Day Eighty Seven: After a Rainy Day by Thomas Burton
Hello and welcome to day 87 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today study is of 'After a Rainy Day' by Thomas Burton.
Thomas Burton was an English artist and not actually a Tonalist however I felt that this particular scene evidenced many qualities of Tonalism and that why I included it in this series. I will be reading some biographical information about Thomas Burton in today's video narration, so please check that out.
We been talking over the last several weeks about my progression as a Tonalist landscape painter. We've talked about proportions and surface quality. Today I like to talk about about edges. We had one post in this series already where I was speaking about edges but I thought it would be good to maybe talk today about my struggle to get to the sort of fracture and diffused edges that are most apparent in the work of George Inness but also other Tonalist painters.
Someday I may try to incorporate all of this information that I've shared on this blog into a book on how to paint in a Tonalist way. No guarantees on that, but it's an idea that has crossed my mind. One of the reasons is that it would be cool, is that you would be able to look at photos of paintings from my earliest attempts at Tonalism to go along with the text. For now you will have to use your imagination.
One of the main differences between Tonalist paintings and the way that I was working prior to that, are the softer more diffused edges that are essentially a part of the Tonalist style. My earliest attempts at working in this mode, I think I got my edges too soft. I would paint by building up the edges very gradually with quite small brushes. This is the way that I believe Camille Corot worked. I got some okay results working this way, however I was not satisfied.
After moving to New Zealand, my work became even softer to the point where almost no brushstrokes were actually in evidence. This was a result of doing multiple layers of oil paint with semi translucent amounts of pigment applied with small brushes. Eventually I abandoned that approach and started working with much larger brushes in a looser, more fractured way. We talked already about how I paint edges in one or two blog posts in this series, so I won't get too much into the mechanics here.
Today, I am interested in talking about nailing the mental/internal approach to edges which is not just affected by the brushes you use, it's actually controlled more by how you see. It's been several years since I've been here New Zealand working at this everyday and I feel that the edges that I get in my paintings now are quite good. Doing these small paintings has helped me even more with edges, in that it has given me the opportunity to study at the feet of the Masters directly by making studies from their paintings.
Having the right approach to edges is one of the most crucial aspects of getting a Tonalist effect. There are other major factors such as color which we will talk a bit more about tomorrow.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'After a Rainy Day' by Thomas Burton; this is one of the few nighttime scenes that I took on in this series. In the current paintings that I'm doing I am painting a couple of night scenes. It is a challenge to paint this type of scene.
It's very easy to take the way things look at night for granted, photographs do very poor job of capturing this look, There have been some painters that have absolutely nailed it though and I hope to one day be in that category.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - After a Rainy Day by Thomas Burton, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
Thomas Burton was an English artist and not actually a Tonalist however I felt that this particular scene evidenced many qualities of Tonalism and that why I included it in this series. I will be reading some biographical information about Thomas Burton in today's video narration, so please check that out.
We been talking over the last several weeks about my progression as a Tonalist landscape painter. We've talked about proportions and surface quality. Today I like to talk about about edges. We had one post in this series already where I was speaking about edges but I thought it would be good to maybe talk today about my struggle to get to the sort of fracture and diffused edges that are most apparent in the work of George Inness but also other Tonalist painters.
Someday I may try to incorporate all of this information that I've shared on this blog into a book on how to paint in a Tonalist way. No guarantees on that, but it's an idea that has crossed my mind. One of the reasons is that it would be cool, is that you would be able to look at photos of paintings from my earliest attempts at Tonalism to go along with the text. For now you will have to use your imagination.
One of the main differences between Tonalist paintings and the way that I was working prior to that, are the softer more diffused edges that are essentially a part of the Tonalist style. My earliest attempts at working in this mode, I think I got my edges too soft. I would paint by building up the edges very gradually with quite small brushes. This is the way that I believe Camille Corot worked. I got some okay results working this way, however I was not satisfied.
After moving to New Zealand, my work became even softer to the point where almost no brushstrokes were actually in evidence. This was a result of doing multiple layers of oil paint with semi translucent amounts of pigment applied with small brushes. Eventually I abandoned that approach and started working with much larger brushes in a looser, more fractured way. We talked already about how I paint edges in one or two blog posts in this series, so I won't get too much into the mechanics here.
Today, I am interested in talking about nailing the mental/internal approach to edges which is not just affected by the brushes you use, it's actually controlled more by how you see. It's been several years since I've been here New Zealand working at this everyday and I feel that the edges that I get in my paintings now are quite good. Doing these small paintings has helped me even more with edges, in that it has given me the opportunity to study at the feet of the Masters directly by making studies from their paintings.
Having the right approach to edges is one of the most crucial aspects of getting a Tonalist effect. There are other major factors such as color which we will talk a bit more about tomorrow.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'After a Rainy Day' by Thomas Burton; this is one of the few nighttime scenes that I took on in this series. In the current paintings that I'm doing I am painting a couple of night scenes. It is a challenge to paint this type of scene.
It's very easy to take the way things look at night for granted, photographs do very poor job of capturing this look, There have been some painters that have absolutely nailed it though and I hope to one day be in that category.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, After a Rainy Day by Thomas Burton |
Day Eighty Six: Autumn Gold by George Inness
Hello and welcome to day 86 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today study is 'Autumn Gold' by George Inness.
We've done quite a lot of studies after Inness paintings on this blog and we have several more to go. I will be reading from the book George Inness by Nicolai Cikovsky on today's video narration, so please check that out.
Over the last week or so, we've been talking about my history as a landscape painter and some of the challenges I've run into in my pursuit of a more Tonalist approach. Today I'd like to talk a bit more about texture and surface quality. This is a subject I've broached a few times in this blog, but I thought it would be good to expand a little bit more on it since this is one of the things that I wrangled with as I was trying to get my painting into a more Tonalist framework.
I began initially doing paintings on canvas and then I progressed to working on different types of wood. I really like having a bit of wood grain coming through and interacting with the texture of the brushstrokes. But I was also intrigued by the idea of working on a more heavily textured surface.
My initial experiments were with regular white acrylic gesso. I tried applying this in many different ways. I tried a sort of spackle approach, I also tried putting a bunch of gesso on the board and then just pushing it against a flat surface like a table and then pulling up. I did several paintings with these heavily textured boards.
There was a problem with the white gesso in that if I had to pick at the painting in any way I would be rewarded with a white spot. At one point I attempted mixing in an under color with the white gesso but the effect was too pastel for me.
I sort of liked the paintings with the texture but in some cases I found it to be too distracting. I really hadn't arrived at the proper textural approach, and so sometime around when I moved to New Zealand I decided to abandon texturising my boards. This was about the same time that I decided to work in a larger size of 8x12. At that time, I was not doing studies for the larger versions of my paintings I was just doing the 8x12 paintings.
The way I was approaching the surface of the boards was to apply several coats of transparent acrylic sanding sealer with a tint of burnt sienna added to it. This worked okay but I was challenged with some of my earliest attempts in that the brush that I used to apply the sealer would leave long stroke marks on my board that could be seen in the final painting.
I eventually found a way to apply the tinted sanding sealer so that the wood panel was completely smooth leaving only the subtle texture of the wood grain coming up through the painting. I worked like this for a good while. Until one day, I decided that it would be good to do a small study or small version of each motif that I was planning on painting. This is when I decided to get back into texturising. I wanted the boards at the small sizes that I was working with to have some texture to help pull the paint off of the brush.
The technique that I eventually arrived at for applying texture was to use a transparent acrylic gesso with some burnt sienna acrylic paint added to it. I would apply this with the side of a big flat brush using a sort of smacking gesture. This technique works very well, especially if you go over the texture a few times with the side of a clean brush so that the texture is subtle and not too intense. This is the technique that I use now on all my boards both the studies and my larger paintings.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Autumn Gold'; this is a late middle period George Inness painting. I like the composition quite a lot and his use of the pond in the center is very effective. I enjoyed painting the warm golden tones and I am happy with the way my study turned out.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Autumn Gold by George Inness, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
We've done quite a lot of studies after Inness paintings on this blog and we have several more to go. I will be reading from the book George Inness by Nicolai Cikovsky on today's video narration, so please check that out.
Over the last week or so, we've been talking about my history as a landscape painter and some of the challenges I've run into in my pursuit of a more Tonalist approach. Today I'd like to talk a bit more about texture and surface quality. This is a subject I've broached a few times in this blog, but I thought it would be good to expand a little bit more on it since this is one of the things that I wrangled with as I was trying to get my painting into a more Tonalist framework.
I began initially doing paintings on canvas and then I progressed to working on different types of wood. I really like having a bit of wood grain coming through and interacting with the texture of the brushstrokes. But I was also intrigued by the idea of working on a more heavily textured surface.
My initial experiments were with regular white acrylic gesso. I tried applying this in many different ways. I tried a sort of spackle approach, I also tried putting a bunch of gesso on the board and then just pushing it against a flat surface like a table and then pulling up. I did several paintings with these heavily textured boards.
There was a problem with the white gesso in that if I had to pick at the painting in any way I would be rewarded with a white spot. At one point I attempted mixing in an under color with the white gesso but the effect was too pastel for me.
I sort of liked the paintings with the texture but in some cases I found it to be too distracting. I really hadn't arrived at the proper textural approach, and so sometime around when I moved to New Zealand I decided to abandon texturising my boards. This was about the same time that I decided to work in a larger size of 8x12. At that time, I was not doing studies for the larger versions of my paintings I was just doing the 8x12 paintings.
The way I was approaching the surface of the boards was to apply several coats of transparent acrylic sanding sealer with a tint of burnt sienna added to it. This worked okay but I was challenged with some of my earliest attempts in that the brush that I used to apply the sealer would leave long stroke marks on my board that could be seen in the final painting.
I eventually found a way to apply the tinted sanding sealer so that the wood panel was completely smooth leaving only the subtle texture of the wood grain coming up through the painting. I worked like this for a good while. Until one day, I decided that it would be good to do a small study or small version of each motif that I was planning on painting. This is when I decided to get back into texturising. I wanted the boards at the small sizes that I was working with to have some texture to help pull the paint off of the brush.
The technique that I eventually arrived at for applying texture was to use a transparent acrylic gesso with some burnt sienna acrylic paint added to it. I would apply this with the side of a big flat brush using a sort of smacking gesture. This technique works very well, especially if you go over the texture a few times with the side of a clean brush so that the texture is subtle and not too intense. This is the technique that I use now on all my boards both the studies and my larger paintings.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Autumn Gold'; this is a late middle period George Inness painting. I like the composition quite a lot and his use of the pond in the center is very effective. I enjoyed painting the warm golden tones and I am happy with the way my study turned out.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Autumn Gold by George Inness |
Day Eighty Five: Bruges Moonlight by Charles Warren Eaton
Hello and welcome to Day 85 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is 'Bruges Moonlight' by Charles Warren Eaton.
Most of you following this blog will be aware of Charles Warren Eaton by now. He's in the top three Tonalists that have ever painted. I've been reading from the book a history of American Tonalism by David Cleveland for our last several Eaton studies, and I will continue on with that today in the video narration, so please check that out.
Continuing on with our conversation about my history as a landscape painter; yesterday we were talking about my initial exposure to Tonalism and some of the ways that I was trying to move my art into this mode of expression. As I said yesterday, the discovery of lead white was major as far as achieving some of the buttery tones and effects of the Tonalist Masters. Another thing that I noticed especially in the work of George Inness was a clever use of proportion in their paintings.
It's very easy to take something like the proportions of a rectangle that a painting is done with for granted. It's easy to do this because we often bypass the actual shape of the painting and just perceive the landscape within. The proportions that a painter uses has a very great effect on the art. Different proportions will give different results perceptually. After having discovered this, I began to work with a proportion that is essentially the golden ratio. Since I was painting quite small, the size that I was working with was 6x9. Previous to that I'd been working with 6x8 as a predominant size for the paintings that I was doing.
6x8 is far more standard than 6x9. You can purchase ready-made frames in the size of 6x8 whereas that is impossible with a 6x9, it's not until you get up to larger sizes like 24x36 that you actually have any sort of ready-made frames in the golden ratio proportion. The golden ratio proportion is quite panoramic and I noticed a change in my art immediately. I was quite enamored with this proportion to the point where that's the only proportion I was painting with. When I moved to New Zealand in 2010 I decided that I needed to start working larger so I began doing paintings in a size of 8x12. Which is not really a standard size although it is possible at times to find ready-made frames in this proportion.
The reason I keep bringing up framing is that it is far cheaper if you can find an attractive ready-made frame to put on your painting than to do custom framing. For that reason I eventually abandoned 8x12, but not before I produced many paintings in that size, as well as12x18 (also golden ratio). Most of the paintings I did for my first one-man show were these two sizes plus a few 12x12's which is a square format.
I got into the square format after doing some paintings for a group show here in New Zealand. I had asked the owner of the gallery what sizes they were looking for and they had given me a piece of mat board that was cut approximately 8x8. If it had not been for this I don't know if I ever would've stumbled upon working in the square proportion. As it stands, I do about one third of my paintings these days in a square format.
What I enjoy about the square format is how it allows me to put more of an emphasis on the sky. Another size that I do a lot of these days is 8x10. 8x10 is not one of my favorite proportions to work with but it seems to be such a standard for frames that for a time I was doing only 8x10 and 8x8 paintings. I believe 8x10 is so popular because it was a standard photographic paper size for a long time. It took me a while to wrap my head around working in this proportion, a lot of times I just sort of treat it as an elongated square and that seems to help.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Bruges Moonlight' by Charles Warren Eaton; this painting is super famous and is one that comes up readily in any search of Eaton's paintings. I really enjoyed doing the study. I did feel somewhat constrained by the small size in this particular instance.
His painting is so simplified and designed that I feel a lot of its success relies upon a certain finessing of various angles of the trees. I did my best and I am relatively happy with the way my study turned out. I could see at some point in the future getting my own painting to a level of simplification and design that is in evidence in 'Bruges Moonlight'.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Bruges Moonlight by Charles Warren Eaton, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x5, Oil on wood panel |
Most of you following this blog will be aware of Charles Warren Eaton by now. He's in the top three Tonalists that have ever painted. I've been reading from the book a history of American Tonalism by David Cleveland for our last several Eaton studies, and I will continue on with that today in the video narration, so please check that out.
Continuing on with our conversation about my history as a landscape painter; yesterday we were talking about my initial exposure to Tonalism and some of the ways that I was trying to move my art into this mode of expression. As I said yesterday, the discovery of lead white was major as far as achieving some of the buttery tones and effects of the Tonalist Masters. Another thing that I noticed especially in the work of George Inness was a clever use of proportion in their paintings.
It's very easy to take something like the proportions of a rectangle that a painting is done with for granted. It's easy to do this because we often bypass the actual shape of the painting and just perceive the landscape within. The proportions that a painter uses has a very great effect on the art. Different proportions will give different results perceptually. After having discovered this, I began to work with a proportion that is essentially the golden ratio. Since I was painting quite small, the size that I was working with was 6x9. Previous to that I'd been working with 6x8 as a predominant size for the paintings that I was doing.
6x8 is far more standard than 6x9. You can purchase ready-made frames in the size of 6x8 whereas that is impossible with a 6x9, it's not until you get up to larger sizes like 24x36 that you actually have any sort of ready-made frames in the golden ratio proportion. The golden ratio proportion is quite panoramic and I noticed a change in my art immediately. I was quite enamored with this proportion to the point where that's the only proportion I was painting with. When I moved to New Zealand in 2010 I decided that I needed to start working larger so I began doing paintings in a size of 8x12. Which is not really a standard size although it is possible at times to find ready-made frames in this proportion.
The reason I keep bringing up framing is that it is far cheaper if you can find an attractive ready-made frame to put on your painting than to do custom framing. For that reason I eventually abandoned 8x12, but not before I produced many paintings in that size, as well as12x18 (also golden ratio). Most of the paintings I did for my first one-man show were these two sizes plus a few 12x12's which is a square format.
I got into the square format after doing some paintings for a group show here in New Zealand. I had asked the owner of the gallery what sizes they were looking for and they had given me a piece of mat board that was cut approximately 8x8. If it had not been for this I don't know if I ever would've stumbled upon working in the square proportion. As it stands, I do about one third of my paintings these days in a square format.
What I enjoy about the square format is how it allows me to put more of an emphasis on the sky. Another size that I do a lot of these days is 8x10. 8x10 is not one of my favorite proportions to work with but it seems to be such a standard for frames that for a time I was doing only 8x10 and 8x8 paintings. I believe 8x10 is so popular because it was a standard photographic paper size for a long time. It took me a while to wrap my head around working in this proportion, a lot of times I just sort of treat it as an elongated square and that seems to help.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Bruges Moonlight' by Charles Warren Eaton; this painting is super famous and is one that comes up readily in any search of Eaton's paintings. I really enjoyed doing the study. I did feel somewhat constrained by the small size in this particular instance.
His painting is so simplified and designed that I feel a lot of its success relies upon a certain finessing of various angles of the trees. I did my best and I am relatively happy with the way my study turned out. I could see at some point in the future getting my own painting to a level of simplification and design that is in evidence in 'Bruges Moonlight'.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Bruges Moonlight by Charles Warren Eaton |
Day Eighty Four: Remembrance of Lake Garda by Camille Corot
Hello and welcome to day eighty four of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is 'Remembrance of Lake Garda' by Camille Corot.
As I've written in previous blog posts where we featured paintings by Camille, he is not actually a Tonalist painter. He is a member of the Barbizon school. He is in this series because his influence on Tonalism was extensive and also because I wanted to learn more about how he put paintings together. Today's video features a track off my album The Light in Darkness.
Continuing on with our current discussion regarding my personal history as a Tonalist landscape painter; as I was saying in our last blog post it was in 2009 that I had become inspired by exposure to actual Tonalist paintings that I saw at the de Young Museum.
From this point forward I started digging into what Tonalism was and how I could manage to do paintings in this manner. I was off to a good start by using wood panels. They already gave my paintings a more interesting surface finish than a standard canvas board would.
The next discovery that I made was lead white paint. On the surface it might seem that white is white but the reality is that there are three white pigments currently in use by artists. These are lead white, titanium white and zinc white.
Lead white has been in use by human beings to make art since before time was measured. As a matter of fact, on the scale that is used to assign codes to pigments, lead white is PB1. In other words, lead white is the first pigment that is named. Lead has fallen out of favor in recent times for two reasons. The first being that it was a common ingredient in house paints for many years and when lead white starts peeling off of a house, the chips taste sweet. Unfortunately children will often eat these lead chips and as we all know it's not very good for human consumption in any way.
The second reason that lead white has fallen out of favor was the invention of titanium white. Titanium white is a very opaque and cool white. This is the primary pigment that you will get in any tube of white paint that is not labeled in any way. The third white that is used these days is zinc white. Zinc white is far more transparent and translucent than titanium white and for this reason it is often mixed with titanium white (it is in many tubes of paint that are labeled as just titanium white). There is a huge problem with zinc white though, and that it is very prone to cracking. I try to use it not at all in my work.
The reason why lead white is important to our discussion of Tonalism and Tonalist landscape painting is that lead white has properties that are very unique especially in comparison to the now more popular titanium white. Where titanium white is cool lead white is warm. Where titanium white mixed with other colors will give a chalky feeling, lead white is far more friendly and easy to use. Lead white has many unique properties and I highly recommend that if you are a painter that you try out the tube.
Personally, I like to mix my lead white with titanium white. This way I get the best of both worlds. I get the coverage of titanium white and the warm, yielding on chalkiness of lead white. I came up with the idea to mix them together several years ago, when it occurred to me that I would have to use quite a lot of lead white paint to get coverage in certain areas of my painting. If I had to choose between the two, I would choose lead white every time. It's just more giving and cooperative than titanium white.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Remembrance of Lake Garda'; I'm very pleased with the way the study turned out, my actual reference image was very lo rez (see below) and for that reason I could make out almost no detail. I really enjoy Corot's composition here and I was glad that I was able to pull off a good study from the limited reference that I had to hand.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Remembrance of Lake Garda by Camille Corot, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
As I've written in previous blog posts where we featured paintings by Camille, he is not actually a Tonalist painter. He is a member of the Barbizon school. He is in this series because his influence on Tonalism was extensive and also because I wanted to learn more about how he put paintings together. Today's video features a track off my album The Light in Darkness.
Continuing on with our current discussion regarding my personal history as a Tonalist landscape painter; as I was saying in our last blog post it was in 2009 that I had become inspired by exposure to actual Tonalist paintings that I saw at the de Young Museum.
From this point forward I started digging into what Tonalism was and how I could manage to do paintings in this manner. I was off to a good start by using wood panels. They already gave my paintings a more interesting surface finish than a standard canvas board would.
The next discovery that I made was lead white paint. On the surface it might seem that white is white but the reality is that there are three white pigments currently in use by artists. These are lead white, titanium white and zinc white.
Lead white has been in use by human beings to make art since before time was measured. As a matter of fact, on the scale that is used to assign codes to pigments, lead white is PB1. In other words, lead white is the first pigment that is named. Lead has fallen out of favor in recent times for two reasons. The first being that it was a common ingredient in house paints for many years and when lead white starts peeling off of a house, the chips taste sweet. Unfortunately children will often eat these lead chips and as we all know it's not very good for human consumption in any way.
The second reason that lead white has fallen out of favor was the invention of titanium white. Titanium white is a very opaque and cool white. This is the primary pigment that you will get in any tube of white paint that is not labeled in any way. The third white that is used these days is zinc white. Zinc white is far more transparent and translucent than titanium white and for this reason it is often mixed with titanium white (it is in many tubes of paint that are labeled as just titanium white). There is a huge problem with zinc white though, and that it is very prone to cracking. I try to use it not at all in my work.
The reason why lead white is important to our discussion of Tonalism and Tonalist landscape painting is that lead white has properties that are very unique especially in comparison to the now more popular titanium white. Where titanium white is cool lead white is warm. Where titanium white mixed with other colors will give a chalky feeling, lead white is far more friendly and easy to use. Lead white has many unique properties and I highly recommend that if you are a painter that you try out the tube.
Personally, I like to mix my lead white with titanium white. This way I get the best of both worlds. I get the coverage of titanium white and the warm, yielding on chalkiness of lead white. I came up with the idea to mix them together several years ago, when it occurred to me that I would have to use quite a lot of lead white paint to get coverage in certain areas of my painting. If I had to choose between the two, I would choose lead white every time. It's just more giving and cooperative than titanium white.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Remembrance of Lake Garda by Camille Corot |
Day Eighty Three: Landscape near Perugia by George Inness
Hello and welcome to Day 83 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is of 'Landscape near Perugia' by George Inness.
Today's study is a mid period George Inness. For the last several George Inness studies that we've done, we have been reading from the book 'George Inness' by Nikolai Cikovsky on our video narration for that day. Today we're going to keep that going so please check the video out.
Continuing on with our discussion of my history as a landscape painter. As I stated in the previous blog post I started out working in a more Impressionist mode. I think that many landscape painters these days are working in an Impressionist manner whether they are aware of it or not. I can't say I was all that aware of it myself until through my research and study of the history of oil painting, I gradually became familiar of many modes of landscape painting that were popular in the United States that had been pretty much forgotten.
Sometime in 2008 my (now) wife came out to visit me in California from New Zealand. Though I lived in San Jose which is only about 60 miles away from San Francisco, I very infrequently would go up to the city. But, because I wanted to show her the sites we made a trip not just to San Francisco but also to Oakland.
At that time I was very deep into oil painting, doing a lot of paintings and reading a lot about the history of landscape painting online. I'm not exactly sure where and when I first became aware of George Inness. I was going to say it was the blog of Stapleton Kearns but I now recall that I probably discovered his blog in the process of researching George Inness.
Either way I was aware that there were a few paintings of his at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. They have a fantastic wing of American landscape paintings. Many are from the Hudson River school era but there are quite a few Luminist and Tonalist works there as well.
I was completely blown away by the mastery that I saw that day at the Museum. These guys had done paintings that positively glowed, not to mention the exquisite surface quality of their work. I believe I've talked a bit about surface quality in this blog. All I will say today is that, I think many modern artists are almost completely unaware of this aspect of their work, to the detriment of their paintings.
I left the Museum that day totally infused with a desire to improve the quality of my own paintings and with a really good idea of the direction that I wanted to move in artistically. I wasn't exactly sure why this era of landscape painting had been subsumed by Impressionism but I knew then that I wanted to become a Tonalist painter.
Tomorrow we'll talk a bit more about Tonalism.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Landscape near Perugia' by George Inness; this painting has a very unique sky in it and I almost didn't want to do a study because of that. It is however a very strong mid period George Inness painting so I included it in this series.
I really like the way that Inness has modulated from greens in the foreground to mauves and grays in the background and I'm quite happy with my study from his painting.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Landscape near Perugia by George Inness, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
Today's study is a mid period George Inness. For the last several George Inness studies that we've done, we have been reading from the book 'George Inness' by Nikolai Cikovsky on our video narration for that day. Today we're going to keep that going so please check the video out.
Continuing on with our discussion of my history as a landscape painter. As I stated in the previous blog post I started out working in a more Impressionist mode. I think that many landscape painters these days are working in an Impressionist manner whether they are aware of it or not. I can't say I was all that aware of it myself until through my research and study of the history of oil painting, I gradually became familiar of many modes of landscape painting that were popular in the United States that had been pretty much forgotten.
Sometime in 2008 my (now) wife came out to visit me in California from New Zealand. Though I lived in San Jose which is only about 60 miles away from San Francisco, I very infrequently would go up to the city. But, because I wanted to show her the sites we made a trip not just to San Francisco but also to Oakland.
At that time I was very deep into oil painting, doing a lot of paintings and reading a lot about the history of landscape painting online. I'm not exactly sure where and when I first became aware of George Inness. I was going to say it was the blog of Stapleton Kearns but I now recall that I probably discovered his blog in the process of researching George Inness.
Either way I was aware that there were a few paintings of his at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. They have a fantastic wing of American landscape paintings. Many are from the Hudson River school era but there are quite a few Luminist and Tonalist works there as well.
I was completely blown away by the mastery that I saw that day at the Museum. These guys had done paintings that positively glowed, not to mention the exquisite surface quality of their work. I believe I've talked a bit about surface quality in this blog. All I will say today is that, I think many modern artists are almost completely unaware of this aspect of their work, to the detriment of their paintings.
I left the Museum that day totally infused with a desire to improve the quality of my own paintings and with a really good idea of the direction that I wanted to move in artistically. I wasn't exactly sure why this era of landscape painting had been subsumed by Impressionism but I knew then that I wanted to become a Tonalist painter.
Tomorrow we'll talk a bit more about Tonalism.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Landscape near Perugia' by George Inness; this painting has a very unique sky in it and I almost didn't want to do a study because of that. It is however a very strong mid period George Inness painting so I included it in this series.
I really like the way that Inness has modulated from greens in the foreground to mauves and grays in the background and I'm quite happy with my study from his painting.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Landscape near Perugia by George Inness |
Day Eighty Two: Evening by John Francis Murphy
Hello and welcome to day 82 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today study is Evening by John Francis Murphy.
Those of you that have followed this blog for a while will be well aware of Francis Murphy by now. We've done many studies of some of his best paintings. In today's video narration I will be discussing some biographical information about John Francis Murphy from the book a History of American Tonalism by David Cleveland so check that out.
We've been talking for the last week about my progression as an artist into becoming a landscape painter and about my earliest days of painting. We're going to continue on with that discussion today. I was working along in my sort of Impressionist style quite happily in those early days. I had discovered painting on wood panels as opposed to canvas and I was also experimenting with different types of painting mediums.
One of the mediums that I tried early on was Galkyd by Gamblin. This medium is quite a bit thinner than Liquin and also produced a glossier finish. I am not a fan of the glossy finish, also there were a few paintings I did with this medium where upon close inspection there were tiny bubbles in my painting. Definitely not an effect size I found desirable. Others, I guess, have better results with Galkyd .
I eventually settled on using Liquin as my primary medium. These days I use a medium made by Archival called Odorless Lean. I'm not sure if this medium is available in the US or not as it is made in Australia. This is a very liquid type of medium that gives me good paint movement and is also very fast drying period, it also has the big advantage of being far cheaper than Liquin.
While I was in the process of doing all these early paintings I was researching books and also online. There is a site called Wet Canvas. They have a forum with a good range of artists there from absolute amateurs to those with a lot of experience. I did learn some things from reading their forum. I was surprised to seet how involved people were with their materials especially their painting mediums.
A lot of amateur artists believe that the right materials are somehow magically going to help them create professional quality work. While it's true that using crappy paint or shoddy mediums on inferior substrates will make it a struggle to create a good painting, it is still possible. The opposite is not true however, you can have the most expensive paint, the finest mediums and be working on the priciest linen is still produce terrible amateurish work. As with anything else difficult to accomplish the way to improve your painting is to create a lot of paintings. There is no real shortcuts.
Tomorrow I'm going to talk a bit about my transition from a semi Impressionist into a Tonalist painter so stay tuned for that.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about Evening by John Francis Murphy; this painting is a great example of Tonalism in its purest form. There are many different paintings that can fit into the category of Tonalism but I would put this particular work right in the center of that range.
I really enjoyed doing this study. As I have enjoyed doing studies of all of the John Francis Murphy paintings in this series. Of all the painters that we have covered in the series I would have to say that I resonate the most as an artist with John Francis Murphy.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Evening by John Francis Murphy, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
Those of you that have followed this blog for a while will be well aware of Francis Murphy by now. We've done many studies of some of his best paintings. In today's video narration I will be discussing some biographical information about John Francis Murphy from the book a History of American Tonalism by David Cleveland so check that out.
We've been talking for the last week about my progression as an artist into becoming a landscape painter and about my earliest days of painting. We're going to continue on with that discussion today. I was working along in my sort of Impressionist style quite happily in those early days. I had discovered painting on wood panels as opposed to canvas and I was also experimenting with different types of painting mediums.
One of the mediums that I tried early on was Galkyd by Gamblin. This medium is quite a bit thinner than Liquin and also produced a glossier finish. I am not a fan of the glossy finish, also there were a few paintings I did with this medium where upon close inspection there were tiny bubbles in my painting. Definitely not an effect size I found desirable. Others, I guess, have better results with Galkyd .
I eventually settled on using Liquin as my primary medium. These days I use a medium made by Archival called Odorless Lean. I'm not sure if this medium is available in the US or not as it is made in Australia. This is a very liquid type of medium that gives me good paint movement and is also very fast drying period, it also has the big advantage of being far cheaper than Liquin.
While I was in the process of doing all these early paintings I was researching books and also online. There is a site called Wet Canvas. They have a forum with a good range of artists there from absolute amateurs to those with a lot of experience. I did learn some things from reading their forum. I was surprised to seet how involved people were with their materials especially their painting mediums.
A lot of amateur artists believe that the right materials are somehow magically going to help them create professional quality work. While it's true that using crappy paint or shoddy mediums on inferior substrates will make it a struggle to create a good painting, it is still possible. The opposite is not true however, you can have the most expensive paint, the finest mediums and be working on the priciest linen is still produce terrible amateurish work. As with anything else difficult to accomplish the way to improve your painting is to create a lot of paintings. There is no real shortcuts.
Tomorrow I'm going to talk a bit about my transition from a semi Impressionist into a Tonalist painter so stay tuned for that.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about Evening by John Francis Murphy; this painting is a great example of Tonalism in its purest form. There are many different paintings that can fit into the category of Tonalism but I would put this particular work right in the center of that range.
I really enjoyed doing this study. As I have enjoyed doing studies of all of the John Francis Murphy paintings in this series. Of all the painters that we have covered in the series I would have to say that I resonate the most as an artist with John Francis Murphy.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Evening by John Francis Murphy |
Day Eighty One: On the Heights by Robert Crannell Minor
Hello and welcome to Day 81 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is On the Heights by Robert Crannell Minor.
Robert Crannell Minor was a Tonalist artist born in 1839 and died in 1904. I will be reading a bit about Robert on today's video narration so please check that out.
Continuing on with our recent discussion regarding my history as a landscape painter; today we're going to talk more about my earliest days as a landscape painter. As I stated yesterday, I initially started working on 6x8 canvas panels but I found the canvas to be a bit too textural at such a small size. So I started working on wood panels. I would just paint the panels with gray house paint and then do my painting.
I was using photography as reference for the paintings I was doing and I was going out and photographing an area that was behind my workplace at that time. This is the Campbell perk ponds. Campbell is a city located very close to San Jose in California.
I'm guessing I did about 45 paintings of that area. I knew, to become a good landscape painter that the key was to do a lot of paintings and so I was endeavoring to do a painting every few days. The small size made accomplishing this quite a bit easier. I'm quite proud of a lot of the paintings that I did then and I chalk a lot of my initial success up to my many years as a commercial illustrator and also to beginners luck.
I have noticed that the universe seems to give beginners a certain amount of leeway. This is mostly the case when they are starting on a path that is appropriate for their individual destiny as an artist. I have seen beginners luck at work many a time.
I started a blog to log my progress and to share what I was doing with the world at large. Here's a link to that blog here.
My initial style would've been considered to be impressionistic, but It's hard to say since the reality is I was just doing my best to do a painting from the reference I had at hand. In most cases my early paintings was quite faithful to the photograph I was working from. I was not overly concerned with style anyway, I was mostly concerned with just getting a handle on creating paintings. I've always done my best to make any artwork that I've created as beautiful as possible. The early paintings that I did were no exception, many of them came out nicely.
While I was in the process of my initial foray into oil painting I was also buying a lot of books and some DVDs as well. I mentioned in a previous blog posts the two guys that I found most helpful. I was also researching and learning a lot about the properties of oil paint including what different pigments were made from as well as about different binding mediums. The very first paintings that I did, I just used linseed oil as a medium but it didn't take me long to discover alkyd mediums.
Tomorrow we will continue on with this discussion regarding my progression and history as a landscape painter so stay tuned for that.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about On the Heights by Robert Crannell Minor; I've not heard much about Robert, but this painting of his caught my eye immediately. In many ways it struck me as semi-contemporary in that I'd seen paintings similar to this in my youth in the 60s.
I enjoyed painting the Autumn colors and I'm quite pleased with the gestural way that I handled the fence. This study has a nice resonant quality especially when viewed in real life.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - On the Heights by Robert Crannell Minor, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
Today's study is On the Heights by Robert Crannell Minor.
Robert Crannell Minor was a Tonalist artist born in 1839 and died in 1904. I will be reading a bit about Robert on today's video narration so please check that out.
Continuing on with our recent discussion regarding my history as a landscape painter; today we're going to talk more about my earliest days as a landscape painter. As I stated yesterday, I initially started working on 6x8 canvas panels but I found the canvas to be a bit too textural at such a small size. So I started working on wood panels. I would just paint the panels with gray house paint and then do my painting.
I was using photography as reference for the paintings I was doing and I was going out and photographing an area that was behind my workplace at that time. This is the Campbell perk ponds. Campbell is a city located very close to San Jose in California.
I'm guessing I did about 45 paintings of that area. I knew, to become a good landscape painter that the key was to do a lot of paintings and so I was endeavoring to do a painting every few days. The small size made accomplishing this quite a bit easier. I'm quite proud of a lot of the paintings that I did then and I chalk a lot of my initial success up to my many years as a commercial illustrator and also to beginners luck.
I have noticed that the universe seems to give beginners a certain amount of leeway. This is mostly the case when they are starting on a path that is appropriate for their individual destiny as an artist. I have seen beginners luck at work many a time.
I started a blog to log my progress and to share what I was doing with the world at large. Here's a link to that blog here.
My initial style would've been considered to be impressionistic, but It's hard to say since the reality is I was just doing my best to do a painting from the reference I had at hand. In most cases my early paintings was quite faithful to the photograph I was working from. I was not overly concerned with style anyway, I was mostly concerned with just getting a handle on creating paintings. I've always done my best to make any artwork that I've created as beautiful as possible. The early paintings that I did were no exception, many of them came out nicely.
While I was in the process of my initial foray into oil painting I was also buying a lot of books and some DVDs as well. I mentioned in a previous blog posts the two guys that I found most helpful. I was also researching and learning a lot about the properties of oil paint including what different pigments were made from as well as about different binding mediums. The very first paintings that I did, I just used linseed oil as a medium but it didn't take me long to discover alkyd mediums.
Tomorrow we will continue on with this discussion regarding my progression and history as a landscape painter so stay tuned for that.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about On the Heights by Robert Crannell Minor; I've not heard much about Robert, but this painting of his caught my eye immediately. In many ways it struck me as semi-contemporary in that I'd seen paintings similar to this in my youth in the 60s.
I enjoyed painting the Autumn colors and I'm quite pleased with the gestural way that I handled the fence. This study has a nice resonant quality especially when viewed in real life.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, On the Heights by Robert Crannell Minor |
Day Eighty: Approaching Storm by George Inness
Hello and welcome to Day 80 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is of 'Approaching Storm' by George Inness.
We've got 20 more days to go and plenty more George Inness studies ahead of us. This one turned out to be pretty special for me you can read about that below at the end of this post. I have read a bit from the book 'George Inness' by Nicolai Cikovsky in today's video narration, so please check that out.
We've been discussing my progression as an artist to ultimately becoming a landscape painter in the last several blog posts. Today I'd like to talk about my earliest forays into oil painting. After my attempts at trying to create landscape paintings with a computer using Photoshop, I began to think seriously about using actual oil paints on canvas.
Prior to my career as a commercial illustrator I had mostly done color work with the computer, A lot of that art was of an abstract nature. For the most part, I had worked in pencil and in black and white before that. At various points I had worked with colored inks and watercolor but the only other oil painting I had done was when I was about 18 and an artist took interest in me and allowed me to join in with several of his painting classes. I wrote about this in my previous blog.
I ended up selling or giving away most of the oil paintings I did at that time. I believe I did about seven or eight landscape paintings in oils. I'd also did some more abstract landscapes in acrylic for my job at the hospitality art manufacturing company. Other than those occasion, I mostly worked in a small-scale with pencil and ink.
Once I decided to start doing actual oil paintings I reasoned that I would learn how to paint more quickly using small canvas panels. All of my first paintings were done this way. I went outdoors to do my first paintings. I quite enjoyed painting outdoors, however I was unhappy with the sorts of colors I was coming up with in response to painting directly from nature and I decided to work from my own photographs instead.
My first paintings were on canvas using 6x8 panels. The type of panels you can find it any art or hobby store. I enjoyed working with oil paint it's very flexible as a medium, especially after so many years of having to install almost every effect that I needed into my art using painstaking brushwork or stippling. One of the wonderful things about oil paint is the way that unexpected things can happen in small and large ways while you are painting.
Tomorrow we'll talk more about my personal journey as a landscape painter and its beginnings, so stay tuned for that.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Approaching Storm' by George Inness; of all the studies in this series there are many ways in which the study has affected and influenced the way I am painting my own paintings currently.
If you watch the video you will observe a lot of my glazing and dry brush techniques which I'm using more these days to finish my paintings. I have been fortunate to see a few Inness paintings in real life and with this study I feel that I was actually getting very close to the sorts of textures and edges that I see in his work.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Approaching Storm by George Inness, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
Today's study is of 'Approaching Storm' by George Inness.
We've got 20 more days to go and plenty more George Inness studies ahead of us. This one turned out to be pretty special for me you can read about that below at the end of this post. I have read a bit from the book 'George Inness' by Nicolai Cikovsky in today's video narration, so please check that out.
We've been discussing my progression as an artist to ultimately becoming a landscape painter in the last several blog posts. Today I'd like to talk about my earliest forays into oil painting. After my attempts at trying to create landscape paintings with a computer using Photoshop, I began to think seriously about using actual oil paints on canvas.
Prior to my career as a commercial illustrator I had mostly done color work with the computer, A lot of that art was of an abstract nature. For the most part, I had worked in pencil and in black and white before that. At various points I had worked with colored inks and watercolor but the only other oil painting I had done was when I was about 18 and an artist took interest in me and allowed me to join in with several of his painting classes. I wrote about this in my previous blog.
I ended up selling or giving away most of the oil paintings I did at that time. I believe I did about seven or eight landscape paintings in oils. I'd also did some more abstract landscapes in acrylic for my job at the hospitality art manufacturing company. Other than those occasion, I mostly worked in a small-scale with pencil and ink.
Once I decided to start doing actual oil paintings I reasoned that I would learn how to paint more quickly using small canvas panels. All of my first paintings were done this way. I went outdoors to do my first paintings. I quite enjoyed painting outdoors, however I was unhappy with the sorts of colors I was coming up with in response to painting directly from nature and I decided to work from my own photographs instead.
My first paintings were on canvas using 6x8 panels. The type of panels you can find it any art or hobby store. I enjoyed working with oil paint it's very flexible as a medium, especially after so many years of having to install almost every effect that I needed into my art using painstaking brushwork or stippling. One of the wonderful things about oil paint is the way that unexpected things can happen in small and large ways while you are painting.
Tomorrow we'll talk more about my personal journey as a landscape painter and its beginnings, so stay tuned for that.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Approaching Storm' by George Inness; of all the studies in this series there are many ways in which the study has affected and influenced the way I am painting my own paintings currently.
If you watch the video you will observe a lot of my glazing and dry brush techniques which I'm using more these days to finish my paintings. I have been fortunate to see a few Inness paintings in real life and with this study I feel that I was actually getting very close to the sorts of textures and edges that I see in his work.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Approaching Storm by George Inness |
Day Seventy Nine: The Coast Guard's Hut by Lowell Birge Harrison
Hello and welcome to Day 79 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is 'The Coast Guard's Hut' by Lowell Birge Harrison.
Lowell Birge Harrison was a well-known Tonalist painter and teacher of art. We've covered several of his paintings in this series. Today's video features a track from my album Tomorrow's Yesterday Today.
Continuing on with my history as an artist and how I eventually became a landscape painter; today I'd like to talk about my first attempts to do landscape painting using the computer.
Towards the end of my tenure as a commercial illustrator I had discovered some interesting techniques whereby I could, in the computer, basically paint over the top of a photo using a new layer and sampling colors from the photo below. This was back in 2007 or so. At that time, Adobe had some brushes that attempted to be more like actual brushes. With a bit of practice I was able to use these tools to get results, mostly on animal subjects, that resembled an oil painting.
I thought that maybe I could use these techniques to create landscape paintings using the computer that looked like they had actually been painted with oil paints. There has been quite a history of attempted natural media brushes and effects in the digital realm. Some of these media work better than others for example, pastel and chalk work fairly well in the computer. You can also get some fairly convincing watercolor effects. I have seen people use the painting tools in Photoshop and painter to create some incredible work and there's no question that good artwork can be accomplished with digital media.
When I first started attempting to do landscape paintings with the computer using the brush tools available in Photoshop, I had quite a struggle to create something that had the proper feeling to it. I made about 6 to 8 attempts at pulling off a landscape painting in Photoshop. At the time I didn't think they looked all that bad but it didn't take long for me to realize that I was fighting an uphill battle, and that what I was producing was a bit stiff and also far more work to do than it would be if I was to just use actual paints and brushes.
I remember going to the bookstore in my neighborhood back then and looking for instructional books on oil painting. One of the first books I came across (that I still recommend very highly) is called the Painterly Approach by Bob Rohm. There is also a DVD of the same name that I recommend as well.
Another guy who's books that I looked at was Kevin MacPherson, he has some great tips and advice and he is the guy that put me onto working with a limited color palette (a great way to start BTW). A book of his that I recommend is fill your oil paintings with light and color and also painting inside and out. These are fantastic resources for painters just starting out. He has a relatively streamlined approach to teaching painting that is encouraging for a beginner.
After getting my hands on some good books, I initially attempted to apply their lessons to what I was doing with the computer as I have not quite given up on creating good paintings with digital media. I discussed this topic in my previous blog here.
Tomorrow we will start talking about my first attempts to do landscape paintings with actual oil paints and canvas so stay tuned for that.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'The Coast Guard's Hut' by Lowell Birge Harrison; I was attracted to this painting because I thought it would work in a square format and I liked the blue tone. Like quite a few Birge Harrison paintings I've seen, this is predominantly a sky picture. It's all about capturing atmospheric effects for ol' Birge.
I was initially going to make the house a tree. If you watch the video you will see in my drawing stage that it is a tree however when I got to my color stage I decided to go ahead and paint it as a house, after all was very simply done and that little bit of light in the window is very necessary I think to the success of his painting and therefore my study.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - The Coast Guard's Hut by Lowell Birge Harrison, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x5, Oil on wood panel |
Lowell Birge Harrison was a well-known Tonalist painter and teacher of art. We've covered several of his paintings in this series. Today's video features a track from my album Tomorrow's Yesterday Today.
Continuing on with my history as an artist and how I eventually became a landscape painter; today I'd like to talk about my first attempts to do landscape painting using the computer.
Towards the end of my tenure as a commercial illustrator I had discovered some interesting techniques whereby I could, in the computer, basically paint over the top of a photo using a new layer and sampling colors from the photo below. This was back in 2007 or so. At that time, Adobe had some brushes that attempted to be more like actual brushes. With a bit of practice I was able to use these tools to get results, mostly on animal subjects, that resembled an oil painting.
I thought that maybe I could use these techniques to create landscape paintings using the computer that looked like they had actually been painted with oil paints. There has been quite a history of attempted natural media brushes and effects in the digital realm. Some of these media work better than others for example, pastel and chalk work fairly well in the computer. You can also get some fairly convincing watercolor effects. I have seen people use the painting tools in Photoshop and painter to create some incredible work and there's no question that good artwork can be accomplished with digital media.
When I first started attempting to do landscape paintings with the computer using the brush tools available in Photoshop, I had quite a struggle to create something that had the proper feeling to it. I made about 6 to 8 attempts at pulling off a landscape painting in Photoshop. At the time I didn't think they looked all that bad but it didn't take long for me to realize that I was fighting an uphill battle, and that what I was producing was a bit stiff and also far more work to do than it would be if I was to just use actual paints and brushes.
I remember going to the bookstore in my neighborhood back then and looking for instructional books on oil painting. One of the first books I came across (that I still recommend very highly) is called the Painterly Approach by Bob Rohm. There is also a DVD of the same name that I recommend as well.
Another guy who's books that I looked at was Kevin MacPherson, he has some great tips and advice and he is the guy that put me onto working with a limited color palette (a great way to start BTW). A book of his that I recommend is fill your oil paintings with light and color and also painting inside and out. These are fantastic resources for painters just starting out. He has a relatively streamlined approach to teaching painting that is encouraging for a beginner.
After getting my hands on some good books, I initially attempted to apply their lessons to what I was doing with the computer as I have not quite given up on creating good paintings with digital media. I discussed this topic in my previous blog here.
Tomorrow we will start talking about my first attempts to do landscape paintings with actual oil paints and canvas so stay tuned for that.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'The Coast Guard's Hut' by Lowell Birge Harrison; I was attracted to this painting because I thought it would work in a square format and I liked the blue tone. Like quite a few Birge Harrison paintings I've seen, this is predominantly a sky picture. It's all about capturing atmospheric effects for ol' Birge.
I was initially going to make the house a tree. If you watch the video you will see in my drawing stage that it is a tree however when I got to my color stage I decided to go ahead and paint it as a house, after all was very simply done and that little bit of light in the window is very necessary I think to the success of his painting and therefore my study.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, The Coast Guard's Hut by Lowell Birge Harrison |
Day Seventy Eight: Normandy Road by Lewis Meakin
Hello and welcome to day 78 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today study is of 'Normandy Road' by Lewis Meakin.
Lewis Meakin was an American Impressionist painter 1850 – 1917, There's not a lot of information about him online, but what I found, I read on today's video narration so please check that out.
Continuing on with our discussion regarding my artistic progression to becoming a landscape painter; yesterday I gave you some background on my history as a young artist, and the day before we talked about my exploration of digital media. Today, we are going to chat about my life as a commercial artist and how that has informed my work and led to me becoming a landscape painter.
One of the most challenging aspects of my job as a commercial illustrator was that I had to create artwork that was going to be printed with 1 to 8 colors. This always presented challenges and required quite a lot of planning and discipline to use only the colors I had available to me in the most advantageous manner.
This could be especially challenging when confronted with having to illustrate a scene from a national park like Yosemite in that I basically had only 8 colors to work with, and one of those would have been an underprint so that the design I was working on could be printed on dark or light shirts.
For example if I was to do the picture of a waterfall I would have to use white, black, gray, tan, light green, dark green and blue. That's 8 colors right there and you can see that it would not give you much in the way of color choices. The main strategy that I would use to solve these types of problems was to establish very good values and contrast in my supporting line drawing. This way the colors can act as accents. Also, quite a lot that can be accomplished in the way of modifying values using stippling and airbrushing.
An emphasis on solid values carries forward into the landscape paintings that I do today. I always have a good supporting underpainting that is done in three or four values at most. What's great to me after so many years of having to work with an extremely limited selection of colors, is that I have the ability now as a painter to create any color I can imagine using the 14 or so pigments on my palette. It's extremely cool.
There are several ways that working as a commercial illustrator led into landscape painting. As I said in a recent blog post, my job started out quite nice but became more challenging with each year as I was given less time to create artwork. There are other pressures too namely, inane and stupid changes being made to artwork that I created not only by buyers but by the designer that I worked for. This can really wear on you after a while especially if you have a strong love and care for art.
I decided that I would ride that job as far as I could. I was well-paid and quite fortunate as an illustrator to have a regular paycheck as opposed to working freelance. Many of the other artists that I worked with in my time as a commercial artist had been beaten down by the pressures that I just mentioned, to the point that they no longer had the love and care for art that they started with.
I'm very lucky in that that did not happen to me and I decided that when that job was over, that I would find another way to work. I left that job in 2010 but I had started painting in 2009.
Tomorrow we'll talk about the reasons why I started painting landscapes and about my early forays into oil painting.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Normandy Road' by Lewis Meakin; back in June I had an exhibition of the studies that I've done for this series. At the time I sold about nine of them and Normandy Road by Lewis Meakin was one of those ones that I sold. I think this is because this painting looks quite a lot like New Zealand.
The study we are looking at today is my second version of this painting and I have to say I really enjoyed painting it both times as it is beautiful in its simplicity.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Normandy Road by Lewis Meakin, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
Today study is of 'Normandy Road' by Lewis Meakin.
Lewis Meakin was an American Impressionist painter 1850 – 1917, There's not a lot of information about him online, but what I found, I read on today's video narration so please check that out.
Continuing on with our discussion regarding my artistic progression to becoming a landscape painter; yesterday I gave you some background on my history as a young artist, and the day before we talked about my exploration of digital media. Today, we are going to chat about my life as a commercial artist and how that has informed my work and led to me becoming a landscape painter.
One of the most challenging aspects of my job as a commercial illustrator was that I had to create artwork that was going to be printed with 1 to 8 colors. This always presented challenges and required quite a lot of planning and discipline to use only the colors I had available to me in the most advantageous manner.
This could be especially challenging when confronted with having to illustrate a scene from a national park like Yosemite in that I basically had only 8 colors to work with, and one of those would have been an underprint so that the design I was working on could be printed on dark or light shirts.
For example if I was to do the picture of a waterfall I would have to use white, black, gray, tan, light green, dark green and blue. That's 8 colors right there and you can see that it would not give you much in the way of color choices. The main strategy that I would use to solve these types of problems was to establish very good values and contrast in my supporting line drawing. This way the colors can act as accents. Also, quite a lot that can be accomplished in the way of modifying values using stippling and airbrushing.
An emphasis on solid values carries forward into the landscape paintings that I do today. I always have a good supporting underpainting that is done in three or four values at most. What's great to me after so many years of having to work with an extremely limited selection of colors, is that I have the ability now as a painter to create any color I can imagine using the 14 or so pigments on my palette. It's extremely cool.
There are several ways that working as a commercial illustrator led into landscape painting. As I said in a recent blog post, my job started out quite nice but became more challenging with each year as I was given less time to create artwork. There are other pressures too namely, inane and stupid changes being made to artwork that I created not only by buyers but by the designer that I worked for. This can really wear on you after a while especially if you have a strong love and care for art.
I decided that I would ride that job as far as I could. I was well-paid and quite fortunate as an illustrator to have a regular paycheck as opposed to working freelance. Many of the other artists that I worked with in my time as a commercial artist had been beaten down by the pressures that I just mentioned, to the point that they no longer had the love and care for art that they started with.
I'm very lucky in that that did not happen to me and I decided that when that job was over, that I would find another way to work. I left that job in 2010 but I had started painting in 2009.
Tomorrow we'll talk about the reasons why I started painting landscapes and about my early forays into oil painting.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Normandy Road' by Lewis Meakin; back in June I had an exhibition of the studies that I've done for this series. At the time I sold about nine of them and Normandy Road by Lewis Meakin was one of those ones that I sold. I think this is because this painting looks quite a lot like New Zealand.
The study we are looking at today is my second version of this painting and I have to say I really enjoyed painting it both times as it is beautiful in its simplicity.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Normandy Road by Lewis Meakin |
Day Seventy Seven: Upland Pasture by Alden Weir
Hello and welcome to day 77 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today study is of 'Upland Pasture' by Alden Weir.
Alden Weir was predominately known as an American Impressionist painter, however some of his paintings definitely fall into the Tonalist camp. Here is some biographical information about Alden. We have one of my music tracks on todays video 'The Night is Falling' from my album 'It Never Was' so please check that out,
Continuing on with the discussion we started yesterday regarding my journey to becoming a landscape painter; I stated yesterday that I wasn't really sure why in my 20s I thought that I might want to have a career as a landscape painter when I was older. After having thought about it, it occurred to me that there were definitely some signs and motivators that I had not immediately recalled.
Some time in 1985 I decided that I wanted to do some pencil drawings of oak trees. I'm not really sure what my motivation was. I got my friend David who had a camera to go with me and we did some photography in the local foothills. I selected about five or so of the photographs, to draw. I rendered these on illustration board with various grades of pencil.
After that I would sometimes do artwork for the company I worked for at the time that was doing picture framing for the mass-market. We had accounts like JCPenney and Sears. My employer wanted to do a series of framed, colored drawings of various California landmarks. I did a bunch of research and produced about six ink drawings which were then colored with watercolor.
Back then in the 80s the poster market was really taking off. A lot of interesting artwork became available in the form of posters. There are three landscape based poster guys that I recall from that time that I liked, one is Marcus Uzilevsky, Jerry Schurr and the guy that really put a thought in my head about landscape painting, Don Irwin. There was a piece by Don Irwin that I found especially inspiring called California hills. When I saw this poster, it got me thinking that I would really like to do something like that at some time in the future.
At that time, in the 80s I was predominately interested in drawing. I liked to draw people and fantasy type subjects. When I was in my teen years I was very inspired by artists like Roger Dean and Frazeta, not to mention quite a few comic book artists whose work I would copy in an effort to learn drawing and anatomy better. From the time I was a teen until into my 20s and even early 30s I was focused on drawing better, improving as an artist and developing my abilities.
In the early 90s I started becoming interested in doing more abstract, gestural types of drawings. I did a lot of insect drawings with Don Martin inks.
This gets us back to where we started with yesterday's blog post where I talked about using the computer to do art in 1994 and eventually got a job doing illustration using a computer in 1997.
We will pick up from here tomorrow and discuss a bit more about my experience as a commercial artist, so stay tuned for that.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Upland Pasture' by Alden Weir; this was not a scene that I had originally planned to do when I was mapping out the potential studies for my 100 days of Tonalism project. I think when I got to 77 I realized that I had painted the previous scene already, so I dug into my archives and pulled out this painting by Alden Weir. There is another Alden Weir that is it much earlier in the series and I like his work although not all of it is great.
This is quite a different composition than what I would normally do and I really enjoyed doing the yellow grasses and textures in this study and I learned a lot.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Upland Pasture by Alden Weir, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
Alden Weir was predominately known as an American Impressionist painter, however some of his paintings definitely fall into the Tonalist camp. Here is some biographical information about Alden. We have one of my music tracks on todays video 'The Night is Falling' from my album 'It Never Was' so please check that out,
Continuing on with the discussion we started yesterday regarding my journey to becoming a landscape painter; I stated yesterday that I wasn't really sure why in my 20s I thought that I might want to have a career as a landscape painter when I was older. After having thought about it, it occurred to me that there were definitely some signs and motivators that I had not immediately recalled.
Some time in 1985 I decided that I wanted to do some pencil drawings of oak trees. I'm not really sure what my motivation was. I got my friend David who had a camera to go with me and we did some photography in the local foothills. I selected about five or so of the photographs, to draw. I rendered these on illustration board with various grades of pencil.
After that I would sometimes do artwork for the company I worked for at the time that was doing picture framing for the mass-market. We had accounts like JCPenney and Sears. My employer wanted to do a series of framed, colored drawings of various California landmarks. I did a bunch of research and produced about six ink drawings which were then colored with watercolor.
Back then in the 80s the poster market was really taking off. A lot of interesting artwork became available in the form of posters. There are three landscape based poster guys that I recall from that time that I liked, one is Marcus Uzilevsky, Jerry Schurr and the guy that really put a thought in my head about landscape painting, Don Irwin. There was a piece by Don Irwin that I found especially inspiring called California hills. When I saw this poster, it got me thinking that I would really like to do something like that at some time in the future.
At that time, in the 80s I was predominately interested in drawing. I liked to draw people and fantasy type subjects. When I was in my teen years I was very inspired by artists like Roger Dean and Frazeta, not to mention quite a few comic book artists whose work I would copy in an effort to learn drawing and anatomy better. From the time I was a teen until into my 20s and even early 30s I was focused on drawing better, improving as an artist and developing my abilities.
In the early 90s I started becoming interested in doing more abstract, gestural types of drawings. I did a lot of insect drawings with Don Martin inks.
This gets us back to where we started with yesterday's blog post where I talked about using the computer to do art in 1994 and eventually got a job doing illustration using a computer in 1997.
We will pick up from here tomorrow and discuss a bit more about my experience as a commercial artist, so stay tuned for that.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Upland Pasture' by Alden Weir; this was not a scene that I had originally planned to do when I was mapping out the potential studies for my 100 days of Tonalism project. I think when I got to 77 I realized that I had painted the previous scene already, so I dug into my archives and pulled out this painting by Alden Weir. There is another Alden Weir that is it much earlier in the series and I like his work although not all of it is great.
This is quite a different composition than what I would normally do and I really enjoyed doing the yellow grasses and textures in this study and I learned a lot.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Upland Pasture by Alden Weir |
Day Seventy Six: Golden Sunrise by Charles Warren Eaton
Hello and welcome to Day 76 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is 'Golden Sunrise' by Charles Warren Eaton.
Charles Warren Eaton was one of the better-known Tonalist painters, and we have been covering his work fairly extensively on this blog. On today's video narration I will be reading from the book a History of American Tonalism by David Cleveland so please check that out.
On today's blog post I would like to discuss the value of painting to me and my journey to doing it. By painting I mean painting with actual paints on an actual surface and not the digital equivalent.
Some of you may be aware that I worked as a commercial artist and illustrator for 13 years. In that time I worked almost exclusively in digital media. I would do drawings in pencil or India ink and then scan, colorize and paint them in the computer using my Wacom tablet and Photoshop.
I first got into doing art with the computer back in 1994. Prior to that time I had a straight up aversion to computers and prefered to work with pencil and pen and ink. I would occasionally use watercolor as well. but prior to my learning how to use a computer I worked predominantly in black and white.
The computer unleashed a world of creativity and color that I could scarcely believe. I'd been inspired to get a computer and make art with it by the cool 3-D art I saw in movies and the computer based coloring I was seeing in comic books. I thought it would be a great way to color my pen and ink work.
It took me a while but I eventually gained mastery over the medium of digital art creation. I used programs like Painter, Photo Paint and Photoshop, teaching myself as I went along. In 1997 that hard work paid off and that I was able to get a graphics job on the basis of my portfolio and also because I had a good friend who worked at the company. This company was in the business of printing T-shirts and I was engaged in creating illustrations that were plugged into designs generated by my employer.
I worked there for a long time and I created a lot of illustrations and a few designs of my own. The sort of things that I would illustrate were animals, dinosaurs, monster trucks, national parks scenes and lots of spot illustrations of all sorts of different items.
It was a fun job especially at first. And with each year there I gained greater and greater mastery over my craft. I enjoyed using my skills and being able to produce artwork that was commercially viable and generated sales. Being a commercial artist has a way of pushing you into completing work and it must be salable if you are to keep getting paid.
Somewhere in my 20s I got the idea that at some point I would like to be a landscape painter. I'm not sure really where this idea came from. I think in many ways it was a lot like the initial reason I went into art in the first place, in that I felt it would be an occupation that was compatible with my personality and life goals. I can't say I was that much into landscape painting at that time but I had this idea in my mind and it stayed there.
I will continue talking about my history and eventual decision to become a landscape painter in tomorrow's blog post, so stay tuned.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Golden Sunrise' by Charles Warren Eaton; this is typical of Eaton's type of painting in that it features the white pines that he made famous. At the time he was painting these trees they were becoming somewhat scarce. After his paintings became popular and captured the imagination of the American public, these trees have made a big resurgence and are no longer hard to find.
I enjoyed painting this nearly duo toned scene and especially appreciate Charles Warren Eaton's approach to composition in this painting, it is very simple and yet very effective
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Golden Sunrise by Charles Warren Eaton Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
Charles Warren Eaton was one of the better-known Tonalist painters, and we have been covering his work fairly extensively on this blog. On today's video narration I will be reading from the book a History of American Tonalism by David Cleveland so please check that out.
On today's blog post I would like to discuss the value of painting to me and my journey to doing it. By painting I mean painting with actual paints on an actual surface and not the digital equivalent.
Some of you may be aware that I worked as a commercial artist and illustrator for 13 years. In that time I worked almost exclusively in digital media. I would do drawings in pencil or India ink and then scan, colorize and paint them in the computer using my Wacom tablet and Photoshop.
I first got into doing art with the computer back in 1994. Prior to that time I had a straight up aversion to computers and prefered to work with pencil and pen and ink. I would occasionally use watercolor as well. but prior to my learning how to use a computer I worked predominantly in black and white.
The computer unleashed a world of creativity and color that I could scarcely believe. I'd been inspired to get a computer and make art with it by the cool 3-D art I saw in movies and the computer based coloring I was seeing in comic books. I thought it would be a great way to color my pen and ink work.
It took me a while but I eventually gained mastery over the medium of digital art creation. I used programs like Painter, Photo Paint and Photoshop, teaching myself as I went along. In 1997 that hard work paid off and that I was able to get a graphics job on the basis of my portfolio and also because I had a good friend who worked at the company. This company was in the business of printing T-shirts and I was engaged in creating illustrations that were plugged into designs generated by my employer.
I worked there for a long time and I created a lot of illustrations and a few designs of my own. The sort of things that I would illustrate were animals, dinosaurs, monster trucks, national parks scenes and lots of spot illustrations of all sorts of different items.
It was a fun job especially at first. And with each year there I gained greater and greater mastery over my craft. I enjoyed using my skills and being able to produce artwork that was commercially viable and generated sales. Being a commercial artist has a way of pushing you into completing work and it must be salable if you are to keep getting paid.
Somewhere in my 20s I got the idea that at some point I would like to be a landscape painter. I'm not sure really where this idea came from. I think in many ways it was a lot like the initial reason I went into art in the first place, in that I felt it would be an occupation that was compatible with my personality and life goals. I can't say I was that much into landscape painting at that time but I had this idea in my mind and it stayed there.
I will continue talking about my history and eventual decision to become a landscape painter in tomorrow's blog post, so stay tuned.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Golden Sunrise' by Charles Warren Eaton; this is typical of Eaton's type of painting in that it features the white pines that he made famous. At the time he was painting these trees they were becoming somewhat scarce. After his paintings became popular and captured the imagination of the American public, these trees have made a big resurgence and are no longer hard to find.
I enjoyed painting this nearly duo toned scene and especially appreciate Charles Warren Eaton's approach to composition in this painting, it is very simple and yet very effective
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Golden Sunrise by Charles Warren Eaton |
Day Seventy Five: Solitude by Granville Redmond
Hello and welcome to Day 75 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is 'Solitude' by Granville Redmond.
We've done a couple of studies of Granville Redmond's work in this series. Granville Redmond was deaf, he was also known as an actor in a few Charlie Chaplin movies. His Tonalist work is fairly well known in California where he resided for most of his life. Today's video features a track from my album 'Just Be' so please check that out.
We've completed our recent assay regarding my Tonalist painting process with yesterday's post. However, there is one aspect of my process that we haven't gone into yet and that is framing.
Tonalist paintings going back in the 19th century were typically framed with gold leaf frames. These frames would vary in the level of ornateness, but for the most part tended to be more ornate types of moldings. Much of the reason for this use of gold leaf frames back then, was because these paintings were designed to stimulate a spiritual response in their viewers and were often placed in people's homes in spots of importance.
I have a deep and abiding love of ornate gold leaf picture frames. For the last several years that is what I have framed my work with predominantly. Recently however, I have been making a shift into a more transitional/contemporary style of molding. The reason for this is, in the area where I live very few people have the types of homes that would support an ornate gold leaf frame. For that reason I've made a move into a more contemporary style.
I'm not sure if I mentioned yet or not that while my first color pass is drying in the area of my studio dedicated to drying paintings I very much like to put some sort of frame on each painting so that I can visualize the painting completed. At first, this idea might seem to be not too important but I believe that it helps a lot with visualizing how the painting should proceed. The addition of a frame creates a border that makes the painting separate from what is going on around it. This is very useful in assisting to reveal any problems that the painting might have that need to be addressed before it is finished.
Oil paintings deserve to be framed. Many artists in the area where I live favor what is called a gallery stretched canvas. This is a canvas that has been stretched on a deeper stretcher bar so that it comes off the wall about 1 inch or so. It's no secret why this is a popular way of presenting paintings, it happens to be the cheapest option available to any artist to have no frame at all, just a bare canvas against a wall.
Since I paint on panel an option like this isn't really open to me. Not only that, I feel that if I'm charging hundreds of dollars for a painting that it should be presented in a nice frame.
Speaking of nice frames, the wrong frame can easily skunk a sale. The wrong color, the wrong style or the wrong moulding width, all of these are factors that can preclude a buyer from actually buying a painting. This is why I started to use a very nice but simple black molding with subtle orange accents to present my work. I've had a lot of favorable response to this particular framing approach.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Solitude' by Granville Redmond; I quite like the composition of this scene. Granville has also used a unique semi monochromatic approach to his colors in his painting.
I enjoyed working with the limited palette of cerulean blue, phthalo green and ivory black.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Solitude by Granville Redmond, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x5, Oil on wood panel |
Today's study is 'Solitude' by Granville Redmond.
We've done a couple of studies of Granville Redmond's work in this series. Granville Redmond was deaf, he was also known as an actor in a few Charlie Chaplin movies. His Tonalist work is fairly well known in California where he resided for most of his life. Today's video features a track from my album 'Just Be' so please check that out.
We've completed our recent assay regarding my Tonalist painting process with yesterday's post. However, there is one aspect of my process that we haven't gone into yet and that is framing.
Tonalist paintings going back in the 19th century were typically framed with gold leaf frames. These frames would vary in the level of ornateness, but for the most part tended to be more ornate types of moldings. Much of the reason for this use of gold leaf frames back then, was because these paintings were designed to stimulate a spiritual response in their viewers and were often placed in people's homes in spots of importance.
I have a deep and abiding love of ornate gold leaf picture frames. For the last several years that is what I have framed my work with predominantly. Recently however, I have been making a shift into a more transitional/contemporary style of molding. The reason for this is, in the area where I live very few people have the types of homes that would support an ornate gold leaf frame. For that reason I've made a move into a more contemporary style.
I'm not sure if I mentioned yet or not that while my first color pass is drying in the area of my studio dedicated to drying paintings I very much like to put some sort of frame on each painting so that I can visualize the painting completed. At first, this idea might seem to be not too important but I believe that it helps a lot with visualizing how the painting should proceed. The addition of a frame creates a border that makes the painting separate from what is going on around it. This is very useful in assisting to reveal any problems that the painting might have that need to be addressed before it is finished.
Oil paintings deserve to be framed. Many artists in the area where I live favor what is called a gallery stretched canvas. This is a canvas that has been stretched on a deeper stretcher bar so that it comes off the wall about 1 inch or so. It's no secret why this is a popular way of presenting paintings, it happens to be the cheapest option available to any artist to have no frame at all, just a bare canvas against a wall.
Since I paint on panel an option like this isn't really open to me. Not only that, I feel that if I'm charging hundreds of dollars for a painting that it should be presented in a nice frame.
Speaking of nice frames, the wrong frame can easily skunk a sale. The wrong color, the wrong style or the wrong moulding width, all of these are factors that can preclude a buyer from actually buying a painting. This is why I started to use a very nice but simple black molding with subtle orange accents to present my work. I've had a lot of favorable response to this particular framing approach.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Solitude' by Granville Redmond; I quite like the composition of this scene. Granville has also used a unique semi monochromatic approach to his colors in his painting.
I enjoyed working with the limited palette of cerulean blue, phthalo green and ivory black.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Solitude by Granville Redmond |
Day Seventy Four: Indian Summer by George Inness
Hello and welcome to day 74 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is 'Indian Summer' by George Inness.
Those of you that follow this blog regularly will be well aware of George Inness. I have read a bit from the book 'George Inness' by Nicolai Cikovsky in today's video narration, so please check that out.
Continuing on with our recent assay regarding my Tonalist painting process; we're getting close to the end of our discussion about my process. There may be some additional things that I think of in the next 26 days and if I do, I will not hesitate to bring them up.
Today I'd like to discuss something that I do to every painting. After my first color pass and after scraping down the peaks of my painting I like to apply a generous coat of Liquin to the surface. I will be applying another coat on top of my second color pass as well. I've written about Liquin in my previous blog here.
There are several schools of thought about this. Many people believe that Liquin should only be used for glazing and as a medium. I tend to use it as a coating to remove the dullness that you will get with certain pigments. Applying Liquin gives me a uniform finish that is not too glossy. Frankly, I don't see much of a difference between doing this and doing a coat of glazing. I find that Liquin provides a very tough and durable surface.
I also like to apply a coating of Gamvar varnish by Gamblin when a person purchasing a painting requests a varnish. Varnish can be a double-edged sword. On one hand it can protect the actual surface of the painting from staining or discoloring that may be occurring in the environment in which the painting is hung. On the other hand it has a tendency to yellow and often times art restorers can damage paintings in the process of removing it.
It is really the call of the art collector whether varnish be applied or not. Gamvar is one of the better options available to artists these days and I do recommend it if you want to varnish.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Indian Summer' by George Inness; I really like the composition of this painting. It's quite similar to compositional motifs that I go after quite often.
It was fun to paint the orange tree and I really enjoyed doing this study.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Indian Summer by George Inness, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
Today's study is 'Indian Summer' by George Inness.
Those of you that follow this blog regularly will be well aware of George Inness. I have read a bit from the book 'George Inness' by Nicolai Cikovsky in today's video narration, so please check that out.
Continuing on with our recent assay regarding my Tonalist painting process; we're getting close to the end of our discussion about my process. There may be some additional things that I think of in the next 26 days and if I do, I will not hesitate to bring them up.
Today I'd like to discuss something that I do to every painting. After my first color pass and after scraping down the peaks of my painting I like to apply a generous coat of Liquin to the surface. I will be applying another coat on top of my second color pass as well. I've written about Liquin in my previous blog here.
There are several schools of thought about this. Many people believe that Liquin should only be used for glazing and as a medium. I tend to use it as a coating to remove the dullness that you will get with certain pigments. Applying Liquin gives me a uniform finish that is not too glossy. Frankly, I don't see much of a difference between doing this and doing a coat of glazing. I find that Liquin provides a very tough and durable surface.
I also like to apply a coating of Gamvar varnish by Gamblin when a person purchasing a painting requests a varnish. Varnish can be a double-edged sword. On one hand it can protect the actual surface of the painting from staining or discoloring that may be occurring in the environment in which the painting is hung. On the other hand it has a tendency to yellow and often times art restorers can damage paintings in the process of removing it.
It is really the call of the art collector whether varnish be applied or not. Gamvar is one of the better options available to artists these days and I do recommend it if you want to varnish.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Indian Summer' by George Inness; I really like the composition of this painting. It's quite similar to compositional motifs that I go after quite often.
It was fun to paint the orange tree and I really enjoyed doing this study.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Indian Summer by George Inness |
Day Seventy Three: Winter Solitude by Charles Warren Eaton
Hello and welcome to Day 73 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is 'Winter Solitude' by Charles Warren Eaton.
Of all the paintings that I've done for this series, 100 days of Tonalism. I would have to say that this is the one that has had the most favorable interest. It is the also only one in the series that I have painted three times. The first version that I painted I sold off my easel to a gentleman that came into my studio. The second was acquired by my wife, and the third is the one that I am showing you today.
I've read some biographical information about Charles Warren Eaton from the book 'A History of American Tonalism' by David A. Cleveland in today's video narration, so check that out.
Continuing on with our current essay regarding my Tonalist painting process; we've been discussing my second color pass. There's a lot that I do with my brush after doing the glazing. Unlike my first color pass where I tend to work in a methodical way from back to front, when I'm doing my second color pass I move my brush all over the panel.
Since I've usually had the first color pass sitting around for a while, I have a pretty good idea of things I want to address in the painting by the time I get into the second color pass. Sometimes there are areas in the painting that I decided I would complete in my second color pass. Also, unlike the first color pass I do not have any colors premixed on my pallet. When painting my second color pass I mix all needed colors as I go along.
This is the time in the painting process where I will make my light areas lighter and my dark areas darker. I work very hard to try to keep the freshness of the first color pass while accentuating and enhancing what is there, as well as correcting that which needs to be addressed.
It's very important in painting not to overdo it. Many amateurs make the mistake of overworking their paintings thinking that more detail and rendering is going to make the painting better. In reality, nothing could be farther from the truth.
There is a fine balance that needs to be struck at this juncture with the painting. Even more so for me these days as I've been getting into dry brushing quite a lot, using the textures of the painting to accentuate areas using the side of my brush. This gives me an effect very much like a stipple. So far I have succeeded in keeping the freshness going in my painting but it pays to be ever vigilant.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Winter Solitude' by Charles Warren Eaton; as I stated above, I've painted this painting three times now. I really love the fact that it even though it is a winter scene is such a warm and inviting painting.
His use of complementary coloration in this scene is masterful to say the least and I learned quite a lot from making several studies of it.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Winter Solitude by Charles Warren Eaton Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
Of all the paintings that I've done for this series, 100 days of Tonalism. I would have to say that this is the one that has had the most favorable interest. It is the also only one in the series that I have painted three times. The first version that I painted I sold off my easel to a gentleman that came into my studio. The second was acquired by my wife, and the third is the one that I am showing you today.
I've read some biographical information about Charles Warren Eaton from the book 'A History of American Tonalism' by David A. Cleveland in today's video narration, so check that out.
Continuing on with our current essay regarding my Tonalist painting process; we've been discussing my second color pass. There's a lot that I do with my brush after doing the glazing. Unlike my first color pass where I tend to work in a methodical way from back to front, when I'm doing my second color pass I move my brush all over the panel.
Since I've usually had the first color pass sitting around for a while, I have a pretty good idea of things I want to address in the painting by the time I get into the second color pass. Sometimes there are areas in the painting that I decided I would complete in my second color pass. Also, unlike the first color pass I do not have any colors premixed on my pallet. When painting my second color pass I mix all needed colors as I go along.
This is the time in the painting process where I will make my light areas lighter and my dark areas darker. I work very hard to try to keep the freshness of the first color pass while accentuating and enhancing what is there, as well as correcting that which needs to be addressed.
It's very important in painting not to overdo it. Many amateurs make the mistake of overworking their paintings thinking that more detail and rendering is going to make the painting better. In reality, nothing could be farther from the truth.
There is a fine balance that needs to be struck at this juncture with the painting. Even more so for me these days as I've been getting into dry brushing quite a lot, using the textures of the painting to accentuate areas using the side of my brush. This gives me an effect very much like a stipple. So far I have succeeded in keeping the freshness going in my painting but it pays to be ever vigilant.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Winter Solitude' by Charles Warren Eaton; as I stated above, I've painted this painting three times now. I really love the fact that it even though it is a winter scene is such a warm and inviting painting.
His use of complementary coloration in this scene is masterful to say the least and I learned quite a lot from making several studies of it.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Winter Solitude by Charles Warren Eaton |
Day Seventy Two: Lake George by Homer Dodge Martin
Hello and welcome to day 72 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is 'Lake George' by Homer Dodge Martin.
Homer was actually considered to be primarily a Luminist painter. However much of his work paves the way for the Tonalist movement that was to become popular in America after 1880. Today's video features a track from my last album The Lost Horizon.
Continuing on with our current assay regarding my Tonalist painting process; today we are getting into my second color pass. This is the stage of the painting where I accentuate certain areas or diminish others and, generally try to enhance what I've done in my first color pass. I can spend as much time on this stage of the painting as I did in the initial first color pass or even more sometimes.
Many of the studies in this series 100 days of Tonalism went through a second color pass, but not all of them. Actually, since having done this series, I determined that I would do a second color pass on my own 5x7 studies. In the past I have done only one color pass for my small studies. I can't resist polishing them up a little now, this is something that came out of me doing this project.
After adhering the painting to my easel with bluetac, I will start to think about what colors I might want to use to do some glazing. There are times in the past I've done no glazing at all but these days I like to do it to pretty much every painting.
The thing with glazing that you need to watch out for, is overdoing it and ruining something that you did in the first color pass that was actually just fine the way it was. This is one of the reasons why I tend to work in a series type of workflow. It gives me time to plan and think and appreciate what is good about my first color pass before going in and modifying it.
I've written about glazing on this blog in the past. My favorite colors to glaze with are ivory black and transparent earth yellow. I will also occasionally glaze with sienna. I like to modify my transparent earth yellow with the touch of alizarin crimson, the yellow has a tendency towards a bit of green quality and the crimson neutralizes that nicely.
Of these colors, my favorite to glaze with is ivory black. I don't usually paint much with ivory black on it's own. I tend to use it mostly to modify other colors and subdue their chroma.
It is a very good color for glazing because you can lay it on thinly and it has a pleasing darkening effect, especially after it is wiped off and just a bit of it has settled into the areas between brushstrokes. This is an effect that I adore and for that reason I use it quite a lot in certain areas of the painting. I don't use it everywhere on my painting though. That would be a huge mistake.
Another thing I like to do with my black glaze mixture is to tamp it on areas of the foliage with a crumpled paper towel. This can give odd bits of organic variety in the foliage areas that is very effective.
My second favorite color to glaze with is transparent earth yellow. I like to apply it to very light areas thinly. This gives those areas a wonderful warm quality. When this thinned down mixture is wiped over very light colors you can get luminous tones that are almost impossible to paint in an opaque manner.
Tomorrow we will continue on with our discussion regarding my second color pass so stay tuned for that.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Lake George' by Homer Dodge Martin. I was attracted to the overall sepia quality of this painting. You might notice that my study is a bit less yellow than Homers. This seems to be a trend in the entire series. One of the main reasons for this is that many of the original paintings have yellowed over time. I painted my studies to reflect what I think the fresh painting would have looked like. BTW it would be a piece of cake to tint them by doing a bit of glazing with yellow.
I enjoyed painting this in the same loose, fractured manner that Homer assumed for his painting. I feel I got a good result with my study.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Lake George by Homer Dodge Martin, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
Homer was actually considered to be primarily a Luminist painter. However much of his work paves the way for the Tonalist movement that was to become popular in America after 1880. Today's video features a track from my last album The Lost Horizon.
Continuing on with our current assay regarding my Tonalist painting process; today we are getting into my second color pass. This is the stage of the painting where I accentuate certain areas or diminish others and, generally try to enhance what I've done in my first color pass. I can spend as much time on this stage of the painting as I did in the initial first color pass or even more sometimes.
Many of the studies in this series 100 days of Tonalism went through a second color pass, but not all of them. Actually, since having done this series, I determined that I would do a second color pass on my own 5x7 studies. In the past I have done only one color pass for my small studies. I can't resist polishing them up a little now, this is something that came out of me doing this project.
After adhering the painting to my easel with bluetac, I will start to think about what colors I might want to use to do some glazing. There are times in the past I've done no glazing at all but these days I like to do it to pretty much every painting.
The thing with glazing that you need to watch out for, is overdoing it and ruining something that you did in the first color pass that was actually just fine the way it was. This is one of the reasons why I tend to work in a series type of workflow. It gives me time to plan and think and appreciate what is good about my first color pass before going in and modifying it.
I've written about glazing on this blog in the past. My favorite colors to glaze with are ivory black and transparent earth yellow. I will also occasionally glaze with sienna. I like to modify my transparent earth yellow with the touch of alizarin crimson, the yellow has a tendency towards a bit of green quality and the crimson neutralizes that nicely.
Of these colors, my favorite to glaze with is ivory black. I don't usually paint much with ivory black on it's own. I tend to use it mostly to modify other colors and subdue their chroma.
It is a very good color for glazing because you can lay it on thinly and it has a pleasing darkening effect, especially after it is wiped off and just a bit of it has settled into the areas between brushstrokes. This is an effect that I adore and for that reason I use it quite a lot in certain areas of the painting. I don't use it everywhere on my painting though. That would be a huge mistake.
Another thing I like to do with my black glaze mixture is to tamp it on areas of the foliage with a crumpled paper towel. This can give odd bits of organic variety in the foliage areas that is very effective.
My second favorite color to glaze with is transparent earth yellow. I like to apply it to very light areas thinly. This gives those areas a wonderful warm quality. When this thinned down mixture is wiped over very light colors you can get luminous tones that are almost impossible to paint in an opaque manner.
Tomorrow we will continue on with our discussion regarding my second color pass so stay tuned for that.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Lake George' by Homer Dodge Martin. I was attracted to the overall sepia quality of this painting. You might notice that my study is a bit less yellow than Homers. This seems to be a trend in the entire series. One of the main reasons for this is that many of the original paintings have yellowed over time. I painted my studies to reflect what I think the fresh painting would have looked like. BTW it would be a piece of cake to tint them by doing a bit of glazing with yellow.
I enjoyed painting this in the same loose, fractured manner that Homer assumed for his painting. I feel I got a good result with my study.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, Lake George by Homer Dodge Martin |
Day Seventy One: Summer Montclair by George Inness
Hello and welcome to day 71 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is of 'Summer Montclair' by George Inness.
A vertical Inness today. I have been reading from the book by Nikolai Cikovsky "George Inness" on the videos for our recent bunch of Inness studies. I will continue on with that today in the video narration, so please check that out.
I know, I said that we were going to jump into the second color pass today in our recent series of blog posts about my Tonalist painting process. However, it occurred to me that it would be good to take a little break from that and discuss the idea of looking at, living with and editing your own work.
I have touched on this concept of self editing before in this blog, but it is deserving of more attention. It's very easy to focus only on the positive 'actions' that one takes to create art. A bit like how it's easier to focus on the positive content of the picture (like a figure or a tree) as opposed to the negative space. For art to be good it must be in balance, and so good art is always the result of both action and inaction, thinking and feeling.
After I finished my first color pass I set it on a wall in my studio to my right. Against that wall I have two fairly large display easels. On those easels I like to place all of my recent paintings after I have completed a particular stage. This is an area where paintings dry but also a place where I can look at what I've done, think about it and continue the process of critical analysis that started with coming upon the scene in nature and, continues on through each of the stages of my process.
I find it important to put a frame on the painting in its intermediate stages. This creates a border that really helps me analyze the painting. I have known some painters that actually create their paintings in a frame (I might try it myself one day).
For the type of painting that I do, it's essential that the work also be presented in some sort of frame. I will discuss framing, it's importance and effect in a later blog post.
As I've mentioned previously on this blog, I tend to work on about 14 scenes at a time. I take each painting through all of my stages before completing any. This is a good number for me because it's not too many scenes but it is enough for there to be a reasonable span of time between the two color passes. This gives me a chance to look at the work in its first color state and really think about things that might be bothering me or ideas I may have as to ways that I could improve the picture.
I've tried in the past bringing one or two paintings to completion at a time but I feel I get more work done this way of a higher quality.
A phenomenon that I had noticed in my painting life is that I would complete a painting and put it on the wall. After a while when the newness of the painting wore off, I would slowly become aware of issues with the painting that needed to be resolved. This is not every painting I did, but definitely more than a few of them needed a bit of editing or reevaluation. Doing 14 scenes at a time gives me the opportunity to do that reevaluation while I'm still in the process of working on a given scene.
Not every painting that I do is going to be a masterwork, but there's no sense in having work out there in circulation that could be better or could have been improved. Fortunately I'm not a perfectionist and I'm quite happy to let things go after a certain point. Unlike my favorite painter George Inness. He was famous for reworking paintings and working over existing paintings that had been sold, even working over the paintings of his friends.
Tomorrow we will actually begin talking about the second color pass and I hope to give you some good information about my process in that regard so stay tuned.
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Summer Montclair' by George Inness; this is a painting I have been aware of for quite a while and is one that comes up readily in an image search for Inness on Google. It wasn't actually until painting my study of this scene that I realized that the pond is shaped like a coffin.
This painting exhibits Inness' mastery of values and also edges. One thing he does in this painting that I generally try to avoid the is that he has a very odd tree shape in the middle ground trees. Also he has left a visual way out of the scene on the right-hand side as well as the left, which is working in this painting but is not something that I tend to do.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Summer Montclair by George Inness, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood panel |
A vertical Inness today. I have been reading from the book by Nikolai Cikovsky "George Inness" on the videos for our recent bunch of Inness studies. I will continue on with that today in the video narration, so please check that out.
I know, I said that we were going to jump into the second color pass today in our recent series of blog posts about my Tonalist painting process. However, it occurred to me that it would be good to take a little break from that and discuss the idea of looking at, living with and editing your own work.
I have touched on this concept of self editing before in this blog, but it is deserving of more attention. It's very easy to focus only on the positive 'actions' that one takes to create art. A bit like how it's easier to focus on the positive content of the picture (like a figure or a tree) as opposed to the negative space. For art to be good it must be in balance, and so good art is always the result of both action and inaction, thinking and feeling.
After I finished my first color pass I set it on a wall in my studio to my right. Against that wall I have two fairly large display easels. On those easels I like to place all of my recent paintings after I have completed a particular stage. This is an area where paintings dry but also a place where I can look at what I've done, think about it and continue the process of critical analysis that started with coming upon the scene in nature and, continues on through each of the stages of my process.
I find it important to put a frame on the painting in its intermediate stages. This creates a border that really helps me analyze the painting. I have known some painters that actually create their paintings in a frame (I might try it myself one day).
For the type of painting that I do, it's essential that the work also be presented in some sort of frame. I will discuss framing, it's importance and effect in a later blog post.
As I've mentioned previously on this blog, I tend to work on about 14 scenes at a time. I take each painting through all of my stages before completing any. This is a good number for me because it's not too many scenes but it is enough for there to be a reasonable span of time between the two color passes. This gives me a chance to look at the work in its first color state and really think about things that might be bothering me or ideas I may have as to ways that I could improve the picture.
I've tried in the past bringing one or two paintings to completion at a time but I feel I get more work done this way of a higher quality.
A phenomenon that I had noticed in my painting life is that I would complete a painting and put it on the wall. After a while when the newness of the painting wore off, I would slowly become aware of issues with the painting that needed to be resolved. This is not every painting I did, but definitely more than a few of them needed a bit of editing or reevaluation. Doing 14 scenes at a time gives me the opportunity to do that reevaluation while I'm still in the process of working on a given scene.
Not every painting that I do is going to be a masterwork, but there's no sense in having work out there in circulation that could be better or could have been improved. Fortunately I'm not a perfectionist and I'm quite happy to let things go after a certain point. Unlike my favorite painter George Inness. He was famous for reworking paintings and working over existing paintings that had been sold, even working over the paintings of his friends.
Tomorrow we will actually begin talking about the second color pass and I hope to give you some good information about my process in that regard so stay tuned.
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Summer Montclair' by George Inness; this is a painting I have been aware of for quite a while and is one that comes up readily in an image search for Inness on Google. It wasn't actually until painting my study of this scene that I realized that the pond is shaped like a coffin.
This painting exhibits Inness' mastery of values and also edges. One thing he does in this painting that I generally try to avoid the is that he has a very odd tree shape in the middle ground trees. Also he has left a visual way out of the scene on the right-hand side as well as the left, which is working in this painting but is not something that I tend to do.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting,Summer Montclair by George Inness |
Day Seventy: A Stormy Day by John Francis Murphy
Hello and welcome to day 70 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today's study is of 'A Stormy Day' by John Francis Murphy.
This painting by Murphy is awesome, one of my all-time favorites. I was excited to try my hand at doing a study. I will be reading some biographical information about John Francis Murphy from the book A History of American Tonalism by David Cleveland on today's video narrations, so please check that out.
Continuing on with our current assay regarding my Tonalist painting process; I think we've covered the first color pass pretty well. This has been an overview and not a thorough in-depth analysis that I've been serializing in these blog posts. I have got into some good detail here and there in regards to my process and approach to painting. There's more to come as we go into the 2nd color stage over the next week.
Today I'd like to just talk about painting wet into wet since this is the main thing that distinguishes the first color pass from the second (and all of the related techniques and ways of applying paint). Many painters favor doing their entire paintings wet on wet this is referred to as painting Alla Prima. I believe that Alla Prima means 'all at once' in Italian.
There is an excellent book by Richard Schmid called Alla Prima that I have referenced on this blog in the past. Richard is one of the best landscape painters living and though, I would not consider him to be a Tonalist, he certainly understands what Tonalism is and how to do it. The reason I bring Richard Schmid up here, is that he is the preeminent Alla Prima painter, in that he paints almost entirely wet on wet. This book has some awesome chapters and instruction in painting with oils. I highly recommend purchasing it.
Getting back to my first color pass and painting wet into wet. You can get wonderful effects, blending, striations and modulations of color by working with wet paint into wet paint that could not be accomplished any other way. One of the wonderful things about working with oil paint, is that it stays quite wet on the painting until it is dry the next day. There is a certain characteristic to paintings done this way that is distinctive.
I enjoy working wet on wet and I always endeavor to make the painting as good as possible in the first color pass. There are times that I will hold back knowing that I will be doing a second color pass. I will hold off on putting in the lightest tones or, wait to paint certain passages that will require a lot of light over dark or dark over light painting.
Tomorrow we will start talking about my second color pass and getting into some of the techniques that I utilize to bring my painting to a nice finish.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'A Stormy Day' by John Francis Murphy; as I stated above this is one of my favorite paintings by J Francis Murphy. I love how dark, emotional and intense this painting is. His use of rich auburn reds and an entire range of interesting grays is masterful.
I spent some time in the second color pass of this study doing some textural work. This is something that J Francis Murphy was famous for and, I believe that this painting of his could be the pinnacle of his textural approach.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - A Stormy Day by John Francis Murphy, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood pane |
This painting by Murphy is awesome, one of my all-time favorites. I was excited to try my hand at doing a study. I will be reading some biographical information about John Francis Murphy from the book A History of American Tonalism by David Cleveland on today's video narrations, so please check that out.
Continuing on with our current assay regarding my Tonalist painting process; I think we've covered the first color pass pretty well. This has been an overview and not a thorough in-depth analysis that I've been serializing in these blog posts. I have got into some good detail here and there in regards to my process and approach to painting. There's more to come as we go into the 2nd color stage over the next week.
Today I'd like to just talk about painting wet into wet since this is the main thing that distinguishes the first color pass from the second (and all of the related techniques and ways of applying paint). Many painters favor doing their entire paintings wet on wet this is referred to as painting Alla Prima. I believe that Alla Prima means 'all at once' in Italian.
There is an excellent book by Richard Schmid called Alla Prima that I have referenced on this blog in the past. Richard is one of the best landscape painters living and though, I would not consider him to be a Tonalist, he certainly understands what Tonalism is and how to do it. The reason I bring Richard Schmid up here, is that he is the preeminent Alla Prima painter, in that he paints almost entirely wet on wet. This book has some awesome chapters and instruction in painting with oils. I highly recommend purchasing it.
Getting back to my first color pass and painting wet into wet. You can get wonderful effects, blending, striations and modulations of color by working with wet paint into wet paint that could not be accomplished any other way. One of the wonderful things about working with oil paint, is that it stays quite wet on the painting until it is dry the next day. There is a certain characteristic to paintings done this way that is distinctive.
I enjoy working wet on wet and I always endeavor to make the painting as good as possible in the first color pass. There are times that I will hold back knowing that I will be doing a second color pass. I will hold off on putting in the lightest tones or, wait to paint certain passages that will require a lot of light over dark or dark over light painting.
Tomorrow we will start talking about my second color pass and getting into some of the techniques that I utilize to bring my painting to a nice finish.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'A Stormy Day' by John Francis Murphy; as I stated above this is one of my favorite paintings by J Francis Murphy. I love how dark, emotional and intense this painting is. His use of rich auburn reds and an entire range of interesting grays is masterful.
I spent some time in the second color pass of this study doing some textural work. This is something that J Francis Murphy was famous for and, I believe that this painting of his could be the pinnacle of his textural approach.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, A Stormy Day by John Francis Murphy |
Day Sixty Nine: The Last Gleam by Charles Appel
Hello and welcome to day 69 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today study is 'The Last Gleam' by Charles Appel.
We've done a few studies after Charles in this series. He was fairly well known in his day but not so much now. Today's video features a track off my latest album Lost Horizon so please check that out.
Continuing on with our current assay regarding my Tonalist painting process; today I would like to discuss the palette knife and how I use it.
It's no secret that many painters paint with these knives and some of them quite effectively. I have given it a try for painting but palette knives do not lend themselves very well to working on wood panels.
Occasionally I might paint something very straight with the edge of a palette knife. I have experimented with using them for the limbs on trees and that can work. Ultimately though I prefer to use the clean edge of a brush to do the same sorts of things. If necessary I will resort to using a new brush that has a good crisp edge before painting with a palette knife.
So, what do I use palette knives for? On my palette I use them for cleaning and scraping the palette. Also, as I mentioned in my post about raised peaks of paint and scraping thereof, I use palette knives to scrape down those peaks.
In my actual painting process I use palette knives for one thing. It occurred to me yesterday while I was writing about edges that I do quite a lot of blending and picking with the point of the knife, generally right before finishing for the day. At times I will even do some swirly mixing with the knife through the wet paint.
This is a small part of my painting process but it is something I do (almost unconsciously) all the time. A little thing you can do add to the painting but all those little things add up.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'The Last Gleam' by Charles Appel ; I really like the rich over saturated colors in the sky in this painting by Appel. I enjoyed painting the sky and I'm glad that I did a study of this piece.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - The Last Gleam by Charles Appel, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood pane |
Today study is 'The Last Gleam' by Charles Appel.
We've done a few studies after Charles in this series. He was fairly well known in his day but not so much now. Today's video features a track off my latest album Lost Horizon so please check that out.
Continuing on with our current assay regarding my Tonalist painting process; today I would like to discuss the palette knife and how I use it.
It's no secret that many painters paint with these knives and some of them quite effectively. I have given it a try for painting but palette knives do not lend themselves very well to working on wood panels.
Occasionally I might paint something very straight with the edge of a palette knife. I have experimented with using them for the limbs on trees and that can work. Ultimately though I prefer to use the clean edge of a brush to do the same sorts of things. If necessary I will resort to using a new brush that has a good crisp edge before painting with a palette knife.
So, what do I use palette knives for? On my palette I use them for cleaning and scraping the palette. Also, as I mentioned in my post about raised peaks of paint and scraping thereof, I use palette knives to scrape down those peaks.
In my actual painting process I use palette knives for one thing. It occurred to me yesterday while I was writing about edges that I do quite a lot of blending and picking with the point of the knife, generally right before finishing for the day. At times I will even do some swirly mixing with the knife through the wet paint.
This is a small part of my painting process but it is something I do (almost unconsciously) all the time. A little thing you can do add to the painting but all those little things add up.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'The Last Gleam' by Charles Appel ; I really like the rich over saturated colors in the sky in this painting by Appel. I enjoyed painting the sky and I'm glad that I did a study of this piece.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, The Last Gleam by Charles Appel |
Day Sixty Eight: Breezy Autumn by George Inness
Hello and welcome to day 68 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today study is of 'Breezy Autumn' by George Inness.
A very nice late middle period Inness painting today. On today's video narration I will be continuing on with my reading from the book George Inness by Nicolai Cikovsky, so please check that out.
Continuing on with our current assay regarding my Tonalist painting process; today I would like to talk about edges in painting. Edges are one of the main areas that I have gotten better at in the last few years. This is after many years where I was already aware of the importance of good edges and their impact on landscape painting.
By edges I mean an area where one shape meets or overlaps with another. This could be where the tree overlaps the sky, where a bush overlaps a tree or, where a road or river cuts through the ground plane. All of these areas have edges that need to be negotiated in the painting. Of all the places where edges are critical in the painting the most challenging area has to be where trees overlap the sky. This is the part of the painting that has the greatest amount of contrast between light and dark.
I've talked before in my blog posts about photography and how photographs tend to force objects into being more rigid and contrasting than they are in real life. For example, where a tree overlaps the sky you get a very defined and hard edge in any well focused photograph. I've seen many painters carry this forward into their landscape paintings, mistakenly assuming that that is proper because they believe that photographs are telling them a true story.
The reality is that photographs capture nature in a very limited way compared to our actual vision. If you are using photographs to create paintings you need to be aware of this.
Instead of having a strong contrast where my trees overlap the sky, I like to modulate and soften those edges. There are several ways that a painter can accomplish this, some that are more successful than others. One way is just to use your brush to blend the sky color into the darker tree color and this is a technique that you will see amateur artists embrace, though I use this method sparingly at times. Another approach is to use the ends of the brush to sort of stipple in the edges. This sort of technique was popularized by the speed painting school and by artists like Bob Ross. I do this some times too.
My favorite approach is to start planning for my edges even while preparing my photographic reference to be used for my painting. I will often use various tools in Photoshop to lighten these edges or even lightly erase areas of the trees that are too contrasty. As I stated in my blog post yesterday, one strategy for dealing with the edges (where trees or hills meet the sky), is to mix a color that is one half tree and one half sky and to paint that in. This takes a little more time than some other approaches but is good.
The most effective way I found is to mix a green that's about the same in value as the sky. This gives a color transition but not a value transition. This is without a doubt the number one way I handle the sky/tree contrast issue.
Another place where edges are super critical is clouds in the sky. My main strategy for dealing with clouds is to have my blues in place underneath the cloud forms so that I can use my brush in creative ways to make expressive brush marks where the clouds overlap. It's important that these edges be soft. But it's also important that they not be soft because they've been over worked. Having the right color on your brush to do the job is also key.
Edges in other portions of the painting are generally not as challenging as the aforementioned trees and clouds. But you need to be aware of them all. The main thing is to plan your edges in advance and to use your brush in creative ways to get good edges consistently.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Breezy Autumn' by George Inness; I've been admiring this painting for quite a while. What makes it so strong is the intense use of contrast in the trees against the brighter grass and sky. You can see by the original painting here how masterful George Inness was dealing with edges.
In my study after George's painting I feel that I got across a good impression of his work and I'm very happy with it.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - Breezy Autumn by George Inness , Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x7, Oil on wood pane |
A very nice late middle period Inness painting today. On today's video narration I will be continuing on with my reading from the book George Inness by Nicolai Cikovsky, so please check that out.
Continuing on with our current assay regarding my Tonalist painting process; today I would like to talk about edges in painting. Edges are one of the main areas that I have gotten better at in the last few years. This is after many years where I was already aware of the importance of good edges and their impact on landscape painting.
By edges I mean an area where one shape meets or overlaps with another. This could be where the tree overlaps the sky, where a bush overlaps a tree or, where a road or river cuts through the ground plane. All of these areas have edges that need to be negotiated in the painting. Of all the places where edges are critical in the painting the most challenging area has to be where trees overlap the sky. This is the part of the painting that has the greatest amount of contrast between light and dark.
I've talked before in my blog posts about photography and how photographs tend to force objects into being more rigid and contrasting than they are in real life. For example, where a tree overlaps the sky you get a very defined and hard edge in any well focused photograph. I've seen many painters carry this forward into their landscape paintings, mistakenly assuming that that is proper because they believe that photographs are telling them a true story.
The reality is that photographs capture nature in a very limited way compared to our actual vision. If you are using photographs to create paintings you need to be aware of this.
Instead of having a strong contrast where my trees overlap the sky, I like to modulate and soften those edges. There are several ways that a painter can accomplish this, some that are more successful than others. One way is just to use your brush to blend the sky color into the darker tree color and this is a technique that you will see amateur artists embrace, though I use this method sparingly at times. Another approach is to use the ends of the brush to sort of stipple in the edges. This sort of technique was popularized by the speed painting school and by artists like Bob Ross. I do this some times too.
My favorite approach is to start planning for my edges even while preparing my photographic reference to be used for my painting. I will often use various tools in Photoshop to lighten these edges or even lightly erase areas of the trees that are too contrasty. As I stated in my blog post yesterday, one strategy for dealing with the edges (where trees or hills meet the sky), is to mix a color that is one half tree and one half sky and to paint that in. This takes a little more time than some other approaches but is good.
The most effective way I found is to mix a green that's about the same in value as the sky. This gives a color transition but not a value transition. This is without a doubt the number one way I handle the sky/tree contrast issue.
Another place where edges are super critical is clouds in the sky. My main strategy for dealing with clouds is to have my blues in place underneath the cloud forms so that I can use my brush in creative ways to make expressive brush marks where the clouds overlap. It's important that these edges be soft. But it's also important that they not be soft because they've been over worked. Having the right color on your brush to do the job is also key.
Edges in other portions of the painting are generally not as challenging as the aforementioned trees and clouds. But you need to be aware of them all. The main thing is to plan your edges in advance and to use your brush in creative ways to get good edges consistently.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'Breezy Autumn' by George Inness; I've been admiring this painting for quite a while. What makes it so strong is the intense use of contrast in the trees against the brighter grass and sky. You can see by the original painting here how masterful George Inness was dealing with edges.
In my study after George's painting I feel that I got across a good impression of his work and I'm very happy with it.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
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| Original painting, Breezy Autumn by George Inness |