{"id":585,"date":"2026-09-13T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-13T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/?p=585"},"modified":"2026-09-12T22:43:44","modified_gmt":"2026-09-12T22:43:44","slug":"after-the-rain-4x6-15-minute-painting-session","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/?p=585","title":{"rendered":"After the Rain 4\u00d76 \u2013 15 Minute Painting Session!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/Sl56987eHps\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Transcript and Key Insights<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

I painted this last week based on a photo I took back in 2012 during a trip to England. I\u2019ve made several paintings from this reference over the years, all of them bigger than this one. Back then, I was doing a five by seven study followed by an eight by ten version. I actually sold the five by seven to another artist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I got out of that whole five by seven study approach because I was consistently more thrilled with the smaller version than the larger one. Much of that came down to composition and proportion issues. I\u2019ve always found eight by ten horizontals to be not optimal for landscape painting. You can make them work, but back then I had the idea of just adding more sky to the top, and that was a bad plan. Where your trees relate to your sky is super critical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How Composition Evolves<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Going through my old references recently, I could definitely see where my ability to change up the photo reference to enhance the composition has been one of the major places I\u2019ve grown. There are things that are very easy for me to spot now that I clearly wasn\u2019t seeing back in 2012. As I progress through that folder of references, I have less and less reason to adjust things because of my enhanced capacity to create better compositions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Composition is best learned through experience. This is 100% true. I have a copy of \u201cComposition of Landscape Painting\u201d by Edgar Payne, which I recommend you pick up. It\u2019s a great book. But I had that book back in 2012 and was still making compositions that weren\u2019t as successful as many I come up with today. This is one of the main areas where you\u2019ll expand as a painter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

The sky in this painting is really inspiring. One thing I like to do is leave an area where the board is still visible, and I come in quite light with that. This is something I really wasn\u2019t doing back in the day. I didn\u2019t have these areas of much brighter contrast in the sky. That\u2019s something I almost insist upon now because it helps make the paintings better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having an area of real lightness and brightness is vital and awesome. You need some areas in your tonal painting that are pretty bright. It makes a real difference in how the painting reads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Managing Long Shadows and Ground Plane<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

This scene has definitely some long shadows on the ground because the light is coming clearly from the right side. I did indicate that somewhat, but I didn\u2019t want to get trapped by it. When you have things like long shadows on the ground, that\u2019s an area that can become a real issue or trap. Those horizontal streaks can take over your painting if you\u2019re not careful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this piece, I love the streaks of horizontal shadow on the foreground, but I made an effort to keep them broken up and not let them become too tyrannical. You\u2019ve got to balance that visual interest without letting it dominate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Intuition Comes From Experience<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

One place I felt I really succeeded was with the tree tunnel in the center, the area where you can almost walk or drive through. In the reference, there\u2019s a dark black wedge going up. I painted it the opposite way, and this looks and feels way better. That\u2019s something I did intuitively, like most things I do in my painting. But here\u2019s the thing: the intuition is 100% fed by experience. It\u2019s not a magical process, well, it is a magical process, but it\u2019s one you can train.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can definitely work to make your intuition stronger and stronger. The way to do that is by creating a lot of paintings. Do little four by sixes like this one. You could maybe do even one a day, and then set the world on fire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Painting Process<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

When I started this piece, everything was pretty dark. There\u2019s quite a lot of underpainting with darks on the whole left side, the trees and things. We\u2019re missing the actual dark painting session, but it was only five to ten minutes anyway. What I\u2019m doing here is a bit like sculpting. I\u2019m coming in with lighter and lighter tones, building up the form. If I were sculpting, I\u2019d knock away more and more to reveal the form in the stone. With painting, it\u2019s an additive process, but the ideas are similar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The key is building from your darks and pushing into the lighter values carefully, letting each layer inform the next. That\u2019s how you maintain control while still capturing the energy of the scene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mike\u2019s New Site | Substack | Painting Website | Mailing List | Store | My Music | Support | Members Area<\/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":"

Transcript and Key Insights I painted this last week based on a photo I took back in 2012 during a trip to England. I\u2019ve made several paintings from this reference over the years, all of them bigger than this one. Back then, I...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":583,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-585","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\/585","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=585"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":586,"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585\/revisions\/586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mfrancismccarthy.art\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}