{"id":217,"date":"2026-04-18T03:32:18","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T03:32:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/?p=217"},"modified":"2026-04-18T03:46:21","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T03:46:21","slug":"amber-path-5x7-live-painting-session","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/?p=217","title":{"rendered":"Amber Path 5&#215;7 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: Amber Path 5x7 Live!\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/XQoCagVK-Sc?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>Drawing, Color, and the Art of Restraint<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Good morning, afternoon, or evening. This is your painter in residence, Michael Francis McCarthy, occasionally known as M. Francis McCarthy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yesterday I painted a coastal scene\u2014really a sky painting with a little peninsula worked in. I&#8217;m very happy with it. Most paintings aren&#8217;t perfect, but they&#8217;re perfect in their imperfection. They&#8217;re captured moments in time. Best to express yourself and move on. That&#8217;s my first lesson for you today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Setup and Underpainting<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;ve topped up my palette for you, so you don&#8217;t have to wait. I&#8217;ve been using archival oil spray, and every time that last quarter inch turns into jelly. So I&#8217;ve made a small addition to help with that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This scene has been composited for a while\u2014a wood scene with a path. It&#8217;s a foggy day with beautiful colors. I&#8217;m going to take some liberties with it because it&#8217;s quite complex.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For the underpainting, I&#8217;ve been experimenting. For the last few months I complained about burnt umber being weak, so I was adding Mars black to get it darker. But that uglies it up. So I tried adding ivory black instead. Ivory black is already quick-drying, and it gives me the darkness without the dullness. That&#8217;s pretty. I don&#8217;t even need to juice it up to counteract ugliness. I like that better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Drawing: Intervals and Intention<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Now we&#8217;re going to do a drawing. All these brushes are too stubby\u2014I just ordered some new Robert Simmons twos because I lean on them so much they all turn into stubbies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One thing I want to call out right away: in the reference, there are two trees very close together, and then another tree a ways away. I&#8217;m just going to do one decent-sized tree. There&#8217;s also a place where both limbs come out from the same point. Never do that. Always make sure one limb is lower than the other. Nature doesn&#8217;t care, but you do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The key principle here is intervals. These intervals are critical. I don&#8217;t want things mirroring each other. In the reference, there were two skinny trees that were mirroring, so I removed one and drew in another. You can&#8217;t even tell I drew it in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m also not closing the sky at the top. There&#8217;s an opening that will be somewhat lit. I don&#8217;t want too many limbs coming in here because any limbs have very strong impact. Generally, after the mass is worked in, I might do a few little things, but I&#8217;m not going to over-define right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The great thing about painting nature is there&#8217;s one rule: it needs to look good. You&#8217;ll know it when you see it. Like that was creating a gutter and we don&#8217;t want that. So I just start smacking things in there until it starts working somewhat. But we don&#8217;t want to solve every problem right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Color Mixing: Building the Palette<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Let&#8217;s do some color mixing. I&#8217;m pretty happy with that underpainting color.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We&#8217;ll start with our custom gray\u2014Mike&#8217;s gray. It&#8217;s kind of going to be the color that marries everything together. It&#8217;s sort of a sky tone. I want that a little warmer. That&#8217;s pretty good. I can modify it as I go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Then a lighter version of that, using the same three colors: burnt umber, Mars yellow, and titanium buff. I&#8217;m going to tuck this one over here\u2014it&#8217;s going to be handy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For the sky, we&#8217;re going to have a bright tone at the top. I&#8217;m not closing it at the top. I don&#8217;t know how much of that I need, but whatever. That&#8217;s it for the sky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, Mars black. You&#8217;re very handy for what I want you to do, which is be opaque and be dark. You&#8217;re not as pretty as ivory black, but you&#8217;re effective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Looking at the reference, I&#8217;ve got a range of greens with a smoky quality\u2014that&#8217;s the fog. So it can be a little iffy because you&#8217;re bringing in Mike&#8217;s gray and white. But let&#8217;s build our green. This is our dark green, but again, it&#8217;s a foggy-ish quality. Will it actually come off as foggy? Yeah, we hit it. Look at that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A color like yellow ochre already has that chalky quality. And foggy is another way of saying chalky. That&#8217;s nice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now I&#8217;m going to have some more strident tones, but I&#8217;m liking that. These pre-mixes don&#8217;t get hung up on nothing. Just do it quick. It&#8217;s your first idea. It&#8217;s a great way to start moving towards the painting. Break things down into great stages and steps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I tend to squint, and I see a lot of grays. Then I see this clayish tone, which is very close to board color. And then the golds. That&#8217;s almost everything. Let&#8217;s do this clayish tone. Almost the same as the stuff I was doing for the sky, but a little more oomph. A bit of burnt umber will just give it a little more body. Everything here is a bit subdued, except for when we start moving into the golds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These gold tones\u2014I&#8217;m going to do two. A light, a little yellowy, and a darker, orangier. We&#8217;re going to start with Mars yellow and burnt umber. Look at that. It&#8217;s beauty. It&#8217;s like a dark, burnished gold. That&#8217;s going to be my undergold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now for the lighter gold. I don&#8217;t want it screamy or poppy. We&#8217;ll start there and knock it back with some raw umber. That&#8217;s our light gold. See? Nice. There&#8217;s lighter tones in the painting, but I think that&#8217;s good. We can bring in some more cads and yellow ochres as we&#8217;re painting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Painting: Intention Over Outcome<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>The main thing you&#8217;re doing with the painting is you have an intention. If your desire to succeed is too great, you won&#8217;t get that. It doesn&#8217;t work that way. If you have an intention to paint, to express yourself, you likely will have a good result, especially if you&#8217;re applying yourself. You&#8217;ve got to take action. You can&#8217;t just sit there and wish to be a great painter. You have the intention of being a great painter, and you&#8217;re painting all the time, and you&#8217;re not too invested in outcomes. You just do your best.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m working quite lightly, but I&#8217;ve extended the darkness a bit, diffusing it, because what I&#8217;m not that interested in with this painting is super dark. I&#8217;m happy with that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My favorite foliage brush is the filbert. Now I&#8217;m looking at these greens. I remember making them pretty muted. Yeah, we can juice that up a little. Let me green it up a little, especially for one section I&#8217;m looking at. Now that dulled it. I like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Things over here in general were red. I didn&#8217;t mix any red, but I was just thinking as I was painting that the next color might just splash in a reddish tone. I&#8217;m just doing a little green here. Like I said, I don&#8217;t see tons, but you don&#8217;t want to just have green on one side of the painting, not on the other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is another thing I love about the filbert\u2014you can get these kind of nicer marks. You can do that with a flat too, but the filbert has a nice toe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Philosophy of Painting<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>You&#8217;re making decisions, decisions, decisions as you paint. It&#8217;s infinite, and it&#8217;s a definite collaboration between conscious and subconscious, rational mind and your soul, if you want to put it that way. It&#8217;s looking nice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m working with an agent to do transcriptions of these live videos. I know it&#8217;s very tough because they like to get creative and summarize things, but it comes off not being your voice. You have to be a bit of a tyrant sometimes. They always mean well and always try. But on the other hand, the opposite\u2014I leave in every &#8220;yeah&#8221; and &#8220;you know&#8221; and &#8220;all right.&#8221; These are all things they say to get my brain in alignment. You&#8217;re not going to want to sit there and read that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s time to get into that dark gold. I know it doesn&#8217;t look very gold. I&#8217;m aware. But it&#8217;s on the edge of glory. Let&#8217;s get some chroma. Keep in mind a lot of this is going to have the brighter over the top. Very much like the lesson I was trying to part with the clouds\u2014if you&#8217;ve got bright clouds over blue sky, it&#8217;s definitely better to have a gray where it can meet over the blue, and then bring your highlights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m trying to avoid definition back here. It&#8217;s inevitable though. That&#8217;s going to look fake. We can temper it with a little burnt number and burnt sienna. I&#8217;m thinking here where there&#8217;s like bushes that are going gold, dead leaves on the ground. I want this underneath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Finish<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>When you find you&#8217;re messing things up more than you&#8217;re fixing things, that&#8217;s when you know you&#8217;re done. I might wait a second to see if anything like these little moves. I could be making these for a while. I don&#8217;t want to get too many because I like the kind of quality it has.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Looking in the camera, I think that&#8217;s a nice little painting. I&#8217;ve got one little, a couple little issues, but they&#8217;re minor. I&#8217;m very happy with the way this turned out. There&#8217;s a little fragmented here, and I don&#8217;t really want to get in and do a bunch of extra darks because I like the way the darks feel. But that&#8217;s a little better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m not painting the world, but you never know. When you find you&#8217;re messing things up more than you&#8217;re fixing things, that&#8217;s when you know you&#8217;re 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>M Francis McCarthy, Your Painter in Residence<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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\u2014really a sky painting with a little peninsula worked in. I&#8217;m&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":218,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-217","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\/217","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=217"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":219,"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217\/revisions\/219"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}