Whangarei Heads: 14×28 Oil Painting
The painting I’m bringing you today is called “Whangarei Heads.” It’s a 14 by 28 that I painted last week, and I’m so proud and happy to share it with you. This was quite an ordeal getting it to the state where I can share it with you—the actual painting session took about eight hours total. That’s not including prep time, and a lot of my tech was just choking on that footage, but I figured it out, and here we are today.
Whangarei Head 14×28
The Extended M. Francis Grid
What you see me doing here first is introducing the extended M. Francis grid. It’s not just dividing the space in half each way—it’s dividing the space in half again each way, so we get 16 individual little rectangles. This allows us to get our bearings quite a bit easier. I don’t really worry much about changing things as I paint. It’s more that without that grid, all you have is the four edges of the board itself, so it’s a big advantage just for getting your bearings and finding out where you are.
The Perfect Panoramic Proportion
This painting represents the third in a series I’ve been doing, and this is the first one I’m sharing on YouTube. What’s interesting is this proportion—14 by 28—which I quite favor. It is two squares abutted together. The two squares together, for me, is like the perfect amount of panoramic. I picked up that proportion from Jules Dupre. If he was going to do a panoramic, those are the proportions he would use.
Finding the Right Composition
This scene had some real challenges. I live on the other side of this head—out there in the distance—and that was a view I was trying to paint. But it just compositionally wasn’t working, even though I’d taken it so far as to do an underpainting and throw everything I had at it. At the end of that day, I just said, “Forget it. It’s not working.” And I went back to the studio from my car, squeezed some oil on the board and wiped the underpainting off. Then the next day, I came in and was able to find a different view of Whangarei heads from the other side, which had everything I wanted: interesting water and rocks interspersed with green areas. That’s really my MO on this project. I want some waves, some rocks, some green—all working in the panoramic format.
Sky Work and Color Strategy
One criteria for this project is I’m not doing sunsets or twilight. They’re all basically blue-ish skies with a range of clouds. I seldom would paint just white, fluffy clouds. I try to get in a good amount of different tones from all the different darks and both warm and cool grays. There’s a lot of flexibility with regular everyday clouds. You might think it’s just clouds—mix up one gray, maybe an off-white and a couple blues and you’re off to the races—but you can inject a lot of other colors in there and really make it quite a bit more expressive.
The Challenge of the Greens
We’re getting into what I found to be one of the more challenging parts of the painting—those greens on the hillside. What a challenge that was! My approach was basically to break into fractured color. I was also working with varying amounts of opacity and moving the color from slightly cooler tone(using my Mike’s Green mixture—Acrylide yellow mixed with ivory black) and tinting that with perylene black/green, which is a much cooler, more intense green. Then also with orange and cadmium yellow, and all the way through I was putting in pretty good helpings of burnt sienna as well. Burnt sienna is a color that I always love to add into my greens because so many greens really need to be a lot redder. Also, when you’re working with the paint’s transparency, there are varying degrees of that reddish underpainting coming through. I have to say I was very satisfied with the result, despite really struggling. This type of landscape is a little bit out of my normal comfort zone in that—it’s not my favorite thing to paint actual real places. But I can do it.
Water Techniques with Prussian Blue
In the water section, everything is basically riffing off of Prussian blue. In the darkest areas I might be bringing in some black, in the lighter areas tones like cadmium yellow. We also adulterate the blue with colors like burnt or raw umber. Another thing I did was instead of bringing in just blues alone, I brought in a lot of Mike’s Gray. Mike’s Gray is made from titanium white mixed with ivory black—it just gives me the standard sort of gray that I have on my palette. It tends to be a little on the cool side. You don’t normally see shadows so much in the ocean, but there are subtle reflections of the darker colors. That’s why you see in that center bit a little more green, in the shadow area. The end result is that you get a feeling that the headland is placed there right over that water.
Process Philosophy: Impressions Over Details
One of the things I was running into with this scene was there’s a lot of little details in that landscape. I could hunker down and start working out and rendering everything as accurately as possible, but frankly I find that quite boring. If I was really going to go that direction, I would probably just use a projector. My approach instead was to work on impressions of it. Those light areas of the rocky outcrops—those are what really make it, along with the brighter yellowy green areas.
Book and Members Area
Book Update: We’ve been shipping out many books and I’m so gratified to send them all over the planet. The book is the result of 13 years of solid painting experience based on learning to teach myself how to paint in a tonal manner. There’s plenty of books out there that show you how to paint in an impressionist way, but not so many that will take you down this particular path.
Members Area Access: You want to check this painting session out in the members area—yes, it’s eight hours long, but you can play that on double or triple speed. There will be a full transcript linked from there, and I have to say some of the information in that transcript is absolute gold. Available in the YouTube members area.
Substack Integration: Also check out my Substack, which is the same cost. It doesn’t have as many videos—but I will be bringing in more special and deluxe content into Substack because what they give me there is the ability to have a transcript, the reference image, a picture of my palette with all the colors listed, and a lot of other stuff that could help you in your painting journey.
Final Thoughts
I’m thrilled to bring this one to you today. I’m really proud of the painting, and I really hope you got something from watching me put this together. Is this Tonalism? That’s debatable. I am cleaving to a certain tonal bias and a harmonic unity throughout the piece, but would I call it pure Tonalism? It’s more accurate to say it’s tonal. This piece challenged me in a lot of ways and I’m not normally challenged with the kind of things I normally go after, which are generally more subjective and intimate—not such a broad sort of vista. I got such a buzz off of this painting after I pulled it off.
Until I come back with another video and post, take good care, stay out of trouble.Mike
Full 8-hour painting session, complete transcript, reference materials, and detailed palette information available in the YouTube members area and Substack. Mike’s book “Landscape Painting the Tonalist Way” - 13 years of tonal painting knowledge, shipping worldwide.