{"id":43,"date":"2026-03-27T04:43:04","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T04:43:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/?p=43"},"modified":"2026-03-28T01:24:53","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T01:24:53","slug":"dusks-ember-live-painting-session","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/?p=43","title":{"rendered":"Dusk\u2019s Ember &#8211; Full Live Painting Session!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"video-container\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Making of - Dusk&#039;s Ember - LIVE Painting Session!\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/90ngsDu65j4?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\">Live Painting Transcript and Key Insights<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>We did a version of this yesterday on the gray. Perfectly saleable. Smaller. But I&#8217;ve changed the scene quite a bit with some help from my assistants. You&#8217;ll see some synthetic color mixing here. Grist for the mill. That&#8217;s how we roll.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the main issues I struggled with yesterday was transparency in the ivory black. I thought, &#8220;I don&#8217;t need the Mars black.&#8221; The painting&#8217;s quite nice, I&#8217;m not complaining. But the underpainting color\u2014it&#8217;s not so much brown as black with brown\u2014and when it&#8217;s that dark, the ivory black just doesn&#8217;t give you the coverage you need. It streaks. It shows through where you don&#8217;t want it showing through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"512\" src=\"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Dusks-Ember-7x14-1-1024x512.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-44\" srcset=\"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Dusks-Ember-7x14-1-1024x512.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Dusks-Ember-7x14-1-300x150.jpg 300w, https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Dusks-Ember-7x14-1-768x384.jpg 768w, https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Dusks-Ember-7x14-1-1536x768.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Dusks-Ember-7x14-1-2048x1025.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Yesterday I had gray peeking around the peninsulas, between the rock shapes and the orange. That gray was too light. It called attention to itself. Problem. So today we&#8217;re switching to Mars black. Mars black is more opaque. It dries. It gives you coverage without the transparency issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I showed a friend of mine yesterday&#8217;s painting. I&#8217;m quite proud of it. Beautiful stormy blue sky with a golden horizon. He said, &#8220;That&#8217;s ominous.&#8221; My assistant called it &#8220;apocalyptic.&#8221; I wasn&#8217;t thinking apocalyptic, but I guess it is. The painting works either way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Underpainting<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s 10:30 Wednesday, March 18th.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The underpainting color is not pure brown. It&#8217;s black with brown. A little matter in there, maybe verging on purple. When the color&#8217;s this dark, you can sense it. It&#8217;ll look even better on the painting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m pretty happy with where this is at. The underpainting will support everything that comes after.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here&#8217;s the thing about the reference: you&#8217;ve got these silvery little peninsulas, rock formations, and there&#8217;s detail I&#8217;m going to completely ignore. I want them mostly dark. I don&#8217;t want a lot of focus on these. They could become a whole subject on their own. Don&#8217;t want that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Always be closing, my friends. Always be closing. That means we&#8217;re always thinking about this hanging in someone&#8217;s home. Don&#8217;t get immobilized by the reference. There&#8217;s detail I could get involved with. Not going there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One thing about yesterday&#8217;s painting that doesn&#8217;t work as well: I made the whole ocean bit just orange. But there are going to be waves here. There&#8217;s going to be activity. There&#8217;s going to be color variation. That&#8217;s more interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Understanding Yesterday&#8217;s Failure<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Yesterday&#8217;s was a five by ten. It looked cool, but there was a few issues, some palces where I failed<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The thing about failures is: your successes are built on your failures. You have to understand that. The streaking issue with the gray, the problems with coverage, those are lessons. Next time, I know to use Mars black for the underpainting. I know to close up the composition. That&#8217;s how you get better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Color Mixing<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Thursday, March 19th. The underpainting is bone dry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We&#8217;re in color mixing mode. We need a lot of blue. We&#8217;re going to take at least half of this and make it a lighter blue. Now we&#8217;re breaking out the Cadmium. Cad will be a player here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What&#8217;s on the palette: titanium white, titanium buff, Cadmium yellow, yellow ochre, Mars yellow, raw umber, Mike&#8217;s green, Cadmium orange, Cadmium red, burnt sienna, rose matter, burnt umber, perylene black, permanent green light, dioxazine purple, Persian blue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;ve got a fairly synthetic reference. It&#8217;s based on manipulated coastal scenes from postcards. Those images tend to look synthetic\u2014where the waves are tinted violet because the photographer had a filter on the camera. You don&#8217;t want it to be too fake or false looking. But you can use that synthetic quality as a starting point and make it your own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here&#8217;s a big lesson I learned yesterday with the ivory black: it&#8217;s great for mixing because it&#8217;s clean. But for doing a dark underpainting, Mars black is superior. It&#8217;s darker, it dries, and it gives you coverage in areas where maybe you want things dark without all that streaking and transparency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I don&#8217;t want to mix every color here. You want some colors to emerge organically as you paint. But we&#8217;re going to establish these transition colors now because we&#8217;re going from blue into orange. That&#8217;s a big jump. You&#8217;ve got to have a cushion. A color that gets on with both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Painting the Sky<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m starting with the sky in red. I&#8217;m tempted to not mix very much paint, to go very dark. But we&#8217;re going to build it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I kind of like doing this sort of move, gets you out of brush stroke mode. I don&#8217;t mind some of that brown peeking through. It&#8217;s nice. The gray was too light, called attention to itself. So here we&#8217;re going to start modulating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You don&#8217;t even have to use dioxazine. You can frankly just use matter and Persian blue together to make all kinds of neat purples. If you don&#8217;t have matter, crimson&#8217;s fine. Same difference. I like matter because it&#8217;s a little cleaner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There&#8217;s the dark foundation. Now we&#8217;ve got this kind of sky blue element. You would think that&#8217;s going to make it purple, but just barely really. It just counteracts that greenishness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You saw the reference. I don&#8217;t want it just in the center. Could go a little brighter. Pure, more bright. When you give yourself a foundation like this, you have something to build on. Whereas if you just go in pure color all the way, this is still not exactly pure, but it&#8217;s getting there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A little more grayish purpley. I&#8217;m trying to avoid creating stripes. I&#8217;m going to grab some more pure blue. The black brings out the green aspects. That&#8217;s okay. I just want to make this a little more smoky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s time to transition. I really want to lean into the burnt sienna. But burnt sienna is missing opacity. I&#8217;m going to keep helping it with the Cad red because it&#8217;s time to transition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Remember this is our transition color. This is how we get in. The challenge is we&#8217;re going from blue into orange. You&#8217;ve got to have a bit of a cushion. A color that gets on with both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That&#8217;s kind of the color I&#8217;ve been envisioning. You could almost say, &#8220;Mike, why didn&#8217;t you mix that?&#8221; Well, you don&#8217;t want to mix every color. You kind of just do the broad bits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;ve got some bunchy up bits. I don&#8217;t want that too much. I want some bunchy up bits. Don&#8217;t get me wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You don&#8217;t want to be in a hurry. In your reference you&#8217;re going to have a lot of complexity. Don&#8217;t get hung up on that. Don&#8217;t worry about that. Worry about what&#8217;s happening in your painting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Richard Schmidt, he&#8217;s got like four yellows. I can see why. We don&#8217;t have four yellows. We got this one. That&#8217;s pretty good. That&#8217;s giving me what I want.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It takes a little while for you to get to know your brush. I can feel how much paint I have. A lot of times you see me make a move and nothing&#8217;s happening. I turn the brush over and then something happens because I know, I have a feeling for how much paint&#8217;s in there. That&#8217;s going to be based on experience with your brush.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I don&#8217;t have a problem but we can fix it. We&#8217;ll fix it with purple. Purple is going to be our problem solver here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One thing I don&#8217;t like is suns in my stuff. You never see me do that ever. I&#8217;ll do something like that instead. Create an atmospheric glow rather than a defined sun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Rocks and Beach<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Let&#8217;s not get too carried away. I think we&#8217;re looking really good. Now all we got to do is some waves. Oh, rocks. Let&#8217;s do the rocks next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You can see the difference between adding the ivory black versus the Mars black. Mars black is like, &#8220;Yep, you want this dark? No problem.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What I&#8217;m doing here is instead of drafting, I&#8217;m just using the brush to vary things. Giving us the feeling of rocks, ideally. We&#8217;re avoiding lots of draftsmanship on these rocks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We have a beach. It&#8217;s gonna be just barely above the rabbet of the frame. One thing that&#8217;s great about this composition is I can do the light in the center, everything fading out. I warn you usually not to do that for most of your landscapes. But it&#8217;s fine here. I&#8217;ve done it and I&#8217;ve sold those paintings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Water<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m kind of running out of room here. Which is okay. As soon as those waves are in, we&#8217;re done. We don&#8217;t want to sit here and fuss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This color is a nothing color. I&#8217;m painting water with purples, blues, teals. That&#8217;s counterintuitive. It just gives us the feeling of motion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m wiping off that brush. Make sure there&#8217;s nothing in it. We do want some little places where paint bunches up, but not everywhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Alright, we&#8217;re done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Technical Materials<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>Take good care of yourself, your family, all your loved ones. Stay out of trouble and fight the power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.substack.com\/@landscapepainter\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Substack Studio Pass<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.landscapepainter.co.nz\/book\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Book<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.landscapepainter.co.nz\/gallery\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Gallery<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.landscapepainter.co.nz\/supplies\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Supplies Page<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@landscapepainter\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">YouTube<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@landscapepainter\/join\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Members Area<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.landscapepainter.co.nz\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">M Francis McCarthy, Your Painter in Residence<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Live Painting Transcript and Key Insights We did a version of this yesterday on the gray. Perfectly saleable. Smaller. But I&#8217;ve changed the scene quite a bit with some help from my assistants. You&#8217;ll see some synthetic color mixing here. Grist for the&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":144,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43","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\/43","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=43"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":147,"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions\/147"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}