{"id":295,"date":"2026-06-03T03:24:04","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T03:24:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/?p=295"},"modified":"2026-06-03T03:25:58","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T03:25:58","slug":"woodland-passage-5x10-15-minute-painting-demonstration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/?p=295","title":{"rendered":"Woodland Passage 5×10 \u2013 15 minute Painting Demonstration!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/iDRkBbYzwJU\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This week\u2019s painting is called Woodland Passage, a 5\u00d710 inch oil on panel. The genesis was simple: I caught some B-roll in a video, liked the pattern of the trees, got rid of the people and the buildings, and went to work. I had to composite in the path and figure out what to do with the background, which turned out to be one of the more interesting problems in the painting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solving the Background<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In a scene like this, your eye naturally wants to head for the lightest area. I tried putting some hills back there, didn\u2019t work, wiped it off. What I settled on was modulating some tones in the back with patches of a gray-violet color. It\u2019s a small innovation but I\u2019m proud of the way it came out. The innovations come small and less frequent the longer you paint, and that\u2019s okay. You keep with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Yellow Sky and Complementary Color<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This is a purple-yellow-green painting. The sky goes up yellow, not white, which would be too strong. I wanted it bright but middle-toned, and that\u2019s pure tonalism to me. Those purplish-gray dabs in the background work beautifully with the yellow coming in beside them. Yellow-purple is almost always a forgiving complementary combination, worth keeping in your toolkit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also used a big brush periodically to knock the edges down a bit. If every stroke in a painting has a sharp edge, it gets off-putting. What I\u2019m after is keeping the strokes but losing the most aggressive edges, especially before the final highlights go in, which will have strong edges by nature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Turning Greens to Gold<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The reference was green trees, green grass, green everything. I\u2019m not painting that. Here\u2019s the tip: if your reference has green trees and green grass, make those grasses gold or rust. In this painting the grass takes up nearly half the canvas, so getting that color shift right was critical. It gave me a big foreground I could actually work with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A word on painting long grasses: indicate, don\u2019t itemize. The moment you start putting in individual strokes for individual blades, you\u2019re in trouble, especially over this much real estate. A little irregularity, some longer bits here and there, and let the viewer\u2019s eye do the rest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Trees and the T-Square<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I paint at a 26-degree angle, have for the last ten or eleven years, just for you. The downside is that spotting whether a vertical is truly vertical gets tricky. I got the painting home, looked at it on screen, and saw that two of the main trees were tilting quite a bit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next day I came back with the T-square and straightened a few of them up. Not all of them, you don\u2019t want perfectly straight trees, that would be its own problem. But certain trees need to be straight, and it\u2019s worth the extra session to get there. On bigger paintings especially, I\u2019ll rule in a straight line or two during the drawing stage just to keep myself honest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Note on Difficult Paintings<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This week I also had another painting that just wasn\u2019t working, not a good one. Even for someone with as much experience as I have, it happens. I didn\u2019t stomp it (though I may yet). I put it behind a frame piece and let it dry out of sight. That\u2019s my advice: if something isn\u2019t making you feel joy, don\u2019t look at it. Put it away. You might pull it out later with fresh eyes and know exactly how to fix it. Or you\u2019ll know it\u2019s time for the curb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Woodland Passage is in the members area now in 4K with no ads. Check out the live session for the full story of the painting. Until next time, take good care of yourself and everyone around you. 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":"

This week\u2019s painting is called Woodland Passage, a 5\u00d710 inch oil on panel. The genesis was simple: I caught some B-roll in a video, liked the pattern of the trees, got rid of the people and the buildings, and went to work. I...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":296,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-295","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\/295","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=295"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":298,"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295\/revisions\/298"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}