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,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...