{"id":255,"date":"2026-05-09T23:26:46","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T23:26:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/?p=255"},"modified":"2026-05-09T23:26:46","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T23:26:46","slug":"violet-woods-6x8-15-min-painting-session","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/?p=255","title":{"rendered":"Violet Woods 6×8 \u2013 15 min Painting Session!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/C04c8ToD1ms\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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 before I even touched brush to canvas, and the painting followed that intention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Violet Woods 6×8<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Underpainting<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

I started with burnt umber mixed with diox purple, thinned down with my medium. This morning, before this painting, I was struggling with an underpainting using mars black, burnt umber, and burnt sienna. The whole thing looked muddy. But introducing the diox purple created something fresh and alive. I’m going to remember that because I think it could work as an underpainting color even when purple isn’t the featured color.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Dioxazine Purple<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

People ask me all the time: “You don’t need diox. Just mix ultramarine with burnt umber” or “use alizarin and blue.” You can absolutely get beautiful purples that way. Alizarin with a little blue and white makes a wonderful purple. But it doesn’t make that diox purple. It’s a royal purple, and you can’t mix it with any other combination of pigments. One of diox’s distinguishing characteristics is that it doesn’t truly identify its nature until you add white to it. It’s kind of like your dark blues that way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Purple and Yellow Getting Along<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Yellow and purple are complementary on the color wheel and in real life. The key to getting them to get on is colors like red, it’s not that far a step from red into orange into yellow. Now, complementary colors are interesting. Mix a really bright strong red with a really bright strong green and you get an ugly grayish brown. But with purple and yellow together, you get a lot of very nice colors. It’s not as ugly straight up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yellow and purple is almost always a sky thing. Almost always a morning thing. And Mother Nature knows how to mix purple and yellow and get beautiful results. The key there is adding a bunch of white. Complementary color theory, not all complementary color dynamics are the same. The red and green combo tends to be muddy and brown and ugly. But the blue orange thing, especially when you bring in white, gets you quite interesting grays. That’s how you get everything getting on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Trees and Sky Holes<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

One thing that worked real well here was the decision to start bringing in those greens. Green gets on very well with purple. I’m working the green into the underpainting which was still wet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s either got to be wet or dry but not some place in between. That can be a real problem. What you think is a strong underpainting is going to disappear, and it happens quite often if you use black for underpainting. You see that royal purple, that’s diox purple straight up. You can’t really mix that with any other combination of pigments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One thing I’ve been talking about a lot is where these trees up at the top are overlapping the sky. You can get in and work it all out in a detail, draftsman-like manner. But what I like to do these days is keep it kind of amorphous and then eventually definition comes into play as I start painting in the sky. That’s been a very major advancement for me. This way just feels more organic and lets more air come into the leaves at the edges of those trees. With this kind of scene, the sky holes make or break it. We don’t have too many. If you’re going to make a mistake on sky holes, definitely make a mistake to have too few rather than too many. Too many sky holes will give your painting kind of a Swiss cheese effect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Road<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Those country roads with swooping arched lines from the tires can really be tyrannical. I totally recommend breaking that up into something that’s not that congruent. You want it to have that feeling of a disturbed earth and surface. I don’t recommend painting those tire tracks as these parallel points meeting in the distance. I’ve done it. I’ve really worked hard on it and I’ve sworn it off. This is a much better approach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this case I chose to just have it sort of taper off on our left. There’s composition elements that pull you back in. You have a bit of an X going with those branches up at the top that wasn’t intentional, it’s just kind of how things worked out. One thing I did was make sure there was a bit of air in these sort of limbs. I come in at one point and just brush in a little bit of lighter color.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Timing<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

This painting altogether didn’t take that much time but that for me is always ideal. When painting is done properly, my idea about painting is that it should be an expression of who and what you are in the moment. The best paintings are ones that are done over a period of concurrent days or even better all in one day, as this one was. I had the reference already set up. It was originally based on a screenshot I took years ago and I’ve derivated from it pretty extensively. The ideal situation is always to make paintings from your own photos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Result<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

I’m so happy to bring this to you. I think it came off with a beautiful toneless quality, riffing on the purples but they feel integrated. They feel nice and they go with all the other colors, the yellows and the grays and the reds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Take care of yourself. Stay out of trouble. And fight the power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mike’s New Site<\/a> | Substack<\/a> | Painting Website<\/a> | Mailing List<\/a> | Store<\/a> | My Music<\/a> | Support<\/a> | Members Area<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

M Francis McCarthy, Your Painter in Residence<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":256,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-255","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\/255","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=255"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":259,"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255\/revisions\/259"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}