{"id":264,"date":"2026-05-17T02:19:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T02:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/?p=264"},"modified":"2026-08-22T02:27:44","modified_gmt":"2026-08-22T02:27:44","slug":"violet-dusk-7x12-15-min-painting-session","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/?p=264","title":{"rendered":"Violet Dusk 7×12 – 15 min Painting Session"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\nhttps:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=MuDgQ_TgEqM\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A Painting That Needed a Second Pass<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Reference and Its Problems<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

This painting is based on a photo I found, but it had some major issues. The main problem\u2014what I call “all in a row.” You know the kind of scene. You come across it in nature, you see some cool trees and stuff, but everything’s in a row. There’s nothing in front, nothing behind. It’s just a row.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The kind of scenes where that works would be a pond type scene where you have reflections. That’s going to bring in some interest. Also in these sorts of scenes, if you don’t have a pond, you can bring in a road or stick some trees in there or whatever, but it’s not ideal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was obviously a pond, but here’s the thing: about 90% of what was happening with the reflection is invented by Uncle Mike here. The reference was such a low res that there was absolutely no detail in some areas. You’d see these big geometric blocks of JPEG artifacts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I don’t really mind that because I’m used to making things up. And it’s probably a good place to say: reference should always, no matter how good or how inspiring, take a back seat to you actually creating the painting on the painting surface. The reference is something that you refer to. If it’s good, if it’s inspiring, that can be the genesis of a great painting. But there can be times where the reference is just okay and you’re in a really good space as a painter that day, and you turn a mediocre bit of reference into an amazing painting. I’ve done it. It’s not usually the case though. If there’s problems in the reference, they tend to find their way onto the painting.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
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Violet Dusk 7×12<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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

Look at the palette here\u2014there’s a lot of colors. For the underpainting, that color is juiced up with a little bit of what’s essentially Burnt Sienna, but it’s juiced up with some Rose Madder and maybe even some Diox Purple. I can see it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I did call this Violet Dusk<\/em>, but the purple is all over the painting, but it’s not hitting me over the head, you know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Sky<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

One of the things that makes the sky is there’s not a lot of actual blue in it. That whole bit at the top is done mostly with grays and oranges and reds. And it really has that feel of a sky that has moisture and air in it. I’m pretty good at getting that across. Sometimes my skies can take on a bit more of a geometric sort of feel\u2014hey, it’s called the style, you know. But in this case, I think we got that feeling of diffusion, air and water and light just right. I had exciting and interesting reference, so that was pretty good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Multiple Passes Problem<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

I want to talk about something that happened with this painting because it touches on a bigger issue. I was fairly happy with it. I tried to do everything in one color pass. A lot of times if I can I’ll do the underpainting same day, but I don’t mind splitting those two in separate processes. But I had to put this painting back up on the easel, and the reason was because the reflection was working down below, but it needed some extra element.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, I’ve talked a lot about trying not to do multiple passes on your paintings. It used to be the default for me. I would do the underpainting, maybe a block-in type of color pass and then a more detailed color pass after that had dried, and then sometimes an additional fourth pass. That can give you interesting results. It can give you very refined results. I have one painting hanging up in my washroom here at my house that really has a beautiful effect. You can’t really even discern the actual brush strokes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But that’s my main issue with the multiple passes. What can happen when you put the painting back up on the easel is that one of the main things painting has going for it is it’s done by humans by hand, and each stroke is an individual decision. Sometimes all the strokes go very well, sometimes most of them go well. Most of them go well. You still have a good painting. But either way, that’s what makes painting intrinsically interesting and exciting over say a photograph, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, in the process of seeking some sort of visual perfection, perhaps you are into the multiple passes. And what can happen quite often is that you will lose the character of the initial brush strokes because you’re basically going over the whole thing again. And I call this rice grain syndrome because you end up with a lot of very small, very discrete sort of brush strokes and you just lose a lot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I would rather not put any painting up back on the easel. But there are definitely times. Especially now that I do all this video recording, I’ve got a lot of things I’ve got to sync up and it’s good in a way because it does keep me honest. A lot of times they’ve taken the final photo of the painting and I think, “Okay, I’ll just leave it alone. I don’t want to get the memory card out of my bag and load everything up,” you know, but because I changed something. So sometimes though, things got to be changed. That’s just how it is, and that was the case on this painting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Water Fix<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The next day it’s back on the easel. And you know, another reason I don’t like to put things on the easel is that paintings can go quite matte. I was very fortunate. This one is a little bit of that matte issue but for the most part it looks pretty good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The thing that needed to be in that water\u2014you can see it’s just too rigid. It looks too\u2014there’s nothing disturbing that image of the tree line in the pond. And I kept looking at that painting and I put in little straight horizontal lines. Now someone like Bob Ross will take that to the limit. He’ll always throw a little bit of a highlight of the horizontal type up against the bank of the pond or what have you. Here though you can see that was really helping. It’s really helping us get that feel of water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think I did a good job with it. What I did, you can see me coming in next\u2014I got the light horizontal line in some cases. I’m throwing in a little dark underneath which you don’t see me doing yet but I’m going to get ready to do it. And I think that really helped sell it. And so for me that made this painting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Overworking<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

I definitely know what it means to overwork paintings. I\u2019ve overworked hundreds of paintings. I would rather leave things somewhat imperfect, be a little maybe dissatisfied with some aspect of the painting. And that\u2019s almost always going to be the case. There\u2019s always going to be things that fall a little bit short. My advice to you in those instances is don\u2019t worry about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, 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","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":265,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-264","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\/264","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=264"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":549,"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264\/revisions\/549"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}