{"id":278,"date":"2026-05-23T06:52:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T06:52:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/?p=278"},"modified":"2026-05-23T06:52:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T06:52:16","slug":"arcadian-road-4x6-live-painting-session","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/?p=278","title":{"rendered":"Arcadian Road 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 Arcadian Road 4x6 - LIVE!\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/n7ctzw2E-zI?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<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Transcript and Key Insights<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We painted this scene before. It came out really excellent. A lot of times that can be the spark behind painting something again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I wanted to do a 4&#215;6. Wanted to make it tonal. Wanted to make it something kind of related to here. This image was run through one of those stable fusions\u2014didn&#8217;t change all that much, but it changed some stuff. I also swapped out the sky. I just love painting this, and we&#8217;re going to be making quite a few significant changes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We&#8217;re not going to do a grid today. We&#8217;re just going to jump right in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"679\" src=\"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Arcadian-Road-4x6-1-1024x679.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-280\" srcset=\"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Arcadian-Road-4x6-1-1024x679.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Arcadian-Road-4x6-1-300x199.jpg 300w, https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Arcadian-Road-4x6-1-768x509.jpg 768w, https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Arcadian-Road-4x6-1-1536x1019.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Arcadian-Road-4x6-1-2048x1359.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Arcadian Road 4&#215;6<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Two Days Off and the Book<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I haven&#8217;t painted for the last two days. But I got into formatting volume four of the Transcendental Landscape\u2014the book I&#8217;ve been yapping on about for a year now. It&#8217;s okay. We don&#8217;t need to rush things like that, because the great thing about books is, unlike media like this, which is quite transitory, books are just more enduring. They last longer than any video. You don&#8217;t need electronic means to play a book. You can just open it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Drawing<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m still pretty happy with my drawing, and I like how this tree is kind of taking on a whole different feel. My main struggle with this is that turning road in the distance. I don&#8217;t love that kind of thing. I&#8217;m going to find different strategies. One is good\u2014coming from like I started to do there. A lot more lumpiness in the reference, a lot more sky holes. I&#8217;m simplifying everything. Having a point a little higher there, then right on the end\u2014that&#8217;s nice. Got some progression going on. That&#8217;s good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When I repaint a scene like this, I have a memory of some of the previous painting and things I like. But here&#8217;s something maybe you haven&#8217;t noticed: just being a human walking along or painting along, when you visualize things, it&#8217;s incredibly low risk. Really, it is. In your dreams, things are incredibly detailed. Why is that? I don&#8217;t know. But I will say this\u2014perhaps dreams are what we think they are, and that&#8217;s a clue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Mixing the Colors<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I need some grays. I use a mix I&#8217;ve had before, and I&#8217;m going to bring in just the slightest amount of blue. It doesn&#8217;t take much. The whole reason I put in blue is that it reads as a blue gray. That&#8217;s smoky. That&#8217;s pretty good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m going to need a warm gray too. I&#8217;m looking at the reference, and there&#8217;s a lot going on. I&#8217;ve used the sky reference a zillion times. I did swap out the sky that was in the original because my feeling is that will resemble the last one I painted less.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For the reds, I want to play them up. I was researching Norman Rockwell a while back\u2014a genius, great painter. He liked painting with Mars violets. I got made into Mars violets. I did a nice underpainting, but I had a problem. It&#8217;s opaque, and the underpainting needs transparency. I got it to work, but I never did it again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">All kinds of issues with this reference image, but we don&#8217;t care because we&#8217;re making a painting loosely based on it. The reference is just a reference. It&#8217;s there to spark something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Let me add some warmth. I&#8217;ll bring in some burnt sienna. I think I just overdid that. I was getting enthusiastic. I like that better. I don&#8217;t want it to be too cold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For the greens, we don&#8217;t want any flashy type green. We&#8217;re going to put a lot of red in that too. It&#8217;ll be green there. When I end up doing stuff like that, I&#8217;ll just put them together. I don&#8217;t need that much. I&#8217;ll go back. Kind of a more neutral tone there. I think that&#8217;ll work. I&#8217;m thinking of these trees in the background, the grasses. You can see I use a little bit of what&#8217;s called complementary color theory there. It was too red, so I put in some more green and it feels nice and natural.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The road&#8217;s not much different from the grays up above. Let me push it away a little bit and we&#8217;ll go lighter and brighter as we&#8217;re painting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Mars Yellow<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I ordered this just for you frankly. I have 12 tubes of the day around me\u2014it&#8217;s a 20ml tube, pretty dinky. But this Mars yellow you can use. I tried one from Old Holland, and it was just like yellow ochre. It was nasty. This does seem to have a pretty good color to it. Maybe it&#8217;s a little deeper. That&#8217;s actually really pretty nice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I do like that it is more in that raw sienna color range. It&#8217;s got more color depth to it. My main problem with a lot of raw siennas is that they&#8217;re the same color as yellow ochre. There&#8217;s no spread. There&#8217;s no reason to have them on the palette right. There&#8217;s not a difference in color then. Yeah, there may be differences in opacity or chalkiness. Raw sienna can be very chalky at times, as can your yellow ochre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Starting the Sky<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For the sky, I&#8217;ll go with my Daler bristle filbert four. It&#8217;s relatively new. I was also thinking about a Robert Simmons silver, which might be good to use, although in my brain I was debating because it&#8217;s a little on the loose side. This could be better. This is a little looser, but actually probably won&#8217;t use that today because this is not a very big painting. That extra bit of looseness would mean some amount of floppiness, which is less of a factor on a larger painting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m pretty happy with my drawing. I&#8217;ll do a little something there, but that could work against us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Okay, now we&#8217;re ready. Let&#8217;s start painting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Painting the Sky and Darks<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I like to break up that little area now. I&#8217;m going to go with this here\u2014it&#8217;s less rose. I don&#8217;t want this linked up because that&#8217;ll free the pan there. I don&#8217;t want that. That&#8217;s nice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Maybe a little counter-intuitive\u2014I think I want that lighter. But there&#8217;s something in the reference I really like. Watch out for halos. I don&#8217;t like halos. I think that&#8217;s good because it&#8217;s a little more blue. We have a lot of grays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Keep in mind that when you lay down a color and then you paint another color over the top, it has a different effect than it would have been if you hadn&#8217;t done that at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Tree and Foliage<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One of the whole mods there because we want to get in somewhere warm. This is cool\u2014this is my regular Mike&#8217;s gray. So I mix it up a little darker today. That&#8217;s opaque. That&#8217;s what you want. That&#8217;s one of the things I love about the Mars yellow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Here&#8217;s the note: I want to juice that. Look at that. A little bit of purple in there too\u2014why not? It&#8217;s dangerous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Where&#8217;s the green? Well, okay, that&#8217;s what I was just thinking. Where&#8217;s the green? A little green. See green before you can mix them. And as we move down, it needs a little more. Something, just add a little bit of that permanent green light to it. Yeah. And I&#8217;m going to darken it with the black there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A little bit of permanent green light, using the toe of the filbert. Okay, now there&#8217;s only\u2014I will put some other notes of green in here, but that&#8217;s it for mostly what we&#8217;re doing. Like all this, I want you saw the reference. Things are very earthy, very brownish, and I like that. Almost like what we&#8217;ll do is just put a couple notes of green in the mix.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There&#8217;s a lot of dustier umber, and I didn&#8217;t really mix any of these, all that humbery, but it&#8217;s not hard. And a little black actually\u2014quickest way to get under with that. Okay, that&#8217;s pretty good. I thought that was gonna be darker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Reference and Imagination<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yeah, I actually maybe said it today. I know I did. But I think it&#8217;s really more profound than even I realized: if it&#8217;s diffused and indistinct in the reference, then don&#8217;t paint it all defined. It&#8217;s generally just being a lot worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Your imagination, your visualizing mind\u2014it&#8217;s some of the lowest res you&#8217;re gonna get. There&#8217;s this guy who&#8217;s autistic or something. He&#8217;d seen a helicopter ride, seen a city scene, and he&#8217;d sit there and draw the whole thing. Some people have these gifts though. Most of us do not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There will be something in a few. This is why I think reference is important. I think reference is important. I like great reference. I need terrible references. The genius grates because you were rocking and rolling that day, of that month, or that year, or that lifetime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Painting the Road<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I struggled with roads for a long time. The first painting I ever sold had a big road. I did it real big. The reference was a wide angle, and so the road was huge on the bottom. It was old. It was a nice painting, but it rendered this. They make a lot of the roads real big. That&#8217;s you know, the rural areas, which is a lot of the areas around here. They make them with what they call metal\u2014which is gravel, you know? And well, it just got real. It took me forever to paint all this texture on the road. When I looked at that painting, I liked the painting. I mean, I showed it, I exhibited it. But I said never again when I paint a road like this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The secret to roads\u2014I want to avoid straight lines, curved or not, you know what I mean? Not straight, uniform lines like from the root to the tire tread. Break things up. Imagine it was really muddy and several different people came in there, right? And it was really muddy really.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the reference, it gets a little skinnier there, but I can&#8217;t seem to make that happen and I don&#8217;t really want to. Yeah, it&#8217;s artistic license. Use it or lose it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You don&#8217;t want anything. You&#8217;re being too busy, too attention-getting. You can have some attention up there where that bright bit in the sky is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Grass and Finishing Touches<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m getting ready to go into some grass now. We are getting close and we want that\u2014um, that&#8217;s a little red, so we&#8217;re gonna kill it with some of that. Didn&#8217;t kill it that much, but when we bring in the umber as well, I think we&#8217;re doing pretty good. I don&#8217;t want to be ugly. I want to be pretty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I got a chapter about revisiting motifs\u2014painting scenes you painted before. I love to do it. I didn&#8217;t know that was going to be what I chose to do today, but I went through a bunch of different things. I almost did a coastal, and I will be getting back into those. But I&#8217;m going to get my brain to rest on the crystals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I intend for this area to be quite bright. It&#8217;s a good move to get some color underneath so you don&#8217;t rely on the whole thing just being what will happen. Your frights will take over. They&#8217;ll be too big, too prominent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now I&#8217;m going to concentrate on the road. You know, I struggled with roads for a long time. But when I looked at that painting, I said never again when I paint a road like this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Most of the story of these trees and stuff I wanted to be told. And as we come down here, I think some pink. Flatten that a little bit. Number it up a little bit. Yeah, I didn&#8217;t do much. Okay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You see those little pockets of paint? Those are real eye-catching. You definitely have some of them because some of them will give the appearance of detail to your work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now, some green. We&#8217;re almost done. Finishing touches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I want to build up my inventory of four by sixes. Strong reds. What you mean, Mac? What is that cad? Oh my god. You might. You know, how can I get rid of that because the red is so opaque?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That&#8217;s distracting there, I think. There&#8217;s a chapter in a book too called &#8220;Spots are Red&#8221; or something. Very powerful. Don&#8217;t do it all the time. Don&#8217;t want to get to\u2014it&#8217;s powerful. It adds a lot of dynamics to the proceedings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Comparing Versions<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When you repaint a motif, don&#8217;t run home and see how it compares. It&#8217;s very much at this point like comparing yourself to others. It&#8217;s a lost cause. It&#8217;s a bad thing. Nothing good can come from that. People do it all the time, even me. But I&#8217;ve learned it&#8217;s bad. Nothing good can come from it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Compare yourself maybe to the masters, people that are dead. Even then, don&#8217;t worry about it. They have a lot of advantages and many disadvantages too, obviously. But you know the big advantages they have, which is more respect for imagery in general. Their respect for what they did. Respect for what went into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Find yourself feathering like that, you know you&#8217;re done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">All right, okay. Thank you for joining me today. It&#8217;s a wonderful painting. I love it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"http:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Mike&#8217;s New Site<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.substack.com\/subscribe\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Substack<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.landscapepainter.co.nz\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Painting Website<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.landscapepainter.co.nz\/mailing-list\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Mailing List<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.landscapepainter.co.nz\/products\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Store<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/abyssm.bandcamp.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">My Music<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.landscapepainter.co.nz\/donate\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Support<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@landscapepainter\/membership\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Members Area<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.landscapepainter.co.nz\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">M Francis McCarthy, Your Painter in Residence<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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&#215;6. Wanted to make it tonal. Wanted to make it something&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","rsfv-has-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278","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=278"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":281,"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278\/revisions\/281"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}