{"id":292,"date":"2026-05-29T21:32:29","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T21:32:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/?p=292"},"modified":"2026-05-29T21:32:32","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T21:32:32","slug":"woodland-passage-5x10-live-painting-session","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/?p=292","title":{"rendered":"Woodland Passage 5&#215;10 &#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 - Woodland Passage 5x10 - Live!\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Mk8sVc8Kmxc?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 class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Today we are painting a forest scene of a woodland with a path cutting through. This started as a screen capture I pulled recently. The original had some different elements, but the tree structure caught my attention. I ran it over to my assistant this morning to add a path. Much cleaner than the original.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m working with a synthetic approach here, photo reference, digital composites, and whatever emotional intent I can muster. The basic structure of the trees is solid. Let&#8217;s see what happens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Building the Foundation: Tree Structure and Intervals<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m shrinking my reference down small. Really small. The goal isn&#8217;t to copy what I see, it&#8217;s to understand the intervals. The spacing between trees. The rhythm of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What attracts me most in this scene is the structure and layout of the trees. Not the foreground grass, that&#8217;s just a bunch of nothing I&#8217;ll have to deal with using strategies I&#8217;ve developed. But the trees matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Here&#8217;s the thing about intervals: they&#8217;re never the same twice. You see one tree, then another that&#8217;s wider, then a gap, then trees clustered. I don&#8217;t want that looking identical to the reference. I want it to feel true without being a copy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When you&#8217;re working with areas of &#8220;nothing&#8221;, whether it&#8217;s foliage or grass, find the spot you want to lead to. It&#8217;s a perspective trick. You&#8217;ve got nothing. Just grass. Nothing in the distance. But you know where the horizon is, roughly. You build leading lines toward it. That&#8217;s the whole trick. Of course, you won&#8217;t paint it literally like that. You paint it like this: broken, varied, alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;ve got my tree structure in place now. Watch out for almost-the-same intervals sitting next to each other. They&#8217;re not quite the same, but they&#8217;re close enough to feel repetitive if you&#8217;re not careful. You want your foliage dancing around your trunks, not marching in formation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Darkness Problem: Breaking Up Solid Areas<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One thing that&#8217;s critical: don&#8217;t just do one strong continuous thing on a path. Paths must be broken up. You want a little iny and outy. A little back and forth with the light. In the reference, the assistant did a good job, there&#8217;s variance. Not 100% consistent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Watch out for one solid bar. One thing&#8217;s broken up. Watch out for the cliche. Grasses coming into the darks? That&#8217;s a great way to solve problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The foliage in the back is mostly amorphous right now. That&#8217;s fine. I&#8217;m not going to overthink the distance. Simplify. Compared to the reference, I&#8217;ve reduced it to basic structures. The lighting is what matters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Color Mixing: Tonalism Without Softness<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now we mix. I&#8217;ve been on a purple lately, bringing tones out of pure green mode. Green, green, green, nothing else. So I brought in other tones. The result is more tonalist, but I&#8217;m not a soft painter. My stuff has soft elements, but there&#8217;s weight to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For the sky, I&#8217;m starting with yellow ochre. Without adding some raw umber, things look way too fakey. Add a little cadmium. See how that kills the color? That feels far more natural. A kiss of yellow, you don&#8217;t need much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now I have my darks. Light sky. Dark sky. It&#8217;s official.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For the greens, I&#8217;m keeping them earthy. My mix is dark today, so I&#8217;m adding warmth with burnt sienna. I&#8217;m waking it up with Mike&#8217;s gray instead of pure white. Lightening with that instead of yellow, which would just make a mess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">These grasses are going gold. Middle tone first. Then the lighter greens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Here&#8217;s a tip I pass along: instead of green for dark grass, bring in a tiny bit of green to temper it. You don&#8217;t want people to see the green, but you want it tempered. Dark grass tone. Medium grass tone. Same deal. Bring in some permanent green. Just a kiss. Just a kiss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This doesn&#8217;t look very green, but that&#8217;s the idea. And I always hold off until I have to. Then throw in some white. That&#8217;s distant. That&#8217;s what holds things together. Value is very similar, that&#8217;s going to work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Breaking Up the Grass: The Rustiest Color Isn&#8217;t Rust<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Grass is nothing. I&#8217;m going to put that there. This is a great approach for areas of nothing: break out of brush mode entirely. Scratch it in. It&#8217;s quick, and it breaks the paint into texture instead of smooth coverage. I don&#8217;t want stroke, stroke, stroke on the grass. I&#8217;ll do a little, but the whole thing shouldn&#8217;t be determined by that. That&#8217;s why you see me using the side of the brush.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If I pull the foliage off right, this base back here will matter. It&#8217;s the lightest tree in the composition. It&#8217;s important to connect your trees. The reference has nothing connecting them, but here, this very interesting place where it comes down to the path, we need some real strength.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Even the rustiest grass will have living grass in and amongst it. I was pretty good with the darks. Not that this is much lighter, but I&#8217;m assuming there&#8217;s some spread.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Simplification and Restraint<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One reason I wanted to get that purple in early: it&#8217;s a lot more difficult to put purple over dark. I don&#8217;t mind a lot of dark trees. That&#8217;s fine. We&#8217;ll do the old &#8220;put the foliage over the top&#8221; trick later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The effect is looking good. The interplay between these darks and these lights is basically setting up the whole foundation of the painting. That&#8217;s one reason why early decisions matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m not going to get overt with the purple in the trunks. But I will use it strategically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Finishing Moves: When to Stop<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We&#8217;re at diminishing returns now. The painting&#8217;s looking solid. The color work is done. The values are right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One last thing: because of the angle of my easel, sometimes it&#8217;s very hard to judge the trees. I spotted a few that are slightly off-vertical. Not crooked, just slanted. You can have quite a few slanted trees, but too many tips the whole thing off-balance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Easy fix. And fortunately the painting isn&#8217;t too matte today, so I can make these adjustments without worry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It can happen easy with this kind of thing, especially when you&#8217;re not painting straight on. I actually ruled straight lines in my underpainting stage to make sure I wouldn&#8217;t do that. Preventative work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The painting is quite nice. I&#8217;m very happy with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Check out the book: <em>13 Years of Accumulated Painting Knowledge<\/em> about how to work in a tonalist way. I&#8217;ve got a book for you and I&#8217;ll send it to you anywhere on the planet for $65 USD with international shipping included.<\/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>Today we are painting a forest scene of a woodland with a path cutting through. This started as a screen capture I pulled recently. The original had some different elements, but the tree structure caught my attention. I ran it over to my&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":293,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-292","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\/292","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=292"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":294,"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292\/revisions\/294"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}