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Where Light Gathers 7×12 – 15 Minute Painting Session!
Transcript and Key Insights This is a riff on a painting by George Inness called Early Autumn Montclair, which is probably my favorite painting of all time. It’s directly inspired by his painting, but it makes some very big divergences, namely it has a pond instead of a grassy area in front. The trees are…
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A Landscape Painter’s Guide to Painting Foliage – Easel Talk #56
Transcript and Key Insights While trees always have foliage, at least in spring and summer, many other landscape elements do as well. There’s a lot of overlap with trees here, but there’s a lot of other just random foliage in the landscape. Just like every other aspect of landscape painting, there are challenges and tips…
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Afternoon Stillness 6×8 – Live Painting Session!
Transcript and Key Insights We’re doing a fall painting today, a six by eight. The reference came together through my process of working with master images and digital means to arrive at a composition. Fall scenes like this aren’t exactly common here in New Zealand. Up north, it’s all trees that don’t change color, so…
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Afternoon Stillness 6×8 – 15 Minute Painting Session
Transcript and Key Insights I painted this six-by-eight on three mil MDF, my favorite surface to work on. It’s totally smooth, very secure, and very inert. I like working on hardboard, but it has a subtle lump depending on the sheet. MDF doesn’t have that problem. Just don’t get it around water, ame constraint you’d…
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The Quiet Passage 6×8 – 15 min Painting Session!
Transcript and Key Insights First off, I want to mention that I had to do the underpainting twice because I didn’t focus the camera properly the first time. But the lesson here isn’t about camera work; it’s about our relationship with reference images. One of the main reasons I make these videos is for legacy,…
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The Quite Passage 6×8 – Live Painting Session!
Transcript and Key Insights We’re going to make a painting today. I’ve got my colors pre-mixed, and we’re starting fresh with the drawing because the camera wasn’t focused on the first attempt. The Reference and Setup This reference comes from a folder I keep of forest scenes, it’s clearly my favorite type of scene. It’s…
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Northland Cove 5×7 – 15 Minute Painting Session!
Transcript and Key Insights Northland Cove is a five-by-seven oil painting I painted a few days ago. While this video is a sped-up version of the live session available in the members area (which includes the color mixing and reference image), what you see here remains faithful to the original process. The Core Concept: Geometry…
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Northland Cove 5×7 – Live Painting Session!
Transcript and Key Insights Good morning, evening, or afternoon. Here we are with a bit of potential right now: this board. We’re making paintings here, so let’s get into it. The Reality of Painting vs. Digital I downloaded this reference at random. It’s not really going to be tonal, except I can’t escape being tonal,…
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The Landscape Painter’s Guide to Mastering Greens in Landscape Art – Easel Talk #54
Transcript and Key Insights A primary challenge in creating an attractive landscape painting lies in the proper handling of the myriad greens present in the natural world. For many beginning painters, this represents a significant hurdle; nearly two-thirds of the colors perceived in a typical landscape are variations of green. The human eye possesses an…
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Woodland Passage 6×8 – 15 min Painting Session!
Transcript and Key Insights The painting I’m bringing you today is called Woodland Passage. It’s six by eight inches; I painted this a couple of days ago and I really like it. Hopefully, you will too. What attracted me to this scene was the contrast, the light against the darks. That is one of the…
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Woodland Passage 6×8 – Live Painting Session!
Transcript and Key Insights It’s your painter in residence, Michael Francis McCarthy. Today I think I’m a little ahead of schedule because instead of scrolling through Reddit this morning, I decided to go through my mounds of reference material. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted yet, so I went for it and came up…
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A Landscape Painters Guide to – Why There Is Nothing New in Painting – Easel Talk #53
Transcript and Key Insights Welcome to Easel Talk number 53. I hope you enjoyed our anniversary episode #52 last week; it was perhaps a little rambly, sorry about that, but there are valuable insights all the way through. If you are here for painting information, you will always get a plenty of good tips. Fact…
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Light Through the Trees – 15 Minute painting session!
Transcript and Key Insights The painting I’m bringing you today is called Light Through the Trees. It’s a 5×7 painted last week, and I really like this painting. I hope you like watching me put it together. This is the sped-up version of the live session, available in the Members area with a color-mixing portion…
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Light Through the Trees 5×7 – Live Painting Session!
I’m creating a tonalist painting based on a California landscape reference I took almost 20 years ago. The original photo captured early morning light filtering through an oak forest, and I’ve simplified the complex scene to focus on what matters, light, shadow, and atmosphere. Transcript and Key Insights The reference has a confusing tree placement…
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River’s Edge 7×12 – 15 Minute Painting Session!
Welcome back to another installment of my 15-Minute Painting Sessions! In this edition, I’m excited to share with you the process behind “River’s Edge,” a 7×12-tonal landscape oil painting that I completed last week. The Inspiration and Challenges This piece is a revisit and refinement of an idea that has been floating around in my…
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A Landscape Painters Guide to 52 weeks on the Easel – Easel Talk #52
I’ve been in this studio since 2011, roughly 15 years now. We’re over 10 years into the channel, and this 52nd Easel Talk marks a full year of weekly conversations about painting. The Foundation: Process Over Mastery Painting isn’t hard, and it isn’t easy. It’s somewhere between the two, leaning toward wherever your head is…
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A Landscape Painter’s Guide to Why You Need Black in Your Paintings – Easel Talk #51
A lot of modern painters do not use black pigment in their process. This is a legacy handed down from the impressionists who famously banished black from their palettes. However, tonalism definitely employs black, and once I started using it wholeheartedly, my work became more authentically tonal. I learned with two guys who had no…
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Rivers Edge 7×12 – Live Painting Session!
Transcript and Key Insights Good morning, evening, or afternoon. It’s your painter in residence, Michael Francis McCarthy. And I’m going to be painting an all-in-a-row scene with some strategies for alleviating that. It’s a pond scene with trees, blue sky, give or take. The reference photo has been tinted yellowish, but it’s unabashedly green. Although…
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The Winding River 4×6 – 15 Minute Painting Session!
Hello and welcome to another Tonal Landscape Oil Painting Demonstration. Today, I’m your painter in residence, Michael Francis McCarthy, bringing you a piece called The Wading River. This four-by-six-inch painting was completed last week and exemplifies the Tonalist style. In this demonstration, I’ll walk you through my process, color choices, and philosophies behind creating this…
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The Waiting River 4×6 – Live Painting Session!
Transcript and Key Insights The reference image came from a multi-step process using modern tools. I used AI image generation to help compose what would otherwise just be an empty field that doesn’t work visually on its own. I cut out a section and asked for a country road, and the AI did a better…
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A Landscape Painter’s Guide to – Painting More and Caring Less – Easel Talk #50
Many aspiring painters fall into the same trap: they believe masterpieces simply emerge from natural talent. This misconception paralyzes them. They sketch grand visions, a 4×6 painting of hedgehogs at an amusement park, meticulously planned, worked on for years, but never finish because the scope is too ambitious. Here’s the reality: you can’t lift 500…
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My Latest Album – Morningstar
Click on the Cover Art image to listen on Bandcamp or click Morningstar
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The Winding Way 6×8 – 15 Minute Painting Session!
The painting I’m bringing you today is called The Winding Way, 6×8. I really liked this painting and couldn’t wait to share it with you. The Ground Color Maybe you’ve noticed the tone of the board is not quite the same as the rich soil we’ve been doing for the last year. I had a…
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The Winding Way 6×8 – Live Painting Session!
Transcript and Key Insights This photo is from about 12 to 13 years ago, just a basic image of a field with a couple of trees in the background. On its own, it’s laughable. But I set it aside a few weeks back because I really liked those trees. Here’s where modern tools come in…
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A Landscape Painter’s Guide to – Developing Your Own Style Easel Talk #49
Style is something I think a lot of painters starting out really care about: developing your own style. You can do it, and you will do it, if you stick with it. I relate artistic style and influences very closely together. Style is one of the aspects of a painting that we can most readily…
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Matapouri Bay at Dawn 5×10 – 15 Minute Painting Session!
You don’t need a bunch of different blues. You only need one blue, use your favorite. I like either phthalo blue or prussian blue. What I love about prussian blue is the history of it. It’s the first synthetic pigment made available to people. Prior to prussian blue, the only blues available were extremely expensive,…
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Matapouri Bay Dawn 5×10 – LIVE Painting Session!
Transcript & Key Insights I’m working on a 5×10 today, and I want to keep it loose and impressionistic. The goal is that daylight, fresh morning quality without getting bogged down in detail. I’ve done this many times, but I want it to have that impressionistic interpretation of the scene. Starting with the sky: very…
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A Landscape Painter’s Guide to Working with Color – Easel Talk #48
The Sky: Blue With Intention The sky presents itself in layers of possibility. Blue at the top, lighter as it descends, this is your starting point, not your destination. As painters, we amplify what’s there. That predominant blue you see isn’t static. It’s darker at the top, always, and lighter at the bottom. Play that…
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Where Shadows Meet Light 7×12 – 15 Min Painting Session
The painting I’m bringing you today is called Where Shadows Meet Light. It’s a 7×12, and I painted this last week. The Foundation: Board Prep We’re working on hardboard primed with several coats of house paint and some transparent gesso. One of the main reasons that you want to prep your board with a color…
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Where Shadows Meet Light 7×12 – Live Painting Session!
Transcription & Key Insights This is a row of trees with a little path coming through. One, two, three, four trees here, then one, two, three, four trees there. There’s a bunch of masses I’m gonna have to pull off, and one tree that’s going right there, I’m gonna open that up a little. I’m…
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A Landscape Painter’s Guide to Enjecting Emotion into Your Paintings – Easel Talk #47
Emotion is the Container Unlike working with the human figure where emotion can be portrayed by a pose or facial expression, landscape art relies on more subtle ways of imparting emotional content. I’m all about painting emotions. That’s my thing. People think I’m into trees or skies, but these are the container, the conveyor of…
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Whisper of the Forest 8×12 – Live Painting Session!
Good morning. I did a painting yesterday, not the most terrible thing I’ve ever done, but it wasn’t the easiest struggle either. It was a 7×12 based on a reference from 2022 that I’d painted before on texture board and gave to my bishop. I missed that painting, so I decided to do it again.…
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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.…
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The Landscape Painter’s Guide to Focusing on the Big Shapes – Easel Talk #46
Everything in your painting is just shapes. A mountain isn’t an intimidating subject, it’s a large series of triangular shapes subdivided by smaller triangular-type shapes. That odd-looking tree is just a collection of organic shapes. Water, paths, skies, you can paint all of it because the problem isn’t the subject. It’s how you’re seeing it.…
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Tutukaka Dawn 5×10 – 15 Min Painting Session
The painting I’m bringing you today is called Tutukaka Dawn. It’s a 5 by 10, and I painted this about a month ago. We’re working on HDF hardboard primed with three coats of house paint, and we’re doing our underpainting color with some Burnt Number, looks like it’s got a little bit of Mars black…
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Tutukaka Dawn 5×10 – Live Painting Session
Transcript and Key Insights This is basically a sky painting. The hills in the middle distance are from Tutukaka over there, so that’ll add some interest for those folks. We’re gonna do the drawing today and then I’ll come back tomorrow and do the rest. We’re using HDF hardboard primed with three coats of house…
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A Landscape Painter’s Guide to Building Internal Compositions – Easel Talk #45
When I first started creating landscape paintings on the computer, back around 2005, 2006, I thought digital tools would solve everything. I had the undos, the infinite possibilities, the comfort of working without consequence. I’d been a commercial illustrator for 13 years, comfortable with digital workflows. So I figured: why not just paint a tree,…
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Woodland Passage 5×10 – 15 minute Painting Demonstration!
This week’s painting is called Woodland Passage, a 5×10 inch oil on panel. The genesis was simple: I caught some B-roll in a video, liked the pattern of the trees, got rid of the people and the buildings, and went to work. I had to composite in the path and figure out what to do…
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Woodland Passage 5×10 – Live Painting Session!
Today we are painting a forest scene of a woodland with a path cutting through. This started as a screen capture I pulled recently. The original had some different elements, but the tree structure caught my attention. I ran it over to my assistant this morning to add a path. Much cleaner than the original.…
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A Landscape Painter’s Guide to—Embracing Imperfection and Perfection – Easel Talk #44
There’s a paradox at the heart of painting that every serious artist eventually confronts: the pursuit of perfection will either propel you forward or paralyze you entirely. The difference hinges on a single concept, functioning perfectionism, and understanding it might be the most liberating realization of your artistic career. I’ve always had a perfectionist streak.…
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Arcadian Road 4×6 – 15 Minute Painting Session
The painting I’m bringing you today is called Arcadian Road. It’s a 4×6 and I painted this a couple weeks ago. The Palette and Reference Philosophy This is our palette. I have a palette with all the tags on it in the video, and if that helps somebody, I reckon it’s a good thing. The…
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Arcadian Road 4×6 – Live Painting Session
Transcript and Key Insights We painted this scene before. It came out really excellent. A lot of times that can be the spark behind painting something again. I wanted to do a 4×6. Wanted to make it tonal. Wanted to make it something kind of related to here. This image was run through one of…
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A Landscape Painter’s Guide to Using Nature, Not Imitating It – Easel Talk #43
Welcome to Easel Talk 43. The topic for Easel Talk 43 is: Using nature, not Imitating it. This goes for reference photos, working plein air, whatever you’re trying to do. Imagination Without Reference In the absence of reference or working outside, you could just make paintings strictly from your imagination. I tried doing that when…
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Violet Dusk 7×12 – 15 min Painting Session
A Painting That Needed a Second Pass Welcome to another Tonal Landscape Oil Painting Demonstration. I’m Michael Francis McCarthy, and the painting I’m bringing you today is called Violet Dusk. The Reference and Its Problems This painting is based on a photo I found, but it had some major issues. The main problem—what I call…
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Violet Dusk 7×12 – Live Painting Session!
Transcript and Key Insights It’s morning, 9:32 on the 29th of April, 2026. Clear blue sky, no clouds. We’re going to make a painting now. This reference has one big issue. What I call all in a row syndrome, distant row of trees and hills, just a horizontal slab of whatever in the foreground. But…
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A Landscape Painter’s Guide to Pigments(Part 2) – Easel Talk #42
Every color on your palette should earn its place Welcome back. This is part two of our palettes and pigments deep dive, we’re picking up where we left off with the oranges and reds. I’ve got two solid outlines to get us through the remaining colors, and while I could stretch this into three parts,…
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A Landscape Painter’s Guide to Tonalism – Easel Talk #39
Tonalism, art history’s forgotten movement (Part 1) This is going to be a two-part talk about Tonalism. This is a subject near and dear to my heart. I’m not an art historian, and I’m not much of a writer either, but we make our efforts and we feel it. That’s the whole thing with painting.…
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Violet Woods 6×8 – 15 min Painting Session!
Today, I’m sharing Violet Woods, a 6×8 I painted last week. It’s based on a landscape I painted in around 2019, you can still find that wider version on the channel. This is a cropped, more intimate take on that same scene. The title came first, as it often does. Violet was on my mind…
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A Landscape Painter’s Guide to Palette & Pigments – Easel Talk #41
The colors you choose matter profoundly. They’re not just tubes of paint sitting on your palette, they’re the foundation of every decision you’ll make during the painting process. Today I’re the foundation of every decision you’ll make during the painting process. Today I want to walk you through my palette and the logic behind each…
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Violet Woods 6×8 – Live Painting Session!
I painted Violet Woods back in 2019. Today we’re painting it again, and this time I want to explore something that fascinated me about the original: the use of violet in the underpainting, mixed into burnt umber and burnt sienna. It’s an approach that challenges the conventional wisdom about shadow color, and it opens up…
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Woolly’s Bay Afternoon 5×7: 15 Min Painting Session!
Welcome to another tonalist landscape oil painting demonstration. This is Woolies Bay Afternoon, a five by seven I painted last week. I want to talk about why I painted it and what it shows about how painting actually works. The Postcard I’ve been thinking about making a small postcard featuring a coastal scene for a…
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Woolley’s Bay Afternoon 5×7 – Live Painting Session!
Revisiting a coastal scene I’m painting a five by seven postcard-sized piece today. It’s Willy’s Bay, a scene I’ve been thinking about for a while. There’s a gallery I like near there—good people—and I want to create a card they can use to promote their business. That’s the kind of thing I’m into. The Setup…
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A Landscape Painter’s Guide to Tonalism Part Two – Easel Talk #40
We covered a lot of ground in part one—the essence of Tonalism, its defining characteristics, the role of figures, time of day, scene selection, finding beauty locally, and the historical context. We also talked about how Tonalism is more subjective than objective, and how it was a response to massive historical change. Today, I want…
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Breaking Through 6×8 – 15 Minute Painting Session
Today I’m bringing you a painting called Breaking Through, 6×8, which I completed last week. I really like this one, and I think you’ll enjoy seeing how it comes together. Why the 6×8 Format Works The 6×8 format is ideal for my painting channel setup. It’s small enough to sell reasonably, but large enough to…
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Breaking Through 6×8 – Live Painting Session
Today I’m working on a 6×8 painting based on a scene I’ve painted many times before. It’s from a field in England. I’ve done versions of this composition so many times that I know it works. Every painting I’ve done from this reference has been good, which tells me something about the power of a…
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Amber Path – 15 Minute Painting Demonstration!
The painting I’m bringing you today is called Amber Path, 5×7. I painted this just a couple days ago and I really liked it. I think you will too. I was out walking thinking about what I wanted to say about this painting. Obviously, we have the live painting session in the members area, which…
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Amber Path 5×7 Live Painting Session!
Drawing, Color, and the Art of Restraint Good morning, afternoon, or evening. This is your painter in residence, Michael Francis McCarthy, occasionally known as M. Francis McCarthy. Yesterday I painted a coastal scene—really a sky painting with a little peninsula worked in. I’m very happy with it. Most paintings aren’t perfect, but they’re perfect in…
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A Landscape Painter’s Guide to Ground Color – Easel Talk #38
The color of your board is one of the most critical decisions you’ll make Welcome to Easel Talk #38. Today’s talk is about ground color—the color of the board you’re painting on. It sounds simple, but I’m telling you, it’s one of the most critical decisions you’re going to make in your whole painting process.…
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The Edge of Light – 15 Minute Painting Demonstration!
Lessons in Color, Scale, and Painting Smart The painting I’m bringing you today is called The Edge of Light. It’s a 4 painting I’m bringing you today is called The Edge of Light. It’s a 4 by 6, and I painted this last week, but it took me a while to do, mostly because little…
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The Edge of Light 4×6 – Live Painting Session!
Revisiting a reference I painted years ago. Maybe some of you have noticed I’ve moved away from the M. It’s just time. Big changes afoot. Check out the new website at mfrancismcarthy.art, lots of videos there, really easy to scroll through. Why Paint Small? What are we doing today? A 4×6. The galleries have been…
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A Landscape Painters Guide to Vignetting in Paintings- Easel Talk 37
I often joke on the channel that I’m a card-carrying member of Vignetteers Anonymous. I got a problem. I got a real bad problem. I love to vignette. I think it’s so powerful. And this talk probably won’t be that long because it’s just one aspect of painting. But it’s incredibly vital, especially to what…
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Riff on Francis Murphy: Full Live Painting Session!
Join me as I create a tonalist riff inspired by Francis Murphy’s “Evening” In the Substack studio pass area, I put up a study from 2021, a painting called “Evening” by Francis Murphy. It got me thinking, I really like that old painting. I’d like to do a riff on it. This was a faithful…
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Riff on Francis Murphy: 15 Minute Painting Demonstration!
Welcome to another tonal landscape oil painting demonstration. This is your painter in residence, Michael Francis McCarthy. And the painting I’m bringing you today is called “Riff on Francis Murphy, Evening.” I painted this back in September of 2025 and I’ve been sitting on it that whole time. Let me tell you the tale. The…
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A Landscape Painter Guide to Painting Big Shapes – Easel Talk #36
Welcome to Easel Talk #36! Big shapes. This is going to be good, and it ties directly to our last talk on modulation. They go hand in hand, though big shapes are way more important. We’re talking composition today, while modulation handles value and color. Why Big Shapes Matter Calling this “Big Shapes” hardly does…
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Light on the Path: 15 Minute Painting Demonstration
The painting I’m bringing you today, Light on the Path. It’s a 5×7, was painted last week, and I’m really happy to show it to you today. New Website I want to mention my new website: mfrancismccarthy.art. It’s my hub—where things are consolidating. If you’re watching this on YouTube, the full live session with detailed…
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Light on the Path: Full Live Painting Session!
Transcription and key Insights I’ve already mixed the underpainting color: burnt umber with a significant amount of Mars black. I’m doing this partly for time savings. I recently painted a sky scene using this Mars black mixture, and it worked well. The key difference from ivory black is opacity. Ivory black is streaky and won’t…
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A Landscape Painters Guide to Modulation Easel Talk 35
What Is Modulation? The definition: also known as gradation. It is always desirable in painting to modulate colors from cool to warm, from dark to light or from one hue to the next. Instead of just laying down a flat, unmodulated color, you want to do some modulating. Always be modulating. ABM. Now, a flat…
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Beacon – Music by Black Wren
Music by Black Wren When the night grows deep and the shadows call, sometimes all you need is a beacon to guide you home. Black Wren is a collaboration between Michael Francis McCarthy and Jennifer L Coward Buy the track on Bandcamp: When Everyones a Stranger by Abyssm
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When Everyone’s a Stranger- Music by Abyssm
“When Everyone’s a Stranger” was written late last year, a reflection on individuality, solitude, and the strangeness that can descend when memory fades… All music written and performed by Michael Francis McCarthy (Northland, New Zealand). No AI used. This channel holds music, films, photography, and spoken reflections. Buy this track (Bandcamp): When Everyones a Stranger…
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Dusk’s Ember – 15 Minute Painting Demonstration!
A Fauvist coastal sky scene The painting I’m bringing you today is called Dusk’s Ember. It’s a 7×14 and I painted it day before yesterday. I was anxious to share it with you. Maybe some of you noticed that I didn’t say welcome to another tonal landscape oil painting demonstration. I don’t think we can…
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Dusk’s Ember – Full Live Painting Session!
Live Painting Transcript and Key Insights We did a version of this yesterday on the gray. Perfectly saleable. Smaller. But I’ve changed the scene quite a bit with some help from my assistants. You’ll see some synthetic color mixing here. Grist for the mill. That’s how we roll. One of the main issues I struggled…
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Welcome to Michael Francis McCarthy
This is the introductory post & video for my new channel and website. Here I’ll share music, thoughts on philosophy, AI, creativity, and whatever’s going on. No niche, or algorithm-chasing. This page is a window into what I’m making and thinking. Warts and all. Contact: mike@mfrancismccarthy.art