Welcome to another session of tonal landscape painting. Today I’m sharing a dawn scene I knocked out this morning - what I’m calling a sister painting to that sunset piece I did recently. Same approach, opposite end of the day, and honestly, this one painted itself, which was exactly what I needed after wrestling with some massive Northland scenes lately.

The Setup and Reference

I started with an Digitally manipulated photo - some work on somebody’s painting that I couldn’t identify. Doesn’t matter. What caught my eye were those classic colors I gravitate toward: rich greens, coral-touched skies, just enough blue to ground everything. Very standard McCarthy palette territory. The reference doesn’t need to be art - it just needs to inspire the painting process. I’ll throw everything including the kitchen sink at a reference if it makes it more stimulating and useful for what I’m trying to accomplish.

Technical Setup Notes

Quick note on the filming setup - you’re sitting on a tripod about two feet from me, maybe two and a half when I’m in painting position. I’ve been working out some lens issues and light leaks. Getting a lot of haze, but the colors you’re seeing are actually more accurate this way. This is on hardboard with house paint prep. Nothing fancy, but it works.

Compositional Decisions

Here’s something crucial that I keep hammering on the channel: I don’t care where elements are in the reference photo. What matters is where they work in relation to the masses I’m creating on my canvas. The tree trunks, the stream, the distant hills - they all serve my composition, not the other way around.

The challenge here was dealing with all those horizontals - horizon line, distant hills, water’s edge. Too many parallel lines will kill a composition, so I relied on color relationships to break things up and create the necessary connections.

Used the grid to establish that horizon line at about one-fifth up the canvas. This is where the grid shows its real value - not for copying, but for getting your bearings.

Color Strategy

Standard approach here:

Mike’s Gray foundation (ivory black and titanium white)
Burnt umber for the darks
Titanium buff for sky transitions
Cadmium red straight from the tube for those grass notes

That sky that looks blue? It’s Mike’s Gray. This is basic color theory - when purple gets too aggressive, hit it with its complement to calm it down.

Why This Approach Works for Dawn

Dawn presents specific challenges. Trees read quite dark against the sky, but they need that subtle glow - not sharp highlight from direct sun, more of an atmospheric rim light. It’s about suggestion, not drama.

The water only needed a sliver. People fill in the blanks. Sometimes less information creates more believable space than trying to render every detail.

Brush Choices

Flats for the sky work - I use those corners constantly. The blending technique with flats has become more central to my approach. Not over-blending, just enough to marry transitions while keeping that chunky paint quality.

For foliage: Trekell number two filbert. Nothing better for foliage work, period.

Working Wet-into-Wet

The entire painting was wet-into-wet, which demands confident mixing and decisive brushwork. No going back once the paint is down. This suits dawn’s atmospheric quality - those soft transitions happen naturally when working into wet paint.

The Sister Painting Concept

This really functions as a sister to my recent sunset work. Similar compositional approach but exploring dawn’s completely different territory. Sunset tends toward dramatic and warm; dawn offers subtlety and cooler harmonies with selective warm notes.

Both paintings share what I’m always after: they feel like real places you could visit, even though they’re largely imaginary compositions built from references.

Modern Tonalism Characteristics

Look at how I handled those background shapes - everything’s stylized and quite graphic. I was content to leave considerable abstraction, which is definitely a hallmark of great tonalist work. Get too realistic and you tip over into Hudson River School territory.

This has all the tonalist hallmarks: large linked masses, minimal actual detail, rich color modulations, deep shadows. Most people familiar with art history would recognize it as Tonalism - just a modern interpretation that’s more graphic and cleaner than traditional approaches.

Working Philosophy

Part of my brief was keeping the brushwork expressive. Once I had the painting covered, I wanted to leave it alone. There were bits I could have tweaked, but I often decide against that. An honest, expressive interpretation that isn’t overworked is always more valuable than an amateurish pursuit of perfection.

This is why I work on colored grounds - I can leave areas exposed if I want. Put down a stroke, leave it alone, move on, finish the painting, leave it alone. That’s exactly what I did here.

Members Area Update

The Substack members area provides the complete package - transcript, video, reference image, palette setup. You don’t get 4K there, but you get everything organized in one post. YouTube members get the corresponding blog post with all the same elements.

Unexpected Interruption

Had some lovely visitors mid-session - Jennifer from Maine (now living in New Zealand) and her friend Liz. These encounters remind me why working in public spaces enriches the experience, even when they interrupt the flow.

This session reinforced key principles I constantly discuss: value relationships matter more than exact color matching, compositional elements must serve your painting not your reference, and sometimes the best paintings are the ones that want to paint themselves.

Hope you got something from watching this come together. Leave a comment if you did - I appreciate that along with the likes and support.

Until next time, take care of yourself and stay out of trouble.

Mike

Transcription

Live Painting Session—Landscape with Trees

I’m just trying to get things better now. I’m not sharing the photo reference—you’ll get your chance to see it. I want to get some drawing and underpainting done right now, then go to lunch. When I come back, I think I’ll have time to get the drawing done and big colors in.

You might ask “why not just mix colors first?” Well, because I have to change lenses to do that. It was nice in the old days—that’s good, that’s pretty good on the screen with the color of the board.

I’m going to squeeze out a little bit of umber down there. I have noticed that covering the top is definitely a huge factor. The other lens is sitting on the table right now—you didn’t know that, did you? You’re on a tripod on the table, about a foot, maybe two feet away from me. Actually, when I’m not painting right now I’m pouring coffee, so maybe two and a half feet when I’m in my painting position.

So I came in this morning and started working with this photo. I’m very happy with it—it’s based on some AI generation from someone else’s painting. I don’t recognize the original painting at all, but it looks like an artistic photo rather than someone’s painting. Very standard McCarthy colors though—you’ve got your rich green, your sky with corals, a bit of blue. I think it’ll be a very nice painting.

I’ve been working on this massive scale for me—you’ll see that this weekend. Very proud of it, very beautiful. In the members area you’ll see exactly how close to the photo it really is, except that it’s painted rather than a photo.

What I love about what we’re doing here is there’s nothing to work out—nothing to work out. I figured out what was my problem with my battery door and I found my cloth! I tried it in the trash—isn’t that brilliant? Well, it’s so much nicer than a paper towel.

I’m always skeptical about brushes, but this one will be good. We don’t need to get real detailed with this painting. I wouldn’t have gotten more orangey, but the last one was quite orangey, so more lavender tops, gray tops and things like that. The last one was straight-up sunset—very similar approach though. This is like a sister picture to it, really.

This won’t be going up this weekend—I’ve got that all prepped. For members, you know—I know many of you are watching here on YouTube, but if you’re here now you could be on Substack, which I think is a way better presentation, although it’s not 4K.

[Setting up the grid and initial drawing]

I’m using a grid version—there we go, so I can judge accurately where things arrive. This is like one-fifth of this space here. That’s the real value of the grid—just to kind of get your bearings.

I don’t really care where the trunks are in the reference. What I care about is where the trunks are in relation to my tree masses. This is like a walk on the beach compared to what I’ve been going through. I have so much license here to do things.

The stream starts here. The horizon line’s there, so we would see the trunks. I’m actually kind of happy with this brush—it’s not as nice as some, but it’ll work.

In the reference, it’s a little odd, but I think I can manage it here. The area like that is very stationary—that’s why I’m putting something there. It could just be color or something, but you don’t want to play up this wedge.

These are silhouettes, so they’re quite dark against the sky. A little bit of highlight on the edge—not so much the kind of highlight you would see from direct light hitting it, more like a bit of a glow.

I’m keeping in mind the “frame rabbit” [format/framing]. Just a little tree over here for balance. A typical McCarthy composition—and it’s not just a McCarthy composition, it is a traditional composition.

We just need a sliver of the lake—we only need a little bit because people are going to fill in the blanks there. We also don’t need a lot of these hills—they don’t need to be very prominent. We can go a little higher here.

[Color mixing phase]

Now let’s make some colors. Big strokes—that’s my way of saying don’t get too detailed, don’t get finicky.

I like that blue. What I brought in was mixed with Mike’s Gray, just bringing in some black to kill the color. That’s good enough. We’re going to need some titanium white.

Does that sky look familiar to you? I like that sky. I like that purple too. That’s just about what I want. I have to think about the purple—we’re going to modulate that very quickly if it’s too complementary. That’s a little cleaner than what’s there, but that’s okay.

One trick I do—I do this quite a lot—I think between these two colors I can manage it. I’m going to focus on the cream tone next.

[Painting the landscape elements]

Now the landscape. I’m going to go with phthalo black—oh, that’s from the dog. It jumped on me. I wonder why my pants are all muddy.

I like playing off those greens. Really, there’s only one dark green and then all the colors in the grass. Colors of water I’ll just deal with when I think about the sky, if I remember. Otherwise we’ll probably just mix them on the fly.

I’ve got all this cardboard up back behind—cardboard over the top. Everything was affected by the haze coming in, a little light leak.

This paint is coming together really nice. I think this is one that’s going to paint itself, which is great. I’m ready for that. Hungary Heads came out great, but I was painting things that I’ve never painted before at this scale.

We got a real color in the grass here—that is very reddish orange. “Well, yeah, I don’t like green too much,” you might say. What do you see? Right there—sun!

[Continued painting process with various technical notes about brush techniques, color mixing, and compositional decisions]

[Visitor interaction—brief conversation about paintings and prices]

[Final painting session continues with detailed work on darks and finishing touches]

First Light LIVE Painting Session!