorts of colors that I wanted to paint into my painting while looking at something that was actually quite different, that it would be far easier if I could manipulate the photograph to look as much like what I wanted my paintings to be as possible. I'd say I really got into this sort of process in earnest around 2011.
Since 2011 I have been manipulating my photographic reference extensively to the point where the photos themselves may look a bit cartoonish and surreal. This is actually a good thing because I am not presenting manipulated photographs the world,I am executing landscape paintings. Photos serve as fuel for the fire, grist for the mill. not as an end in themselves. As an artist working in the modern world I find it very useful to use Photoshop and computers to assist me in getting my paintings to look away I feel they should look.
Tomorrow I'm going to talk about some of the manipulations that I find particularly useful in modifying photographs to create beautiful landscape paintings so stay tuned.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Moonrise Tarpon Springs' by George Inness; I've been familiar with this painting for quite a while and what I've always liked about it is the soft atmospheric quality. I found this fairly easy to execute and one thing I learned about Inness' work from this study, was how to apply varying degrees of pressure on the brush in different ways and angles to achieve textural variation.
Varying the textures is very important for a painting of this type because the forms have been flattened extensively and are quite simplified. It's imperative that some visual interest in these areas be created through texture. I have not actually seen George Inness' original but I'm sure it evidences quite a lot of glazing,picking and scratching.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Moonrise Tarpon Springs by George Inness |
Day Forty Eight: Sunset Landscape by John Francis Murphy
Hello and welcome to day 48 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is 'Sunset Landscape' by John Francis Murphy.
Yesterday, when we were doing a post about Charles Warren Eaton I said he was my number two Tonalist, but to be honest I might have to make John Francis Murphy my number two with George Inness of course being number one as always.
Murphy's paintings are great. I will get into some biographical information about John on today's video so be sure to check that out.
Starting yesterday I began a series of posts about my painting process. We got a little bit into photography yesterday and I'm going to continue today discussing how it is that I acquire reference images to use for subjects for my landscape paintings.
There are many traps inherent in using photographs as reference for a landscape painting. I have to say that it's unfortunate how few contemporary landscape artists are not aware of some of these traps and how they faithfully duplicate almost every aspect of their photographic reference onto their canvas'. This has become so much a problem that some contemporary landscape painters believe that you cannot actually use photographs efficiently and effectively as reference. While I am aware of most of the traps, there are benefits as well
Some of the traps that you need to watch out for are:
Those are the main things to watch out for. I have covered these potential negative aspects in-depth on my previous blog but I felt that it is important to outline these potential problems for any new landscape painters out there.
As far as benefits, here's a smattering:
I'm sure there are more but for me, those are the key benefits that outweigh the traps.
Another factor that is really important when using photography as reference, is knowing what your limitations are and knowing what it is that works for you as a painter. This could be very different for different artists, and one of the great parts of getting older and acquiring experience is knowing what, when and where to photograph.
Tomorrow I will start discussing my approach to digital manipulation of photographs in Photoshop so be sure to stay tuned for that.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Sunset Landscape' by John Francis Murphy; this is one of my favorite Murphy paintings and definitely one I was really looking forward to doing a study of. Paintings like this and the paintings of Inness are the whole reason that I dedicated myself to this project and to the study of these Masterworks.
I really enjoyed doing the yellow sky and also the green washes at the bottom. I feel that I got a bit of John Francis Murphy in my soul now!
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Sunset Landscape by John Francis Murphy, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
Today's study is 'Sunset Landscape' by John Francis Murphy.
Yesterday, when we were doing a post about Charles Warren Eaton I said he was my number two Tonalist, but to be honest I might have to make John Francis Murphy my number two with George Inness of course being number one as always.
Murphy's paintings are great. I will get into some biographical information about John on today's video so be sure to check that out.
Starting yesterday I began a series of posts about my painting process. We got a little bit into photography yesterday and I'm going to continue today discussing how it is that I acquire reference images to use for subjects for my landscape paintings.
There are many traps inherent in using photographs as reference for a landscape painting. I have to say that it's unfortunate how few contemporary landscape artists are not aware of some of these traps and how they faithfully duplicate almost every aspect of their photographic reference onto their canvas'. This has become so much a problem that some contemporary landscape painters believe that you cannot actually use photographs efficiently and effectively as reference. While I am aware of most of the traps, there are benefits as well
Some of the traps that you need to watch out for are:
- Over detailing your canvas, most photographs are incredibly detailed compared to how landscape paintings should be.
- Copying all of the forms contained within the photograph as opposed to creating a unique composition.
- Copying the colors from their photographs directly onto the canvas.
- Improperly rendering shapes in the distance against the sky.
Those are the main things to watch out for. I have covered these potential negative aspects in-depth on my previous blog but I felt that it is important to outline these potential problems for any new landscape painters out there.
As far as benefits, here's a smattering:
- Photos allow the artist to work indoors under controlled conditions.
- Photos can be manipulated to conform to the artists unique vision.
- Photos offer a great way of expanding and extending the artists imagination
I'm sure there are more but for me, those are the key benefits that outweigh the traps.
Another factor that is really important when using photography as reference, is knowing what your limitations are and knowing what it is that works for you as a painter. This could be very different for different artists, and one of the great parts of getting older and acquiring experience is knowing what, when and where to photograph.
Tomorrow I will start discussing my approach to digital manipulation of photographs in Photoshop so be sure to stay tuned for that.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Sunset Landscape' by John Francis Murphy; this is one of my favorite Murphy paintings and definitely one I was really looking forward to doing a study of. Paintings like this and the paintings of Inness are the whole reason that I dedicated myself to this project and to the study of these Masterworks.
I really enjoyed doing the yellow sky and also the green washes at the bottom. I feel that I got a bit of John Francis Murphy in my soul now!
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Sunset Landscape by John Francis Murphy |