{"id":195,"date":"2026-04-11T20:16:19","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T20:16:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/?p=195"},"modified":"2026-04-11T20:16:20","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T20:16:20","slug":"the-edge-of-light-4x6-live-painting-session","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/?p=195","title":{"rendered":"The Edge of Light 4&#215;6 &#8211; Live Painting Session!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"video-container\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Making of: The Edge of Light 4x6 - Live!\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/asp30r8W9fY?feature=oembed&#038;wmode=opaque\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Revisiting a reference I painted years ago.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Maybe some of you have noticed I\u2019ve moved away from the M. It\u2019s just time. Big changes afoot. Check out the new website at <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"http:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/\"><strong>mfrancismcarthy.art<\/strong><\/a>, lots of videos there, really easy to scroll through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Why Paint Small?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>What are we doing today? A 4&#215;6. The galleries have been selling the tiny ones. So I\u2019m going to build up my stock. Maybe a painting a day when I\u2019m in the studio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This particular scene, I painted it a long time ago. I did a sepia version that didn\u2019t make it to the channel. But that\u2019s okay because we\u2019re just making a little painting. When you\u2019re working small, frame rabbit becomes more of a factor than you might think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Drawing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>The first thing we want to do is get the drawing right. I&#8217;m keeping in mind that I made lots of paintings that worked, lots that sold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One thing I love about this reference is the purples, quite vivid. There&#8217;s a painting I made from this reference hanging up in my office right above the door. An old guy walked in here years ago and looked at everything in my little studio gallery. He said, &#8220;Oh, that&#8217;s the best thing here.&#8221; I was very proud of it. It had very good color in it, though it had other problems, like very high hills, which is not something I would do anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When you have multiple horizon lines, it creates a kind of lynch point. It&#8217;s important that we don&#8217;t have everything joining up at the same level. I&#8217;m not loving this lumpy hill. It&#8217;s actually very similar to the reference, so let&#8217;s adjust it. Instead of coming in high like that, we&#8217;ll come in low. I think that&#8217;s better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One thing I like is these little nooks of light peeking through. I have one of my pet peeves: having a bunch of stuff in the gutter section. We&#8217;re going to be intentional about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Color Mixing: The Foundation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Okay, drawing&#8217;s done. Now we&#8217;re going to go into color mixing. This is where the real work begins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our blue is a purpley blue. We don&#8217;t need a ton of paint. What we want is the diox blue. I&#8217;m using pure white here. It&#8217;s not that far off from what I want, to be honest. We&#8217;re going to make it natural with my big tip for the world: here&#8217;s the earth tones for that. It&#8217;s still pretty crazy, but I like that. That&#8217;s pretty much the kind of color you&#8217;ve got in the sky there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;ll do more orangey. A little bit of white. White and orange can give you a sherbet, but many times the solution is to come in with a cad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Grays? Yeah. One gray to rule them all. That would be Mike&#8217;s gray. I&#8217;m just going to use a little of that. This way we&#8217;re in line with things. Maybe just a tiny bit of blue. Look how tiny that is. Did it have an impact? It had a huge impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now in the bottom of the sky, we&#8217;ve got the bottom of the sky blue, which is a tiny amount of paint. Here we can use the buff. Good enough. Very good. Now because we used that Mike&#8217;s gray in there, it&#8217;s feeling fairly natural. I&#8217;m happy with that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What&#8217;s that? You say we should have a bit of a yellow? I only see that one streak. It could be handy. Let&#8217;s do it. I don&#8217;t want that screaming. The tiniest amount of cad in this, so I&#8217;ll make sure I&#8217;ll green it up. We&#8217;re going to de-greenify with some orange. I&#8217;d say that&#8217;s good for now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That&#8217;s pretty nice. There&#8217;s a lot of colors in this. It&#8217;s a little small painting, but what you&#8217;re looking at is intentional. This can double for that grass tone. We&#8217;ll deal with those hill colors on their own. That&#8217;ll be some kind of purple. We&#8217;ll worry about that as we&#8217;re painting. I don&#8217;t want to stop. I want to just do that meadow color, and then we&#8217;re done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Painting the Sky and Landscape<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Now that&#8217;s pretty dang bright. Also I want more purpliness in that blue. This is going to be a purpley, brighty painting, not so much straight up tonalism. Although in many ways it still is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m going to take a look out for as pretty as the burnt umber can be. It definitely is a duller. I don&#8217;t want that too purplish. Now I&#8217;m definitely dulling it up with a little black. I get it there, I get it where I want it. On this side I don&#8217;t want things as intense. I&#8217;m definitely taking my cue from the reference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I don&#8217;t want a lot of straight liney things. I&#8217;m catching it, I&#8217;m catching it early. It&#8217;s like default for me. The best chance we have is to remember.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I wanted that in early. Now we&#8217;ll get into some of these nice colors. Look at that, that&#8217;s pretty intense, hey? I really want that redder. Counterintuitively, I think a little bit of burnt sienna would help. Yeah, that&#8217;s what I wanted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This brush is doing a great job. I love the little bevel on it. It has a nice little toe as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Okay, I remember I mixed this color in the last session, but I didn&#8217;t get it here. It was my only gray I made. I definitely want a lot of color in it. Obviously taking inspiration from the reference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And the principle here is if we put it in one spot, we need a little something somewhere else. I don&#8217;t recommend just having one patch of color completely isolated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Details: Darks and Greens<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Alright, so the predominant color I see, the purple hills. Purple. Let me start it with the purple. Same sort of thing here. I kind of want to just work thin and modify what&#8217;s there. That is super thin, just so you know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, as it comes back, it should be a little more greenish. It&#8217;s got to change. I don&#8217;t want it exactly the same. All I know is that I want it different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It needs to be a little darker. I&#8217;m going to have some lighter bits in there, but I think yellow ochre is the way to go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You&#8217;ll notice like sometimes I put a stroke down and it&#8217;s just really nice, then I go over it and I never get it really as nice again. That&#8217;s a risk you run. Don&#8217;t let it immobilize you. Sometimes you just want to leave things alone. But don&#8217;t get precious. I went through the whole precious thing, that&#8217;s why I don&#8217;t get too worried about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I want to say this brush is doing a nice job. It was not going to be able to do a good job with the blacks, but it&#8217;s doing a nice job here. I&#8217;m okay with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I think that is green. I don&#8217;t want it to be this old giant green hill. Let&#8217;s put in some of that green just to kind of get them getting old. Kind of be darker so that we actually see what&#8217;s happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Those hills, that&#8217;s one of the trickier bits of this painting. We&#8217;re through it. The edge maybe is a little hard. I can see that. But we might be able to just soften it a bit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I used to, for years on the channel, say there are eleven million ways to deal with edges. That&#8217;s one. That&#8217;s better. I don&#8217;t mind if it&#8217;s distinct. I just don&#8217;t want it looking like it&#8217;s cut with a pair of scissors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Second Day: Finishing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, it&#8217;s the next day. This is looking nice. I gotta tell you one thing I don&#8217;t like, though. I don&#8217;t like the hump. You know what? I could leave it and I&#8217;d be alright. But I don&#8217;t like it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is like the longest 4&#215;6 I&#8217;ve ever done. It&#8217;s looking quite beautiful, I think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m kinda looking to do a bit of a scumble. I think that&#8217;ll do it. That&#8217;s nice. These edges, man. You just gotta be careful. If it&#8217;s in the distance, you want it softer. I got one consistent sort of line. Essentially, that&#8217;s quite a lot of scumble in there. I kinda want something going on there. I just don&#8217;t want it to look too hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Alright, good enough. Let&#8217;s get busy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, let&#8217;s get this grass in. Now, that&#8217;s a bit bright to start. That&#8217;s pretty good. That&#8217;ll be dark grass. Dark, distant grass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The inspiration from the reference there is like a less chroma, like a bit of dead grass. Which is dead in a different way, hey?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And we&#8217;re essentially painting on top of drying right now, which is okay. Do more things like what I&#8217;m doing here. Essentially it&#8217;s a lot of scumble sort of moves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now I can see I&#8217;ve got to bring in some stuff to the band of dark there now. Purple. That&#8217;s a bit nice. Green. Green. Green over there. We&#8217;ve got all this dark green left.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I know I&#8217;m putting a lot of red in. Trust me, though, when I come in with these greens, you&#8217;ll be&#8230; You won&#8217;t be noticing the red as much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I don&#8217;t have a lot of greens in this painting. I&#8217;m gonna go ahead and use that permanent green light. It needs to be lighter. That&#8217;s nice. Okay, that&#8217;s a little strong. Maybe some more reds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nice. Okay. We can almost just leave it like that, but we&#8217;re not. We&#8217;re gonna do some grass now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The grass is more reds. I&#8217;m probably gonna&#8230; More earthy reds. That&#8217;s not doing it. What are you? Are you a big, dry chunk of paint? This always happens when I leave my palette out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That&#8217;s good. I&#8217;m liking that. There&#8217;s a little bit of white in it, but it&#8217;ll be alright.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Be careful with this kind of thing, because it can turn into the subject. You start getting real delineating with individual blades of grass. You can pop a few in, of course, and we&#8217;re gonna modulate and kind of get a little bit here of color.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m gonna warm up as we pull out. Pull out towards there, I think, with the orange.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Final Stretch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>I think we&#8217;re done. Definitely more finished than I like to go with my 4&#215;6&#8217;s. But it is what it is. It&#8217;s a byproduct of the three sessions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That&#8217;s looking pretty good. Now here I am seeing some 1, 2, 3, right? It&#8217;s unavoidable, this kind of thing. I think the way to deal with it is just to break up that space a little. That helps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It didn&#8217;t do everything I wanted, in the way I wanted, but we got it done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>Take care of yourself, your family, all your loved ones. Stay out of trouble. Fight the power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/mfrancismcarthy.art\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Mike New Site<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/mfrancismcarthy.art\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Book<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/mfrancismcarthy.art\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Gallery<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/youtube.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">YouTube<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/mfrancismcarthy.art\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Members Area<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/mfrancismcarthy.art\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">My Music<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.landscapepainter.co.nz\/\">M Francis McCarthy, Your Painter in Residence<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Revisiting a reference I painted years ago. Maybe some of you have noticed I\u2019ve moved away from the M. It\u2019s just time. Big changes afoot. Check out the new website at mfrancismcarthy.art, lots of videos there, really easy to scroll through. Why Paint&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":196,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-painting","rsfv-has-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=195"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":204,"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions\/204"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}