Whisper of the Forest 8×12 – 15 Minute Painting Session

Today I’m bringing you Whisper of the Forest, an 8 by 12 inch painting I completed last week.

The Story of Redemption

This is a story of redemption. I painted this scene before in 2022 on textured board, and I was super happy with it. I gave the painting away and missed it ever since. It kept popping up in my head.

I found the original reference and thought I’d remake it, maybe make it panoramic, try some variations. I made a painting, but it didn’t have the magic quality I needed.

So I put it away.

Then I found an image of the original painting I’d given away. The next day, I got a board with the same proportions as the original, not textured this time, and I redid it, referencing both the painting and the original reference.

That is our painting today. I pulled it off. And it’s interesting: even though this one looks similar to the one I gave away, it’s not exactly the same. You’re different every day. Your skill set’s different. Your life’s different. Everything’s different. So there’s always going to be big or small deviations. That’s a given.

What Makes This Painting Work

The things that make this special are the intervals, the spaces between the trees. That’s always a huge factor in these types of scenes. The amount of light in the back. The person I gave the original to said, “It’s the light that I like.”

The one I did before this had some light, but it ended up with a bar at the top where all the foliage was. It just lost something. This one pulled it off.

The Challenge: Sky Holes

The big challenge with these sorts of paintings is the sky holes. If you look at the reference image, even if I remove things with digital tools, there will be hundreds of sky holes. Otherwise, you get what I call the Swiss cheese effect, and it really works against you.

That’s the number one challenge.

The Gray: The Turning Point

What made the original work was the gray. In 2022, I brought in all this gray. You could see it in the reference image, but I really played that up. That was totally missing from the version I did before this painting.

The way the gray plays off the ochres and the oranges and the subtle greens is critical. In a sense, the gray is kind of a placeholder for green in this painting. You can swap out the green for gray. You can do all sorts of interesting things.

The Anchoring Trees

We’ve got that strong contrast of those anchoring trees on the right. The whole thing is having that really dark tree on the closer edge and then the bigger tree with the branches spread out. On the other side, the light gray tree. I think that’s one of the keys.

When Things Go Wrong

I did something similar in my first attempt at repainting this scene, but it was just cocky. I failed. But I was able to save it. So all good. It’s not as good as this one, but it’s still good.

That’s life. There’s always going to be variance in your level of consciousness, your ability to do work every day.

The Criteria for Keeping Paintings

I ask myself two questions: Am I ashamed of this? And will someone like it and want to buy it? If those two things are checked, I usually let it live.

Even my best stuff would have areas I wish I’d pulled off a little better. That’s how it is.

For this one, I’m not going to sell it. I’m going to put it in a frame and live with it, since I missed it so much. I have it back, and I’m just about as happy with this as the original.

Take good care of yourself. Stay out of trouble. And fight the power.

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M Francis McCarthy, Your Painter in Residence